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

In case you missed it, we recently shipped Trapcode Form 2.0. Never content to just sit back, we spent some time post-release fixing up a few issues that we discovered and wanted to share the fixes for those issues with you today (as well as a bonus fix for Lux!). The issues we have resolved:

Lux 1.2.1:

• If the spotlight was pointed at 90 or 270 degrees to the camera, you end up with a single line of transparent pixels.

Form 2.0.1:

• A crash with opening some projects with OBJ models containing texture coordinates.
• Added support for point cloud and vertex only OBJs.
• Fixed an error when keyframing fractal field parameters.
• Catch and return AE error when using multi-processing with low memory, now returns an error dialog instead of rendering blank frames.
• Fixed world transform being double what it should be.
• Added Invert Z option for OBJ models exported with a z axis opposite to that of After Effects.

You can grab the latest Trapcode Suite 11.0.1 installer here. The suite installer contains the fixes for both Form and Lux.

Trapcode Suite 11 is the industry standard package for high quality broadcast design and 3D motion graphics. Its full-featured tools create beautiful realistic effects — with an emphasis on flexible 3D content — for text titles, animated backgrounds, logo treatments and VFX design.

Our freshly released Form 2 is the new rockstar of Trapcode Suite, with a base particle system that can take any shape imaginable, including OBJ files, 3D animated models and organic forms (read more below). Your favorite celebrity, Particular 2, continues to wow its fans as the most powerful particle system for After Effects. And in a star-studded light extravaganza, Lux has been updated to support 32-bpc for more robust color definition.

Other Trapcode tools create 3D styled elements like volumetric light effects, realistic light sources and volumetric lines, all built for the After Effects 3D environment. Get nine addictive plug-ins for a comprehensive addition to your studio workflow, all at a crowd-pleasing price. 

Save $512 when buying the Suite; costs $1,411 for individual plug-ins.

Learn about Trapcode Suite 11
Buy now for $899
Upgrade now for $99

NEW! TRAPCODE FORM 2

Unlimited 3D possibilities & original organic shapes

Words dissolve into sand, a logo catches on fire, and now 3D sequences explode into particles. Trapcode Form 2 keeps the beautiful organic shapes that you love, while adding amazing 3D object support and powerful Particular 2 controls.

Give your base form endless 3D possibilities by importing OBJ models, OBJ sequences or starting with our professionally designed presets. Supercharge the form with popular Particular features like Textured Polygon particles and Shading for AE lights. With its reorganized interface and better integration into After Effects, Form 2 has grown alongside your creative needs.

Powerful new features of Form 2 include:

• Bring OBJ’s into After Effects with Form’s support for 3D models and 3D sequences
• Includes the Particular 2 features you love, like Textured Polygons, Streaklets and particle illumination with Shading controls
• Expanded Layer Map and Spherical Field features include rotating the layer map and distorting a sphere into any elliptical shape
• Get your projects started quickly with sophisticated Form presets designed by Guru animator Harry Frank
• Oh yes! Full backward compatibility with Form 1 projects

Learn about Trapcode Form 2
Buy now for $199
Upgrade now for $99

GET THE TRAPCODE PARTY STARTED

FREE Training for Form 2, Particular 2 & more

Trapcode Suite 11 helps you get that beautiful animation done faster. Learn how to master the Trapcode plug-ins with over 50 hours of FREE Red Giant training.

The video tutorials and quick tips on Red Giant TV give you a solid introduction to every Trapcode product, from the new 3D tools in Form 2 to the Physics controls in Particular 2, and all the cool stuff in between. Learn from Red Giant industry leaders like Harry Frank and Aharon Rabinowitz, and take control of those particles!

Watch the Getting Started with Form 2 video
Watch the What’s New in Form 2 video

Formed in 1976 Accept is one of Germany’s most renowned heavy metal bands with over 27 million albums sold worldwide. When Mark Tornillo (former T.T. Quick front man) joined in 2009 they attacked the industry with fresh ideas and a matured outlook on music and as they say on their web site “A new era begins!” With this new direction in mind they called on Dave Blass to give creative input for their new videos and the story of how ToonIt came to be used is interesting. We asked Dave to tell us his side of the story.

