The Genesis Project

Okay, okay, I know - I should post information about events I'm a part of before this, but let's face it, I'm still getting up to speed on this whole blogging thing.

5/1 - Adobe/Matrox event at reseller 1Beyond. Check out link for more information

5/3 - Adobe event at TekServe in downtown Manhattan. Event is at 6PM and if you're a New Yorker, you know where TekServe is (23rd street)

Moving forward, I'll try to be more transparent about my whereabouts if it's something worthwhile.

Random note - I'll be trying to move my blog entries and administration to Contribute CS3 shortly. Hopefully, this will mean cleaner administration, better entries and better tracking. Right now, I'm doing it using the web interface of Moveable Type. Stay tuned

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 08:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Want to build the simple, elegant look of reflected images in Photoshop...read on...

The style of design from my vantage point has been about restraint and simple looks. Less is more in 2006 and 2007. Witness Apple’s interface and ads over the last several years: the use of a simple gradient and reflection has been one of the lasting designs of the past couple of years.

This look is so easy that I don’t even feel the need to create a PDF of the document. Attached is a sample file with text and I’ll only mention one tip to help you flip your ‘reflected’ layer. Namely, you use the Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical command.

1. Create a gradient layer (I used gray on white)
2. Create and stylize your text layer
3. Duplicate your text layer (ctrl-J)
4. Flip the vertical on the second layer
5. Change the blend mode to Overlay and lower the opacity

Download file

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you can imagine, I hit tradeshows fairly often (yes, sarcasm) and many times I get customers that come up to me asking, "How do I get started with After Effects?" or "What kind of training materials are there for After Effects?"

If this is you, then you'll want to read on and remember one key word - FREE!

If you don’t know about Creative Cow, they are a fantastic resource of free materials, from forums to tutorials and one of the best resources out there for After Effects tutorials is Aharon Rabinowitz’s Cow podcasts. If you haven’t subscribed, do it.

Aharon’s funny, informative and most importantly is a good teacher. That’s the difference between him and many other AE wunderkinds. He’s a great communicator who is funny, entertaining and excited about teaching AE.

http://cowcast.creativecow.net/after_effects/index.html

Random Notes: If you’re a regular reader (all of one of you and I think it’s my mom) perhaps you’re wondering why all of the posts are coming up today. The answer is simple, when you’re squished on a plane with very little room even to type, your options are limited and so, I decided that my 6’5” frame should be actively employed in catching up for that lost week at NAB. It’s also the reason for this post because I watched several of Aharon’s excellent video podcasts.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I remember the days when the video arcade was the place to be in my town and despite all of the cool 4 and 8 bit color games we played, perhaps the most memorable is PacMan. It was (is) a cool game and part of the allure of PacMan was the sounds it used. As PacMan ate his pellets, he would make this sound – wacca wacca wacca. Remember?

How can I steer this post back to reality? I’m not sure, but how about, “Wacom, Wacom, Wacom?”

If you don’t know who Wacom is and you have a talent when it comes to drawing, then you should immediately go to the Wacom website. When you’re done, come on back and read the rest…

http://www.wacom.com/

Wacom makes about the coolest piece of hardware you’re likely to find if you’re a pen and paper kind of designer. Wacom would state (and they’re probably right) that there is still a great need for intuitive tools that augment and tap into the physical abilities that some people have when drawing/designing. So, they’ve made a business out of patented technology that allows them to have an accurate and fast surface that you draw on. That’s right – draw on… To compare Wacom products to a typical computer input device would just be plain wrong – ‘I don’t need no stinkin’ mouse!’ Instead, it’s the closest thing to actually having a pen do what you want it to do in the digital domain.

Their basic product line is the Intuos line of tablets. They come in different sizes and shapes, depending on what your needs are. For some trips, I like to bring along the 4x6 because it is small enough that I can carry it around with me as I travel. For home, I use the larger 9x11 which maps to my widescreen monitors better.

