Workbench

Tutorial 128: I Like Turtles (Spline Animation)

This week we explore how you can make interesting folding meshes with MoSpline using a very simple L-System. You might have seen L-systems, or Logo programming language in school as it's often used to teach programming concepts to young children. The cursor in the UI for these graphic programs is called Turtle—which is where the name for this tutorial came from.

For additional information on L-Systems 2018-06-15 06:25:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Elements - June 2018

Sorry for being late on this! But we always come through! We have some glitch FUI elements this month from an upcoming pack. Grab them here!

Tutorial 127: Tank-Style Wireframes

This might be our longest tutorial ever. It was a difficult edit because I swapped some things around for some clarity, but it's a complicated tutorial involving using some sliders in ways they were never intended. So hopefully it's clear.

Anyway, this week we're taking a look at making a variant of the effect that Stu Maschwitz used on his short film Tank. Make sure to watch that and the 2018-06-08 03:54:09 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 126: Number Crawl

This week, we're going to check out an interesting way to make a number crawl using expressions and master properties. I wanted to avoid using time remapping because it can change the speed of our animations. I also wanted our digits to finish animating when our number stops animating. And above all else, I didn't want this expression to be slow so we needed to keep any lookback loops to a minimum.

While this is mostly an academic exploration, in the end we have a flexible but useful number cr...

Tutorial 125: Secondary Motion

This week, we're going to explore adding secondary motion to your animations in Cinema 4D. We take a look at how to do it with clones as well as splines but the technique can be applied to any keyframed animation.

Our next tutorial just needs to be recorded, so we'll hopefully have that one up early for Patrons next week after the holiday. So we'll see you next week!

Complex Elements - May 2018

Here's a few elements for this month, right now there are some presets for trimming paths. There's a simple trim in/out and then ones that trim in/out from the edges of a stroke and trim in/out from the center of a stroke. I had one just built for trimming in before and it's saved me a ton of time.

These should also add trim paths if you don't already have them on your shape paths, so they're great to combine wit...

Tutorial 124: Linked Paths

This week, we're going to link paths on different layers using a slider so that we can animate them as if they're a single stroke. This lets us easily pass lines around objects in 3D space without actually having to deal with 3D space and figuring out occlusion.

To start with this effect, you need to have a Controller null that has sliders for Start and End. Then you need a slider for either Elements or Bias depending upon which version of this technique you're using. If you have multiple stro...

Tutorial 123: Object Blending

This week we're going to blend without an Osterizer. By using the same object in a few different states, we'll use the blend function in a Mograph Cloner to animate clones without keyframing. This is a powerful way to animate your clones.

You can grab the project file here. If you're a patron, make sure you use the discount code from a previous post.

2018-05-17 17:08:00 +0000 UTC View Post

Elements - May

Hi guys, here's the link for our elements for May. We've got a ton of useful, glitchy transitions and backgrounds in here. One or two have been available in the tutorials, but this pack contains about 46 different elements. These will likely be a part of a pack in the future.

If new elements are added to this, you'll get notified through gumroad. They're also in there individually if you want to download certain ones on their own.

Grab them 2018-05-04 17:08:37 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 122: After Effects Multi-shader

I really wanted to get this one out sooner to you guys. We were working on a heavy 3D spot for the past week or so as well as a few other projects so it didn't happen. That said, next week we should hopefully have an early one from Sev.

This week we take another look at master properties inside of After Effects to build a sort of multi-shader. This allows us to use different mattes to apply textures to an image. If you use the angle control, which is tied to a Colorama effect on e...

Tutorial 121: Quick Tips 07

Here's another collection of Quick Tips for you guys. The time for each tip is as follows:

+ 0:12 - Center Anchor Point

+ 0:55 - Math (Keyframes)

+ 1:57 - Laptop Shortcuts

+ 2:38 - Kill Keyframes (Temporarily)

+ 3:07 - Stroke/Fills Options

+ 3:45 - Reveal Timeline/Effects

+ 4:12 - Vector Math

+ 5:06 - Folder with Contents

+ 5:38 - Quick Color

+ 6:16 - Preservation

And that's it. I hope these help you guys to work faster. That math tip...

Tutorial 120: One Comp to Rule Them All

This week, we take a look at Master Properties using the Essential Graphics Panel. While you can use them to make things like lower thirds comps with replaceable text, we're going to use them in a different way—using single comps of elements to generate more complex imagery.

We'll do that in a few different ways in this tutorial. This tutorial only scratches the surface of what is possible with this new After Effects feature.

Because the feature that allows this is only in the latest v...

Elements March-April

Hey everyone! Here's the WB Elements as promised from last month and it will include new stuff from this month. It's set at $10 for the tier, but the link has a discount code so you get it for $0. I'm putting this at the previous tier level for this reward, since it should have been delivered sooner. Next month this will be at the $10/month level, so if you'd like to get these for May, make sure to change your tier ...

We finally switched to monthly.

Hopefully this goes smoothly. We've switched up the reward tiers. Most of the tiers you were in have changed so be sure to check them and see if you want to change levels. If you were paying $3 per video before, you're now in a tier that's $3 per month instead.

We tried to make the cost a little lower. So, if you were paying $3 x 4 videos, now you'd pay $10/mo. for roughly the same if not more content.

Speaking of, we know we've been slow to get you guys content. And we definitely have s...

