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

We’re a pretty creative lot in Oregon. And one of Red Giant’s Portland neighbors is the award-winning production company and animation studio Bent Image Lab.

Founded in 2002, Bent Image Lab is known for its animation expertise, encompassing stop-motion and strata-cut techniques as well as CG and motion graphics. Their visual artists and animators have created characters and commercials for clients such as MasterCard, Red Bull, Kellogg’s and Reebok, to name just a few.

One particular character who became a celebrity in his own right is loveable Luchadore El Tabador, who featured in a series of commercials for Canadian cell phone company Koodo. We discovered that the artists at Bent used Trapcode software to really bring this character to life.

Brian Kinkley, 2D compositor at Bent told us, “I used Trapcode Starglow to add a nice shiny effect to the car on the Koodo mobile spot. Then I used Trapcode Shine to simulate volume light and how that light interacts with the character in front of the light source. In fact, I use Trapcode Shine on pretty much all that I do. It’s an extremely useful tool!”

Ever wonder why you can’t put After Effects 3D layers in the middle of your Trapcode Particular particle system? They both use 3D space and react to the camera, yet the layers are either behind or in front of ALL the particle. It can be really frustrating, and can make a convincing composite impossible.

BUT DO NOT LOSE HOPE! In this QuickTip from Harry frank, he’ll explain what’s going on, and show you how to put a layer in between particles. Watch it HERE.

Also, there’s a Red Giant TV tutorial called “Better Compositing with Particles” that covers tackling the same problem, but in a very different way. Depending on your situation, you can use either of them.

Finally, if you’re ready to take on this challenge with lots of 3D layers – check out sParticular – an awesome script from AEscripts.com which will give you real control over putting layers in your Trapcode Particular particle system.

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

Harry Frank’s Weddings for Trapcode Suite 10

50 Elegant Compositions for Wedding Videos

Say, “I do!” to this new wedding production Guru Preset Pack by Harry Frank. Give your event videos an elegant mix of traditional and contemporary animated design elements. Wedding bells, rings, butterflies and rose petals create the perfect mood for your client’s special day. Beautiful backgrounds, lower thirds, title pages, transitions and full screen type animations give you many options to highlight and enhance the wonderful memories. Mix and match to create hundreds of combinations that will save time and add value to your production, all before the honeymoon is over.

• Read about Wedding Guru Pack (before the honeymoon is over)
• Watch samples of all 50 presets (and live happily ever after)

Work fast & creatively with these helpful features:

• 50 beautiful projects use Particular 2.0 and Trapcode Shine 1.5
• 7 elegant design packages with 15 additional particle wipe transitions
• Each design package includes a background, lower third, video frame, transition, and full screen title (all at 720P resolution)
• Supports After Effects CS4, CS5, CS5.5

Looping Backgrounds for Trapcode Suite

55 Backgrounds for Broadcast & Corporate Video

Can’t get enough of Harry Frank & Trapcode? Check out his popular Looping Backgrounds for Trapcode Suite 2010. Work with speed and flexibility using a wide variety of textural designs that include glitz, swirls, maps, bokeh, fractal shapes, grids and lines.

* Read about all 55 presets

* Watch samples of all 55 presets

Please share in our excitement of our new site design and take 10% off EVERYTHING storewide. That’s 10% discount on Suites, Guru presets, upgrades and free products (ha, gotcha).

Today only! Use Coupon Code: ALLPROD10

Our new website was designed with you in mind. It focuses on building a community with an emphasis on our product suites, training and customer care. Redgiant.com is not just a website. It’s our new personality that reflects the depth and breadth of products, services and content available to the VFX community. Go to site

“An evolution of how we engage”
Message from Andrew Little, Co-founder

“The launch of RedGiant.com represents an evolution in how we connect, and engage with our customers. We realize that our customers don’t just buy software from Red Giant, they engage with us, participate and even contribute to the development of new ideas and products. We’ve invested significant time and resources to create an online presence that’s not only clean, elegant and easy to navigate, but also simplifies the entire experience.”

Simple Design. Community Focus.

What our new website does for you

Watch the video for a simple, fun intro!

Our new website streamlines our products so they are easy to find. Get over 50 products organized into 4 work-crunching suites.

