I’m testing some changes to our blog software.
But, while I’m at it, I’ll point out that I really like Dave Scotland’s tutorials and other informational resources. I recently added some links for his site to the “3D Channel effects” section of After Effects Help. He’s got a great pair of videos about the RPF format and how to use the various channels in RPF files (and other 3D formats).
A few months ago, I posted a project and simple set of instructions for creating a radial rays graphic. Today, I had a forehead-smacking realization when I was looking at a tutorial that showed how to get the same result in Illustrator.
Duh.
I like this method better.
Make a shape layer containing a single big circle. Set the stroke width to be the same as the diameter of the circle. Make the stroke a dashed stroke. Set the dash length to taste.
Ta-da!
Thanks to Rype for making me see the obvious.
I’m a big fan of encouraging people to add comments to Help documents to provide tips, links to tutorials, and other useful information.
But, I have to admit that plain-text comments aren’t always the best medium for conveying information. Sometimes you need to use formatting, images, movies, and more words to get information across.
That’s why I was glad to see the launch of the Adobe Community Publishing System (CPS).
Here’s what the CPS folks have to say about it:
We’re pleased to announce the Adobe Community Publishing 1.1 beta is live. This new AIR application lets anyone with an Adobe ID publish content on Adobe products and technology directly to Adobe.com.
Community members can contribute tips, movies, code snippets, and more with easy-to-use templates. Contributions are moderated by community experts. Plus, everyone in the community can rate and comment on contributions.
Contributing is easy
1. Download the Community Publishing app: Adobe Community Publishing System (CPS)
2. Author your tip using a simple template
3. Publish it to Adobe.comContent goes live within minutes and is automatically added to community help search. Exceptional contributions will be promoted in Help & Support pages, Developer Connection, Design Center, and considered for inclusion in Adobe partner publications.
They’re right about the interface being easy to use and immediate. It took only a few minutes for me to test it out and write up this little tip/article: “Remove all colors from an image but one”.
It helped that there was an article that explained some parts of the interface: “Adobe Community Publishing tips”
You can see all of the submissions here: Community Publishing index page.
So, take it for a spin. I’ll be keeping an eye on the submissions for After Effects and including links to the especially good stuff when I update the After Effects Help document.
Adobe is looking for participants for a brief (~1 hour) online work observation and interview.
Participants in these studies will be thanked profusely and given a $100 Amazon gift card.
There are two sets of criteria, each applying to a different study. Read the criteria carefully before responding. Also, you must indicate in the subject line of your response which one of the two studies you meet the criteria for and wish to participate in.
The studies will be conducted over the telephone and Connect (software for screen sharing).
For the text animation study, participants must meet the following criteria:
If you meet these requirements and would like to participate in this study, please contact me at kopriva [at] adobe [dot] com, with the subject line “text animation study”.
For the rotoscoping study, participants must meet the following criteria:
If you meet these requirements and would like to participate in this study, please contact me at kopriva [at] adobe [dot] com, with the subject line “rotoscoping study”.
As most of you know, you can add comments to the pages of After Effects Help on the Web. We encourage you to add comments to share tips, tricks, links to tutorials, and other information that will help other users of After Effects.
Also, Adobe hosts a very active After Effects user-to-user forum. Many of the people who add comments to the pages of After Effects Help to provide useful information are the same people who help to answer questions on the forum.
I’d like to thank these folks for helping out their fellow After Effects users. This community generosity is one of the things that makes me so glad that I’m lucky enough to have the job of working with After Effects. For some reason, the people who use After Effects are so much more willing to help each other out than people who use… well… other software.
It would be nice if you did what you could to thank these people, too. You could stop by their websites, leave a note of thanks, consider buying what they’re selling… even use the PayPal donation buttons that some of them provide.
Here is a list of people who have been helping out a lot lately:
(Note that this list doesn’t even consider the work that some of these same people do as Community Help moderators, moderating the comments that are added to Help, which is itself a valuable service.)
Again, thank you, all. I’m sure that everyone reading this thanks you, too, but I’ll let them speak for themselves.
I’m not saying anything new in this blog post. I just wanted to gather together in one place several useful resources on the subject of the new, corrected pixel aspect ratios (PARs) that were introduced with the CS4 versions of the applications in Creative Suite 4 Production Premium.
First of all, I’ll point out that these new PARs don’t affect high-definition work or work that is destined for computer monitors. This issue is strictly limited to the old standard-definition television formats.
Of course, the first place that I’d hope that you’d go is the “Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio” section of After Effects Help, which gives a terse explanation of the change and provides tables with the new PARs and the new square-pixel equivalents for when you’re creating square-pixel assets to work within compositions with non-square pixels.
Mike Afford has put together a good explanation on his website. Mike used to work for the BBC, but to get a direct statement from the BBC, you should check out their own paper about the underlying technical details.
Chris Meyer provides a very detailed and thorough article on the ProVideo Coalition website that explains the history and reasoning behind the new and old pixel aspect ratios and—more important—how to work with these new numbers in any circumstance.
Chris also has a “New pixel aspect ratios” video on the Lynda.com website that covers some of the same material, but in video form and not in as much depth.
UPDATE: See this post for the news that Final Cut Pro 7 uses the corrected pixel aspect ratios, too. And see this thread for information about the Foundry making the change as a bug fix in Nuke.
A little while ago, someone asked on a forum how they could get a readout of color values for one or more points that would update as you tweaked color correction settings.
I whipped together an expression using the sampleImage method.
The idea is simple: Have a text layer with its Source Text property tied to the output from sampleImage, with the input to sampleImage being a point control that you can drag someplace and then just leave it while you fiddle with your colors.
I’m not saying that this is the most elegant solution, but here is what I came up with.
On the layer that you want to measure, add a Point Control effect (one of the Expression Control effects). You can place the Point Control effect’s crosshair (effect control point) wherever you want.
Create a new text layer above the layer that you want to measure, and add this expression to the Source Text property:
targetLayer = thisComp.layer(thisLayer.index+1);
samplePoint = targetLayer.effect("Point Control")("Point");
sampleRadius = [1,1];
sampledColor_8bpc = 255 * targetLayer.sampleImage(samplePoint, sampleRadius);
R = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[0]);
G = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[1]);
B = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[2]);
A = Math.round(sampledColor_8bpc[3]);
outputString = " R: " +R+ "\r G: " +G+ "\r B: " +B+ "\r A: " +A
This will create a text layer that reports 8-bpc RGBA values for the point under the crosshair for the Point Control effect. In the image that I’ve embedded above, you can see that the effect control point is in the upper center, in the nearly pure white clouds, and the RGBA values reflect this.
If you’re using an adjustment layer for your color correction, the adjustment layer is the layer that you’ll want to measure.
You can obviously get a lot fancier with this, but this should be enough to get you started.