After six months away from making tutorials for the sake of our rapidly growing family, it’s time for a comeback.

So, in this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create some great looking titles using Trapcode Particular, depth of field rendering, and some free live-action footage based on a recent project I completed for Calvary Community Church.

I also switched things up a little bit and recorded this pretty much on the fly – so if you pay attention, you’ll probably catch me calling five sided objects hexagons instead of pentagons – but I left some of those in there for entertainment value. Don’t hesitate to rib me in the comments below if you feel the need to further pick on me.

I’ve also included a link to the project file and footage from the tutorial so you can play with the content yourself. Feel free to use the smoke and dust loops in your own work – in fact, I’d encourage it.

The font used in the tutorial is Quicksand and available as a free download.

DOWNLOAD: PROJECT FILES AND FOOTAGE

It’s up! And I gotta tell ya, I think this might be one of the best tutorials you’ve seen all day. Unless, of course, you’ve watched a bunch of them already.

Either way, enjoy the 3D action here – and download the trial versions of Form and PlaneSpace while you’re at it.

I know it sounds basic, but I’ve been surprised to see how many talented animators get tripped up by the archival process in After Effects. So, in this video tutorial, I’ll show you how to archive a project with shared assets using the consolidate footage and collect Files commands.

Watch it here. And let me know what you think!

Finally! The secret project revealed: Horizon replacement using Mocha for After Effects v2.

Check it out at mytoolfarm.com.

Fun fact: I shot this footage near False Bay, South Africa, the same general area they filmed the shark attacks in BBC’s Planet Earth.

Here it is: the latest tutorial. It’s funny, I posted a preview earlier this week of an 80’s project I was working on, and ended up going in a completely different direction when it was time to record.  Maybe the other one will resurface later.

Anyway, In this tutorial I’ll show you how to create a whip pan (a.k.a swish pan) effect using Adobe After Effect’s built in tools.

In this video tutorial, I show you how to use the track a child expression to create an interesting title sequence in Adobe After Effects.

Watch a preview.

Watch the tutorial.

I recently had the opportunity to create some tutorials for Imagineer Systems highlighting some of the key features of their new product, Mocha for After Effects Version 2… and I have to admit, we’ve had a lot of fun making them.

If you’re not familiar with their products, check them out. They really make some great stuff. Now that I’ve become accustomed to doing tracking and rotoscoping in Mocha, I doubt I’ll ever go back to doing it in After Effects except for the simplest of jobs.

In the first tutorial, we demonstrated some of the key tracking features of Mocha for After Effects including planar tracking, the adjust track module, and exporting tracking data to After Effects. I also tend to think that it’s a cool tutorial simply because it involves my wife, a high-power handgun, and flames.

…speaking of which, our friends at Artbeats were kind enough to allow us to use their flame footage in the tutorial and include it for free with the project files. So even if you don’t have Mocha yet, it’ll be worth your time to download the project files along with the tutorial so you can play with the source footage on your own.

In this tutorial, I show you how to track the position of a parented layer using expressions in Adobe After Effects. Special thanks to Michael Natkin and Dan Ebberts for sharing their knowledge.

To track the position of a child layer, use this expression on the layer you want to effect.

L = thisComp.layer(”child_layer”);
P = L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint);

where P[0] gives x, P[1] gives y,  and P[2] gives z.

In this AE podcast tutorial, I show you how to remove chromatic aberration from your footage using Adobe After Effects. And as geeky as it sounds, I’m guessing you’ll find this tutorial more useful than you think. Enjoy.