“I had been hired by the band ACCEPT to Produce/Direct a video for their upcoming Album “Blood of the Nations”, they were going back and forth between songs and ended up setting on “Teutonic Terror”. For that video, the first for the band in nearly 15 years, we wanted something that felt like it was right out of the 80′s Heavy Metal world.

The Teutonic Terror video was a the heart of a unique Social Network scandal when a fan of the band typed “Accept Rules” into Twitter after watching the video, and thus exposed a back-door bug in the system that resulted in Twitter having to shut down its whole network for several hours… creating a worldwide social media event. As opposed to normal shoots, rather than get behind, we finished early and had half a day to shoot some green screen footage for another song “Pandemic”. There was no “concept” at the time of shooting, just “capture some footage, and figure it out later”

The idea for the Pandemic video started with the idea of telling that story in a cool way. We had looked at Trapcode Form as something to use possibly for Teutonic Terror, but ultimately felt it made our 80′s style video look too modern. From there we looked at ToonIt as a possibility to make a graphic novel style telling of the story. Elements of the “Twitter” story were dropped as the world has a short memory for such things, but the concept of a watching a video as if you were reading a graphic novel was kept.

We initially tried compositing all of the footage and then running it through ToonIt, but we found that the faster motion and switching dynamic of the flames caused havoc with the settings depending on the pattern of the flames. Too much detail on the flames, and you got too much detail on the faces etc. Too little detail on the flames, and you lose the toon effect on the faces. We ended up running each element through the software individually and then compositing them together. Some of the sequences ended up being 4-5 passes.”

Dave Blass is well known for his television and film work, and has been responsible for the award winning and incredibly popular western styled drama Justified as well as Cold Case and ER. He also has a number of films to his credit including Asylum and Overdrive.

Related Links

• More about Dave Blass
• More about Accept
• Making of Tutonic

With over fifteen years of postproduction experience to his credit, Compositor, Motion Graphics and Visual Effects Artist, Owain Street has lent his creative expertise to numerous commercials and title sequences for broadcast TV.

Since 2000, as a Designer and After Effects artist at 422.tv, one of the UK’s most recognized post production and VFX houses, Owain has produced some stunning visual work using Trapcode Form and Particular. One commercial that really stood out for us is a 30 sec commercial for OddsChecker.com (an online bet comparison site). We asked Owain to tell us a bit more about the project.

Owain said, “The brief was to try to create a dynamic feeling sports sequence, communicate the idea of “odds” and clearly brand the commercial. I played around with a couple of ideas and then tried out using Trapcode Particular to re-create sports footage with odds and numbers. The client loved the concept & feel of the effect and ran with it”.

“One feature in Particular that made ‘Oddschecker’ possible, was the ability to use layers as particle emitters. Once I had mattes for the live action, I could use Particular to “describe” those live action elements as hundreds of particles. Also, the ability to use custom particles was essential – the sports people needed to be displayed as “odds” like 5/1 or whatever. In fact it was the ability to be able to do these two things that led to my initial concept of turning the sports people into odds in the first place. This is one of the great things about Particular – it allows the creation of a wide variety of effects. It feels like a design tool – a long way from a plug-in that has “one look”, its flexibility is one of its big strengths. As well as the ‘Oddschecker’ effect I have created snow, smoke, fairy dust and energy streams among other things and I’m sure there will be more to follow!”

Another commercial that we had to mention is one of a series made for De Montfort University. Each of the six 10 second commercials used Trapcode Particular and Form to some degree but this particular one is stands out from the others as it was created entirely with 3D Stroke.

