Episode 65: Warp Projection – 3D Environments from a 2D Image

In this multidimensional episode of Red Giant TV, designer Harry Frank is going to walk you through creating a 3D environment from a 2D image, all in After Effects.  This won’t be using traditional camera projection techniques – nor will it use vanishing point in photoshop. Instead, Harry’s figured out a technique for warping images to build 3D layers.  You’ll also learn some great compositing  and color correction techniques to finish off the job right.

Watch the tutorial HERE.

Effects Suite 10.0.1 Goes Live!

Over the last year, we’ve been working on streamlining the entire “purchase to publishing” process at Red Giant – one of the largest behind the scenes activities has been re-releasing all of our suites so you only need to deal with a single installer and a single serial number. It makes installing all of your Red Giant products and getting to use them in your actual day to day work a much easier experience. We’ve finally done it – the remaining product suite now has it’s own single suite installer – say hello to Effects Suite 10.0.1.

While getting this together, we also put together maintenance releases to take care of a number of issues in the products included in the suite. Take a look at all the major updates (there were numerous tweaks made under the hood to clean up all the plugins; I’ll just list the highlights here):

Effects Suite 10.0.1:

• Single installer for the suite, supports a single serial for Suite customers.
• Proper support for Adobe After Effects CS5.5 installations.
• Numerous installer fixes incorporated from all of the Effects Suite products.
• Several issues fixed with the registration of serial numbers.

Knoll Light Factory 2.7.2:

• Windows only: Fixed a crash when “region of interest” tool is used in conjunction with KLF in After Effects (previously fixed for OSX in KLF 2.7.1).
• Windows only: Fixed an issue when using our volume licensing.
• Fixed a problem with Knoll Spectacular that causes After Effects to crash is the scale is set to zero.
• Hitting return or enter in the Lens Designer was not submitting changes; this is now fixed.
• The option to duplicate a light element was missing in After Effects CS5/5.5; this option is now available.

You can get all of our latest installers on our Product Downloads page here.

A “PS” from the Maintenance Release blog post guy:

As this is probably about my 10th blog post, I thought it might be time to say a brief hello and not hide behind the somewhat-weird looking “acheyne” moniker that my posts show up here as. In the real world, I’m Andrew Cheyne, Red Giant’s Engineering Manager. I oversee everything at Red Giant that has to do with getting our products built and released to the customer – design, implementation, builds, installers, bug fixes, and Quality Assurance. I have a great team that gets the real work done in making these products come together, but it’s generally my responsibility to ensure we’re getting you the products you need and want and making sure they work.

Oh, and sorry for the accent; I know Canada-ese can be tough to understand some days.

Note from the Editor: I fixed it so that Andrew Cheyne’s blog identity now shows up as his name instead of acheyene. You know, Andrew,  you could’ve just asked. You didn’t need to release a single suite installer to get me to do that…

Jack Tunnicliffe is the owner-operator of two successful companies in Western Canada that serve broadcast clients along both coasts. His post-production facility Java Post Production provides editing and visual effects for broadcast TV, commercials and ad agency productions. Caffeine Commercial Productions is an award-winning production company that works alongside Java Post with their commercial and corporate clients. Sounds like Jack also serves up a mean cup of dark roasted brew.

At Java Post, Jack works as the chief colorist and a lead motion graphics artist. He began his career as a camera operator, then moved into producing/directing a range of media from commercials and documentaries to sports broadcasts including Olympic broadcasts for Canada and world host feeds. In 1995, Jack started Java Post with a business partner, one Media 100 workstation, and self-taught knowledge of After Effects and compositing. His talents and company exploded along with the visual effects industry.

I caught up with Jack to hear about a new Canadian TV series, InSecurity, that Java Post produces the color correction and visual effects for. The show went to air in January 2011 as a comedy about a bumbling group of Canadian intelligence agents. Jack walked me through the effects-heavy opening sequence of InSecurity and also previewed an intriguing scene that involves a composited ‘finger screen’. Both segments use a lot of heavy-hitting Red Giant products, and the ones I will showcase are Magic Bullet Colorista II and Red Giant Warp.

InSecurity-Intro from Java Post Production

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Red Giant QuickTip #34: Fast 3D Effects in Final Cut Pro

In this tutorial Apple Certified Master Trainer Simon Walker shows you how to improve up your workflow by compositing elements in a virtual 3D space with reflections and glow elements, without leaving the Final Cut timeline.

Check out Simon’s site @ simonwalkerfreelance.com

Related Links:

• Get Red Giant Warp HERE.
• Get Simon Walker’s Weddings & Events for Looks HERE.
• Check out Simon Walkers website HERE.

That’s right! Effects Suite now includes 3 more plug-ins – Holomatrix, Planespace and Warp (including Radium Glow). These were our last products to make CS5-compatible, so now all of our  plug-ins are 64-Bit ready!

Learn more about the Effects Suite HERE.

New Episode Folks!

Episode 28: Building an Airport Scene – Part 2: Compositing
By: Mathias Möhl

In this episode of Red Giant TV, Mathias Möhl continues his airport project, and shows you how to motion track with Mocha For After Effects, and then to use that data along with MochaImport (His own Script) to easily create a solid composite.

Watch the episode here.

And get a discount on Magic Bullet Looks and Red Giant Warp here.

No. Really. I mean that in a good way.

My good friend and former CreativeCow.net After Effects Podcast host Eran Stern has just posted 3 tutorials (a trilogy!) on Red Giant Software’s Warp. Each tutorial focuses on one of the 3 Major tools: RG Shadow, RG Reflection, and RG Corner Pin.

You can watch the tutorial here. (more…)