Tutorial 118: Text Breakup

I was really hoping to get this out to you guys earlier. But we are a day early, so there's that! I ended up having a project pushed back. That really worked out in my favor because I severely underestimated the amount of changes I needed to make to the website in order to accommodate our newest products—shirts! We got merch like a god church you guys. I can't believe I quoted that, but it's just too good to pass on. 2018-04-05 04:34:19 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 117: The Power of Vertex Maps

This week we take a look at a really useful technique in Cinema 4D—controlling effectors and shaders with vertex maps. Generally, you're limited to a simple falloff when it comes to controlling the parts of objects that effectors, uh, effect. But by adding a quick vertex map, we can add complex effects to objects and their shaders.

The C4D file for this project is available through our Gumroad store. If you're a patron, check ...

Improvements

I forgot to note this here last night. I wrote this about changes we're making to project files and to our Patreon tiers—which I mentioned way back in September. Although we're going to do that somewhat differently. Also I had to reconcile my accounts so I could give the info to my accountant so he can prepare my taxes today. So it ended up being a late one.

Anyway, the changes to the project files ar...

Project Files Link

This should set you guys up with no-charge project files. If for some reason it doesn't work, the code is patronsrock. Thanks for your support!

Left this here as a record, but there's a post here that has these files.

Tutorial 116: Filming Elements

This week, we look at using filmed elements to get some free animation. Get someone to drive you around and film out of the windows. Bring the footage into AE and mirror it, crush it with some levels, and just have fun an experiment to see what interesting things you can do with it. Even the footage alone looks interesting. Horizontally reflected skylines have even been used in music videos.

We're switching up out project files, as noted on this post about [Improvements]. So this one is availa...

Lens

I've made a few lens posts but it always seems to get stuck on posting in the app. Have any of you seen them? I can't find them posted on the site within their time period.

Tutorial 115: Audio-Based Glitch Maps 2

This week we build on Tutorial 114: Audio-Based Glitch Maps by using a similar technique to build our maps in Cinema 4D. This allows for a lot of interesting interaction between 3D objects in a Mograph Cloner.

We'll be using the newer Sound Effector in R19 to isolate portions of an audio track to drive movement in our clones. If you have a previous version of Cinema you can still use this eff...

Tutorial 114: Audio-Based Glitch Maps

Our second tutorial of the day is the follow-up to my blog post about The Nugget where I talked about Andrew Kramer's latest Video Copilot glitch tutorial. He had a lot of great stuff to offer in that one, so check it out! But one thing I found really interesting was a texture.

2018-03-09 06:50:56 +0000 UTC View Post

Tutorial 113: Texturing Parametric Faces

We've got a special treat this week—two tutorials! First up, Sev is back with a C4D tutorial. This one is extra to patrons, so it's not charged.

In this one, we're taking a look at parametric object mapping. Giving each face its own color/shader can be a very useful to create a variety of effects, but doing that is not very straightforward.

But, once you know the trick to it, it's really simple! You start by creating a copy of a parametric cube and then making the copy editable. Then y...

Tutorial 112: Modular Text Systems

I switched around my production schedule, so I was able to get this one out to you guys a bit early this week. Hopefully this is something I can do more regularly.

 This week we expand on a technique we made in Tutorial 110: Liquid Write-on to make a more modular system. This way we can add pre-made animations, point them to an existing text layer, and end up with complex animations with minim...

Tutorial 111: Wood Grain and Visualizers

This week was kind of a tough one for me, since I ended up being way busier than I expected. So I took on a simpler tutorial I was asked about, but I couldn't leave it without adding to it. So we start off talking about wood grain and end up building a visualizer effect. We use Red Giant's Trapcode SoundKeys to accomplish this effect, though you can get there in a more difficult route with les...

Tutorial 110: Liquid Write-On

This week's After Effects tutorial shows you how to make a cool procedural liquid-style write-on effect. We isolate letters using a text animator to allow us to do all sorts of things to those characters. We scratch only the surface using Turbulent Displace. Since we're also using blurs here, it would be interesting to combine this technique with the technique from our first blobs tutorial, Tutorial 03: Blobs...

Tutorial 109: Pixel Sorting Shift

Hey guys, I got this one out a little bit early for you patrons!

This week's After Effects tutorial builds upon a previous tutorial, Tutorial 82: Pixel Sorting and More. Here we use an animated precomp to pull a map to feed to a bunch of Displacement Map effects. The result is a nice pixel sorted shift transition that can be changed in many ways. We only just scratch the surface of what's poss...

Tutorial 108: Cinematic Parallax

In this week's After Effects tutorial, we explore a simple technique to fly over a scene using nothing but a still or a locked-off time lapse. A lot of my early career was trying to rub two stills together to make a fire, so I always found techniques like this helpful. But even now it's still fun being able to make something with a 3 dimensional feel out of 2D footage.

As for the 2D footage, shots with an even horizon work best, but we even used some odd angles and it still worked well enough....

Tutorial 107: A Plexus for the Rest of Us

 This week we're having a Plexivus (Plexus) for the rest of us. Plexus is an excellent plugin. A lot of things can be done with it. But if you're not going to take advantage of all that it has to offer, and you just want something Plexus-lite, you can watch this tutorial to make a nice repeating background with some of that Plexus flavor and none of the calories.

2018-01-26 05:06:41 +0000 UTC View Post

Color Sampler

After Effects doesn't have a color sampler that can stay put like those from Photoshop, so I made my own. We go through the expression line by line to show you how to do it.

Grab the preset from this post.