For those of you who have a lot of disposable cash, or are getting well paid, or who can support your gear habit, you probably already know about the Rolls Royce (insert your favorite, expensive luxury item here) of the Wacom line: the Cintiq. The Cintiq is a beauty to behold and even more fun to use. It’s a fast, accurate LCD panel that also happens to be a touch screen for the pen. It can be set up as like a drawing or architects table and we had one or two at the Adobe booth at NAB. During the show, I helped out a buddy by giving him a break on the Photoshop station and it had a Cintiq. I had to stop and show it off as much as Photoshop Extended CS3. It really is a beauty to use.

For those of us (meaning me) who have to use their shekels for something else, there is the Graphire line which while inexpensive is still very functional and a great tool to invest in if you’re just getting started or are an avid hobbyist.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a piece of hardware to connect you more intimately with some Adobe apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash or After Effects, this is on my personal picks list.

Happy drawing…
Dennis

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 06:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Okay, I've been out of touch (or out of my mind from NAB) and so I apologize for not getting back on track earlier. Anyway, in an earlier post, I talked about working on some tutorials for you to download and chew on. Well, on the plane ride today, I was able to finish this one up.

This tutorial is my humble attempt to give you an introduction to After Effects and its 3D capabilities using just a simple Photoshop file. If you want to expand your repertoire in After Effects, this is one way to do it. It's a simple concept that you can build upon and hopefully build up a comfort level with an aspect of After Effects that can seem daunting at first look.

The basic idea of this tutorial is to build up a simple landscape scene and then move your camera through it. I threw in some flying geese(so homely you have to look at them!) and you're done.

The download is a little big (~8MB) but hopefully you'll find it worth it.

Basic 3D Composition

I also saw that Dean Velez posted one (a lot more in depth) at the Anvel.

Let me know what you think!

Dennis

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Just scrolling through some of the latest posts and realized that all of the tutorials on the blog have fallen off, so you know what that means - time for another post!

To reiterate, the focus (or at least some of it) is to help provide some tutorials to help, encourage and (most doubtfully) inspire some of you to take the next steps with some Adobe creative products. If you check out the links on the right, you'll notice a category for tutorials. If you're knew to Adobe blogging, then you're probably visiting my blog for the first time.

NAB is done for me and I had a nice easy day by just working the booth. Day 4 was easier and lighter, but I still bumped into a ton of customers, friends and other vendors. I did After Effects and had some fun talking to others. We showed Vanishing point, multiprocessing, shape layers, puppet tool, etc. etc...

It was a fantastic show and tomorrow it continues in a sense with your truly working at Broadcast Education Association (also at NAB/Vegas) tomorrow.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 07:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sometimes the best of intentions can get way laid and such was the case with my desire to post something substantial each and every day of the show. In case you’ve never been to NAB, let me say that regardless of whether you are an exhibitor or an attendee, staying in Vegas tends to lead to staying up late and getting up early. My schedule has been pretty much get up at 5AM, get ready, work until the show ends, go to some vendor function and then get dinner and socialize. For an early bed kind of guy like myself, this is difficult!

Adobe has had some terrific meetings of substance with many major media companies. We spoke to ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, Showtime, Disney and the list goes on. As I mentioned in my previous post, there was a tremendous amount of interest in the Adobe Media Player. Additionally, there continues to be a seemingly huge demand for our traditional tools like Production Premium CS3. These same companies have a variety of workflows, on a variety of platforms and have a variety of needs. They like that we’ve got a bundle that is complete, integrated, open and can deliver content to any medium. Are you an Avid shop? Terrific! Oh, you use Final Cut? That’s fine, Production Premium CS3 works with those tools.

Here’s something that I hadn’t thought about before that puts the above into perspective? What’s the most used piece of software in video production? Answer – Photoshop.