It’s such an elegant piece of work we asked Owain why he chose Trapcode. He told us, “For me as a motion graphics designer / VFX artist Trapcode software is a fantastic addition to my tool set. They look great, they are relatively easy to use (3D stroke / Shine / Starglow), but in the case of Particular and Form have a lot more going on when you take the time to explore the various settings. For example, as well as the flexibility of Particular as I mentioned earlier I used Form in the De Montfort “Philippa” sequence to generate the “topography” she casts her hand over. This was done using greyscale images that I had created in Illustrator to drive the Fractal Strength parameter in specific areas of the Form image, all I then needed to do was keyframe the displacement amount, to animate the topography rising up from a flat surface to create the appearance of hills. It is this kind of looking “under-the-hood” that can lead to really nice, controllable effects.

You can check out the other 4 equally impressive commercials HERE.

Additional Links:

• More about Owain Street
• More about 422

Behind-the-scenes videos have really developed into a mini-genre in their own right. No more bored-looking talent, coffee-swigging crew or comedy outtakes. One featurette that illustrates this point perfectly is the work of one Oz Smith.

Oz, in conjunction with Turquoise Branding, put together a sequence to introduce the biggest spectacle on the F1 racing calendar, the Monaco Grand Prix. Footage of BBC presenter Jake Humphrey in front of a green-screen was used to create a lively, fast-paced look at several hours in the studio and given a final polish with Magic Bullet Looks. You can see the final film here:

Oz has been a freelance motion designer, director and animator for over 12 years and is based in London. As well as designing and directing on-screen graphics and idents for larger channel brands such as NRK in Norway, Discovery Channel, Nederland 1, 2 and 3, Abudhabi TV, and BBC Global News he has worked on title sequences, music videos, exhibition and graphics for charity organizations.

Just a quick glance at his site shows the depth of his creative abilities. In a previous collaboration with Turquoise, Oz was involved with the titles and event graphics for the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest in Düsseldorf, incorporating the ‘Feel Your Heart Beat’ tag line. We were thrilled to see that Trapcode Particular and Trapcode Form were used in making the heart logo come to life, and we asked Oz to tell us more about the process.

“I use Trapcode software for almost every job I work on – the versatility is amazing for realising ideas, whether it is the key graphic element of a project, or a subtle finessing tool to add details and grading at the end to lift production values. I find it just as useful for working on purely graphic jobs as well as for live action compositing. I am always being dug out of holes using Trapcode software when the client says ‘we don’t have much money, but we want this to look expensive!’”

Hey folks – in a moment of perfect calm, I managed to crank out 2 presets that are variations on the same theme. Holographic text. One version has sharp text, the other uses soft edged text to create more of a rounded 3D effect. These presets use Trapcode Form and Holomatrix.

Get the free preset here: http://redgiantpeople.com/Explore/PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1524

Get the free preset here: http://redgiantpeople.com/Explore/PresetDetail.aspx?PresetId=1523

If you want to learn more about how I created the look of these presets, check out this tutorial:

In this Quicktip, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how using Depth Maps to displace Trapcode Form particles can be used to create a 3D Point Cloud Representation of a city.

This tutorial was inspired by the brilliant Trapcode Form work of Jeremy Cox at Imaginary Forces, for the film “Terminator: Salvation.”

Eran Hilleli’s amazing animation “Between Bears” just won the Vimeo Festival Award for Best Animation. Given the high quality of so much of the work shown on Vimeo, this is a truly standout achievement. We’re proud to say that both Trapcode Particular and Trapcode Form were used in this fantastic short film and we’re glad we were able to contribute to helping this talented artist bring his vision to life.

Between Bears from Eran Hilleli on Vimeo.

my graduation film at bezalel academy of art and design.
a debt to my childhood and other lives i hope i lived. inspired by words of songs that i admire.

original music composed by Ori Avni
performed by Ori Avni and Daniela Spector.
http://oriavni.bandcamp.com
http://danielaspector.bandcamp.com

http://eranhilleli.com

Episode 30: 3D Motion Graphics Logo
Hosted by Carl Larsen

In this tutorial, Carl Larsen shows you how to create an array of 3D particles using Trapcode Form and Red Giant Plane Space to achieve a look that, under most circumstances, has been reserved for more complex, 3d applications.

Watch the episode here.