• Magic Bullet Suite: Everything you need to tell your story
• Trapcode Suite: The industry standard for broadcast & 3D design
• Effects Suite: Over 50 professional tools in one dynamic package
• Browse through hundreds of helpful Guru Preset Packs
• Free online chat, phone & email for enhanced customer support

We’ve brought the community to you in one easy place. No longer do you have to leave RedGiant.com to find the latest Quick Tips or your favorite Guru presets.

• Red Giant TV. Over 190 tutorials and more than 45 hours of free video content including Getting Started Videos and Product Quick Tips. You can also view this content on your iPad. Go to RGTV
• Red Giant People. Find hundreds of free presets created by the community. Buy professional Guru presets created by motion graphics industry experts. Go to RGP
• Customer Connected. Keep up to date and share content from any page viaTwitter, Facebook and Vimeo.

With their eclectic mix of clients, the creative people at Rain have a decidedly different way of thinking. This was the attraction for Provo Craft to commission them to create a promotional video for the Gypsy, their handheld design studio.

The video needed to showcase the benefits of the Gypsy in an exciting and entertaining way. Rain crafted a piece that takes the viewer through a typical busy day in the life of a Gypsy user. Using Red Giant’s Trapcode Particular and Primatte Keyer we asked Dave Nibley, creative director, to give us his thoughts on the capabilities of these powerful plug-ins.

“The concept of this piece relied on being able to keep the Gyspy device in a persistent place on-screen while the environment constantly changed and a set of hands interacted with the device. Primatte Keyer allowed us to effectively composite three separate layers of footage together to pull this off. It’s powerful, deep-reaching keying ability, combined with an intuitive UI, made the experience much easier than it could have been with other keying solutions.

“Particular gave us the ability to quickly create a colorful, bubbly bookend animation that tied perfectly into the product’s branding and spoke very effectively to the crafter demographic.”

Rain is a digital agency based in Utah. You can see more of their stunning work here.

Follow Rain on Facebook here.

COOKIE is UK motion designer, director & VFX artist James Andrew Cook, a senior motion designer for award-winning advertising agency Empire Design in London. Having worked with design, film and advertising agencies for over 15 years, he has built up an impressive portfolio.

His most recent work was on the movie trailer and TV adverts for ‘Senna,’ which won the 2011 World Cinema Documentary Audience Award at the Sundance Film Festival. ‘Senna’ tells the story of the late Formula 1 driver, Ayrton Senna, through archival footage of his life, on and off the racetrack. Trapcode Particular helped shape a fast-paced sequence that perfectly complemented a film devoted to speed.

“I’ve been using Trapcode plugins – my favourite is Particular – on practically a daily basis since I first discovered them back in 2004”, James told us. ”From subtle touches – drifting dust to add realism to a project, for example – to dramatic effects like bursts of light and sparks, I’ve always found that Trapcode plug-ins enable me to create new and exciting visual pieces.”

Check out more of James Andrew Cook’s work at:

• http://www.cookiemotion.com/
• http://www.empiredesign.com/

Often when I come across creative artists there are elements of their work that immediately stand out. They may be great colourists, stunning animators, or incredible editors for example. But when I came across Broken Antler recently, every aspect of the work just blew me away.
 
UK based ‘Broken Antler’ is freelance motion director, designer Ben Adam. With a clutch of awards and some very prestigious clients (Jaguar, Land-Rover, Sony, PlayStation, Bentley and Vodafone to name but a few) to his credit, I was excited to find out that Ben was a big Trapcode fan.
 
Ben was recently asked to create the visual effects on a series of films for IBM, along with a conference-opening spectacle. Each film was shot in a different location, then light streams, explosions and fast moving text were added which give the whole production an incredibly elegant flow. We asked Ben to tell us a bit more about his use of Trapcode Particular.
 
“Trapcode rocks! I find myself using Trapcode more and more with each project and the more I use it the more I discover I can do. I find that it can help take quite a staid subject and help bring it to life. This was definitely the case with IBM. I worked closely with the director and producer at Glover Films and fellow designer Paul Trewartha to create the exploding lights and light streams that would interact with the films. The idea was to visualise the data streams that the films were talking about and also link it to the logo, which used nine coloured lines of dots to illustrate nine different sections of the business. It was the dots and colours in the logo that gave way to the inspiration of having these lights exploding in the shot. Like thoughts being ignited by inspiration or data being used.”