Random notes – today, I’ve got no meetings and am having a ‘break’ by hanging out at a pod at the Adobe booth. If you’re visiting the show today, stop by and say hello.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

All right, here's the quick summary on NAB Day 1 from a super narrow perspective - namely mine. That's not because I'm only talking about Adobe, it's that I was in meetings most of the day.

What's big? Adobe Media Player. The aforementioned meetings were with some big media companies looking for ways to distribute their media to consumers that is an engaging, rich experience. Oh, and one that's profitable too. You were kind of expecting that though weren't you? One of the cool takeaways for me was how interested independent videographers were in this technology as well. In our evening party, I chatted with some friends from the 4Ever group and they were very pumped on what the Adobe Media Player could mean to them.

The tools as you know, are on the Mac and public beta. This still hasn't prepared us for how well received the new releases are. All of the people I talked to were very enthused about the new capabilities and in the case of Mac people, very pleased that Adobe took the time to address their platform in full...

Let me point you to all the press releases for Adobe and you can pick what you might be into.
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/

Apple showed off Final Cut Studio 2 and their Proximity product now called Final Cut Server. Avid was at the front of the hall and talking up Interplay and showed off Liquid working with an AJA card. The Red camera had big lines all day, but will it end up being the Trinity of this year? I personally don't think so.

As you might imagine, many repeat offenders (people who come to NAB every year) bump into old friends. It's great to see friends again, regardless of where they worked and so I bumped into friends from Apple, Avid, Microsoft, etc.

The party tonight was great. Johnny L kicked us off but we had the comedic high jinx of Mark Randall and Karl Miller to entertain us as they talked about Adobe Media Player. Then we had a couple of customers come and talk up their work - both in Film in this case. The Orphanage and The Basement, the latter having worked on 'Marty' Scorcese films and the Orphanage did Superman Returns. When I see these guys work, I realize why I sell software instead of make a living using it. They're awesome and you should check out their work.

Now it's almost 11PM and I have to get up tomorrow and do it all over again. Day 1 was your typically packed day bookended by last minute set ups and late night parties. Day 2 will be shorter but just as packed.

Below is a link to see a few pictures. I'd put up more but it looks like my CF card is corrupt. It's a problem and now at 11PM it's ticking me off. Patience Dennis...go to bed.

a few pix in a pdf

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Shout it from the rooftops (even if John Nack beat us to it)!

If you're an existing Premiere Pro or After Effects user and are itching to try the latest and greatest, we've heard you.

As of this morning, we have published full trial versions of Premiere Pro and After Effects CS3 for both MacTel and PC.

Check out the Time Remapping feature in Premiere Pro - giving you awesome control on slomos with an intuitive interface. Flexbins is so simple and low key, you'll almost miss it - until you go back to Premiere Pro 2.

After Effects we discussed before so remember: Shape Layers, Brainstorm, Puppet Tool, Vanishing Point Exchange.

I tell you what I am most psyched about today: Our ability to output your projects to DVD, tape, FLASH, mobile devices and ipods. Lets face it: we live in a media saturated world and we want our media any time, anywhere and on any device. Welcome to the 21st century.

Download it, play with it, beat on it and tell us what you think - we're here for you.

http://labs.adobe.com

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

NAB (National Association of Broadcasters) is so big, so broad, so diverse, so international, that it’s like taking a visit to Disneyworld – you can’t do it all in one visit. So for me to try and post something here and cover even a fraction is too ambitious.

What I will try and do is over the next few days try to give you some idea of what’s going on at least from the Adobe side of the house and what I may see in the few nanoseconds that I’m not in a meeting.

