Red Giant TV Live – Episode 6: VFX for Indie Film with Seth Worley, Gun Muzzle Flashes with Trapcode Particular

Harry Frank and Aharon Rabinowitz are joined by Plot Device Director Seth Worley to discuss Visual Effects for Indie Film. Harry follows it up with a tutorial on using Trapcode Particular to create gun muzzle flashes.

• A huge thanks to Film Riot for the use of footage from their action short, ‘Losses.’
• Check out Seth Worley’s website to see his projects including ‘Adventure Now’ and ‘The Time Closet.’
• Download the gun muzzle flash project files at Red Giant People.

Watch it HERE.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (1/31/12): Looks for FCPX is now available. Learn more HERE.

We’ve been getting a lot of questions about Magic Bullet Looks for FCPX, and what’s taking so long. So I put together this video to show it in action, and to give an update on it;s development:

As I say in the video, by far, we aren’t the only ones being effected. Apple is taking this issue very seriously, and they’ve been very responsive. We know their team of developers is dedicated to giving you the best possible user experience in FCP, so we expect a resolution soon.

Thanks for hanging in there.

IMPORTANT UPDATE (1/31/12): Looks for FCPX is now available. Learn more HERE.

Red Giant QuickTip #53: Layer Sampling – Generate Particles Where and When You Want Them

In this Quicktip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to control the way particles are emitted from a picture or text, when using a layer emitter. He’ll be exploring a feature called Layer Sampling.

Layer Sampling is a feature that controls whether or not particles are revealed by a layer’s alpha channel, or, depending on the setting, if they are emitted at all. If you have ever wanted to blow up text, this tutorial will help.This is also a great technique for creating underwater simulations (Ex.: bubbles created from a layer’s motion).

Watch it HERE.

We had some trouble recording Episode #4 of RGTV Live, but Harry and I felt the content was too good not to re-record it.

Red Giant TV Live – Episode 4: Motion Graphics for Product Spots

In this Episode of RGTV Live, Harry and Aharon are joined by David Torno of Ghost Town Media to discuss motion graphics for product spots. Also, Harry walks you through a Product spot he recently completed which involved mograph and color correction. Watch it HERE.

Check out David Torno’s work at GhostTownMedia.com.

Red Giant TV Episode 63: Plot Device – Thunderdome

In this episode of Red Giant TV, director Seth Worley takes you through the process of creating the explosion and shockwave effect from the end of the sci-fi scene in Plot Device.

Watch it HERE.

We really want to ensure that your workflow with the new OBJ feature in Form 2.0 is as seamless as possible so we’ve been constantly looking at that feature since release to ensure we have it working just right. This maintenance release focusses on that feature along with a few other goodies to keep things humming. Fixes in this release:

Form 2.0.2:

• We have improved the import of OBJ files so you should, in most cases, be able to have your OBJ match up exactly with how you had your coordinates set when you exported the OBJ from your 3D modelling application. A new parameter is available to turn this behaviour on and off so as not to affect existing projects.
• Motion blur calculations for the offset parameter with OBJ sequences has been fixed up so it now works properly.
• A crashing bug was fixed that gets triggered if you attempt to import an OBJ file that has unused uvw/vt coordinates.
• We fixed a problem with importing OBJ files that had a file path that contained non-ASCII characters.

Lux 1.2.2:

• It was possible to end up with a vertical line rendered in your project while using Lux. This issue is now fixed.

Bonus:

• Our suite installers are also relatively new and we’ve been working on improving those across all of the suites. On OSX, for this release, you will notice that the installer size is significantly smaller – this is not a bug – we’ve fixed up how we package our installer to make your downloads quicker and easier.

Download the latest Trapcode Suite installer here.

OK -  if you’re new to 3D, then the term “Backface” might not mean much to you. But it still beats calling the post “Managing Front & Back Particle Visibility in Trapcode Form” which is the name of this very useful tutorial by Harry Frank. If you’ve never culled a backface… well… you’re going to want to after watching this. Trust me. Because while Harry uses this technique for hiding some particles, it can also be used as a way to transition/reveal a whole Form 3D OBJ from front to back. Watch and learn, buddy:

Red Giant QuickTip 52: Managing Front & Back Particle Visibility in Trapcode Form

In this Quick Tip, Harry Frank shows how to easily manage front and back visibility with 3D null objects and some simple expressions inside Trapcode Form.

Often when using Trapcode Form, it’s ideal to have particles appear invisible on the area facing away from the camera. In 3D applications, this is commonly referred to as “backface culling.”

You can see this in action in the experimental piece “Cosm” by host Harry Frank: vimeo.com/​28093993

It’s that time of the year, where ghosts and goblins, monsters and mayhem, demons and dragons, and vampires and viruses come out to play (yeah – viruses. I have a cold). So in the spirit of things, we bring you a color correction quicktip of undead proportions:

Quick Tip 51: Coloring for Horror

In this QuickTip, Colorist Denver Riddle shows you how to bring out your dead – with great tips for making blood stand out and for creating an overall film look appropriate for a zombie horror flick.**

Watch the tutorial HERE.

** Also great for a zombie romance/comedy, if you can make that work.

Check out Denver’s tutorials on color grading at http://colorgradingcentral.com.

With a mantra that says “We don’t do annoying rubbish!” I knew Barbeque Design were going to be something a bit special, and they certainly don’t disappoint.

In April this year Barbecue produced a concept commercial for Toyota to introduce the new Yaris at the 81st Geneva International Motor Show. This elegant piece of motion graphics was developed using Trapcode Form, so we just had to ask Barbeque about their choice of software.

Managing Director Rüdiger Chmielus told us, “I think that from the moment I first used “Shine” I was a Trapcode follower. Especially the combination of Shine and Particular are essential for the typical “Barbecue” style. We use them on every project – even if it’s not obvious, they’re there. We definitely love this software!”

“The Yaris Project was finished under a very tight schedule and the final production took just under two weeks. We had one unit doing all the rotoscoping and tracking while another unit worked on the composites and the backgrounds.”

Based in Frankfurt and founded in 2007, postproduction and motion graphics studio Barbecue Mediendesign GmbH have produced consistently stunning concepts for brands such as Mercedes-Benz, Audi, Lexus and Porsche, not to mention numerous television ads, main titles and trailers.

As well as using Trapcode for commercial productions, some of their experimental work is equally impressive.

Also, check out their amazing show reel:

Hey all -

A while back, we gave an update on the status of our plugins running on OSX Lion: Roaring Through The Issues. Pretty much, it came down to some serious bugs in OS X Lion, that we could not control. However we did our best to communicate the issues with Apple, and we’re excited to say…

Breaking News! Today, Apple announced an update for OS X Lion: 10.7.2 and we’re happy to say that this update resolves the issues we have been seeing with Magic Bullet Looks 2, Colorista II, Primatte Keyer, and Knoll Light Factory running in Final Cut Pro on OSX Lion. We’ve been testing with the pre-releases of this OS X update and we can finally give it a thumbs up!

Thanks for your patience on this. Getting these bugs resolved was entirely out of our hands, but we’re happy that our dialog with Apple resulted in a  a fantastic problem-solving update!