At a minimum, I think this will be an intriguing year for NAB. Adobe is going back to the Mac with all of its video applications, so that’s a big deal in and of itself. For me – it’s not about Premiere Pro, though I’m excited for Mac users everywhere to get Dynamic Link, Clip Notes and more on the Mac. Rather, it’s about being able to offer a solid suite of tools for the video professional regardless of whether they’re using Final Cut, Avid or Adobe. Perhaps that sounds coy, but I’m serious. I think we’ve got the best suite of tools that are integrated and that will work great with whatever NLE tool you choose to use. Do I want Premiere Pro to be used – absolutely, but I also believe that users want to get work done and learning a new NLE takes time. So – you need Photoshop Extended and After Effects, and probably a couple other of the products in the suite, you pick up Production Premium and they will use it with Avid or Final Cut. I’m okay with that.

All right, get back on track or I’ll have to name this post, ‘Musings on going back to the Mac.’

We’ll have some announcements (just like everybody else), so Monday ought to be full of NAB news. Check out CreativeCow.net and DigitalMediaNet.com for all the latest. I’ll try to post something as well.

As kind of a closing nugget let me give you a vague sense of what NAB is like if you’ve never been to one.

- It’s over 100,000 people from all over the world and takes up three separate but connected convention spaces (North, Central and South halls each with two floors). I would guess that there is well over a million square feet of exhibit booth space and it is so big that industries are put together to make it more manageable.

- It’s JAMMED with people for three days and then lightens up considerably on Thursday. The Adobe booth is usually wall to wall people for three days solid. Honestly, that’s the most fun when it is crazy busy, because you’re talking to people that love creating content and want to know more about your products. It could be even crazier this year since we just announced CS3 and lots of people will be seeing Photoshop Extended for the first time.

- Las Vegas is also generally pretty packed. It’s one of Vegas’ largest shows of the year and so all the restaurants are hard to get into and the shows get sold out. (But I got tickets to see ‘O’ this year)

Anyway, I’m optimistic that this will be a great NAB not only for Adobe but for the business. New tools, new trends, new hardware and a world that is thirsty for content makes this NAB one to remember.

Welcome to sleepless days and nights…

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A lot of people I meet that are using After Effects don't necessarily take advantage of all the software that comes with it (Remember your Cycore)

The same holds true for setting up AE to take advantage of your system. Today's quick tip is about turning on OpenGL inside of After Effects.

Go to Preferences>Preview

After you enable it, it should look something like this under OpenGL info...

Finally, towards the bottom of your comp window you should click on the fast previews button and make sure OpenGL is on or set to interactive

There are times when you DON'T want to have this on, but generally, it's better to have it on than not. We'll hopefully discuss that in another post.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MORE MEMORY AND MULTIPROCESSING – YEAH! For the everyday After Effects user, you can never have too much memory. With Windows XP and After Effects 7, we have a limitation of 3GB of total memory. Pretty much the same with the Mac. Now both desktop platforms are embracing more CPU cores so the demand for memory to feed that processing power is even greater. Enter After Effects CS3. With the latest version, After Effects supports 3.5GB of memory per processor core. Plus, we’ve taken a crack at better processing efficiency. In After Effects CS3 you will see a new preference entitled, multiprocessing. If you have a multi-core system, you’ll be able to get multiple frames rendered at once. Plus, the engineers tell me there that we’re ready for quad and eight core CPU’s as they come out. All this comes at a terrific time as we see more and more people working in HD which has so much more information (data) per frame than SD.

Random notes – working on some beginner tutorials, that I hope you’ll like. Specifically working on a simple timeline that shows you how to take your PSD layers and space them out in 3d space and animate a camera through it.

www.secondlife.com – I haven’t tried it but the thing that freaks me out is the amount of real money being spent there – crazy!

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 11:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

That’s right, the government has mandated that all analog television signals must cease and desist after February 17th, 2009. What does it mean for you and for the industry? Read on to get started on the answer…

For you, the impact could be absolutely nothing or suddenly not getting any TV. What kind of TV do you have, what kind of service (cable, satellite, airwaves)??? All of that may play into what options you have. For most of us, we already have a TV that is at least digital ready if we’re not already watching HDTV right now. Note to self – be content watching NY Mets games in standard definition (SD) when they’re playing away…

For those of you who may not have as many options, who have an older TV and plan to keep it, well…you may be in for a surprise come 2009. In the link below, there are some bits about options that are available to you, but I imagine this is not to important for most of you.

That brings up another point. Will the 2009 date stick? It might not and it depends on several factors. Still, analog TV transmission will stop and probably sooner than later. The reason why? Lots of money. My understanding is the government is motivated to reclaim the bandwidth because they can auction it off to the highest bidders. Remember what your dad said about ‘them not making any more land so become a land owner?’ – the same thing holds true for frequency space and data transmission inside it!

How does this affect broadcasters and our industry? Again, I think it affects us a lot. Broadcasters must retool a lot of equipment to become DTV transmission compliant. Add to this the move to HD (separate from DTV) and you realize there are an enormous amount of capital expenditures taking place. The industry is going thru a perfect storm of change with analog to digital transmission, standard definition to high definition and finally a multiplication of delivery formats: three screens instead of one.

Take a look at the bright side? There will be more jobs and opportunities for creative professionals than ever before. Oh yeah…

http://hometheater.about.com/od/televisions/qt/feb172009date.htm

11 days until NAB and counting…

on an eclectic note - found a photo of a tower that looks remarkably like the old After Effects logo
http://www.dtvutah.com/images/tower/towerlg.jpg

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you want my opinion (maybe you don't ;-), there are two engineering teams within Adobe that never fail to deliver some exciting new enhancements and features to their products. Those teams as you might surmise are the Photoshop and After Effects teams. Why they are always ‘on’, I’m not sure, but their continuing success and foresight are direct contributing factors to their market share and importance among the creative community.

So... I want to chime in as have many others on some of the new features that I like most about Adobe’s latest iteration of After Effects. I'll hit them one or two at a time. My list is in no particular order but hopefully will give you a couple of new nuggets of new information to noodle on as we wait for After Effects CS3 to become a public beta.

BRAINSTORM – Every writer has experienced writers block and so it stands to reason that every media creator has experienced a periodic lack of creative juices (or perhaps it is caffeine?) Anyway, Brainstorm is a terrific tool to help you sort thru all of the permutations of any set of parameters you may choose to modify. This is also one of the tools that really can help users of all levels. From the beginner who is just trying to figure some things out, to the true everyday professional animator, Brainstorm can offer new ideas and styles to just about anything. If there are ideas in Brainstorm that you like but aren’t relevant to what you’re doing, you can save it out as a preset to be recalled or used later. With Brainstorm, you can also control the amount of deviation from the original, so as you hone in on what you’re looking for you can decrease the percentage of variation.

The basics of how it works is that you select any combinations of parameters that you want Brainstorm to work on and then simply click the brainstorm icon, which is located near the graph switch on the timeline. That will bring up the Brainstorm interface and from there it's a intuitive and visual process for refining and selecting your choice.

As I mentioned before, I think this is a feature that will make beginners get excited and productive with After Effects, but by no means do I think everyday professionals will ignore this. Why would you, when Brainstorm can help you get that extra 5% which will make the difference between a good comp and a great one.

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 09:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

ABC's logo treatment over the last couple of years have been all about some strokes zippin' around the ABC corporate logo. I've got to say that I really like it and certainly hope that it was done with After Effects. They've recently moved away from Quantel Paint Box to a Photoshop/After Effects workflow, so it's certainly possible.

More to the point, the strokes themselves reminded me of an AE stroke tip that Dean Velez taught me when he was with the Anvel. With Dean's permission, I've included his PDF lesson on creating a dynamic stroke within AE using TEXT. Wrap it up with a imitation RBC logo and an After Effects Project.

Check it out: RBC Logo Treatment

Dean's website: http://www.theanvel.com/

Posted by Dennis Radeke at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)