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Web-based tutorials (visit Tips too!)
- Adobe's web tutorial pages are constantly shifting but well worth tracking. For new features in AE, see the main site's overviews, especially the Gallery of text animation presets (in Help too). They also had posted several AE tips at various places by Total Training and Adobe staff, now especially at Adobe Studio. So far they cover roving keyframes, 3D compositing, parenting, expressions, and creating a traveling matte with Vector Paint. Check out the Expert Center in Adobe Studio for advanced techniques, free goodies, and more.
- Creative Cow, brought to you by the founders the WWUG, have many tutorials featuring AE. There always seems to be something new there, which is handy when new software is released, so scroll past news for recent Cow tutorials, reviews, and podcasts.
- DV Magazine publishes monthly motion graphics tutorials by Trish and Chris Meyer, who teach classes at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. The Meyers have a handy summary of their motion graphics columns on their Cybermotion site, but success depends on CMP's storage capabilities. DV has had many articles of interest, so you may consider the subscription trade for your vital information (which is most likely sold to other multinational "entities"). Look out for movies of the AE 7 rollout at MGLA.
- Digital Media Net's AE Channel, part of a network of sites using much of the same content (like CreativeMac) has over 150 AE tutorials (As always, be careful with cookies). Stephen Schleicher and Ko Maruyama are among the feature writers, and both have seperate sites listing their tutorials.
- ayato@web has many nice tutorials for good looking results in both English and Japanese. Be sure to check back occasionally because when additions come -- they're good. There was also a Japanese forum, and what appears to be an AE book/CD in Japanese! And there's a Russian site that translates tutorials from other sources according to AE Freemart.
- Toolfarm posts AE news and hosts many AE tutorials, and now incorporates AE FreeMart talent and resources.
- You might try Tutorialfind to see if they've found something other than Creative Cow tutorials.
- The WWUG (Worldwide Users Group) has many older but still useful articles on AE among its hundreds of articles on digital video topics. There's also several user forums available.
- Total Training has posted tutorials including these: Total Gradient Wipe, Total Spiral Sphere, Matrix Tutorial, Backgrounds Project. Sections of Total AE are available at the Adobe site and at Creative Mac and Plug-In Central. Look out for the new podcasts in 2006.
- Angie Taylor, author of Creative After Effects, has tutorials and links too.
- learn Dynamic Media -- had an extensive collection of tips, including information on AE rendering settings for a variety of codecs, adapting print graphics, converting fields to frames and vice versa, safe action area templates, maximizing the use of hard drive space, displacement mapping in After Effects.
- Rendering to Avid codecs was explained in an Avid After Effects Settings walkthrough.
- Forrest Brown has posted a tutorial on using After Effects to create a cell shader look from 3D renders.
- EI Resources, a Web site on Electric Image, had several tutorials involving AE.
- Craig Lyn's old 3D column in DV Magazine sometimes involved AE compositing; see especially those on multipass rendering, the attenuation of reflection, depth of field, and explosions.
- Knoll Lens Flare Pro came with AE project files by John Knoll of ILM (one of the originators of Photoshop). These files demonstrate compositing of multipass renders of 3D project. Use AE to adjust specular values in near real-time, instead of rerendering entire scenes.
- Todd Sines has a tutorial on the Simple Choker filter (Production Bundle); it also appeared in the Summer 1998 issue of Res magazine. Toolfarm, a reseller, had posted another tutorial by Todd, Creating Cel Animations.
- Here's a step by step After Effects Light Saber Tutorial by Gary Cruz; this was featured on NetCam.
- If you don't have Illustrator or Freehand you might try QuickTime Text Tracks and Time Remapping in Adobe After Effects.
- Want to make a dancing man made of fruit? See "Motion Capture Animation with AE", by David Rauch, at the DV site. There's downloadable project of this tutorial, which uses Motion Tracking and Motion Math to do character animation. I've seen the commercial -- it's good.
- There was a tutorial from Lee Croft on creating Stereoscopic images in AE at the Electric Image Resources site. See Electric Image homepage for Barry Berman's tutorial with additional info on Lee's technique for Electric Image. You could also use Cult Effects 3D Glasses which provides a variety of options.
- The Crew of Two show how thay did "The Flyby, Hologram, Keying/Compositing, and Lightsabers" for their desktop Star Wars knock-off "Duality."
- In "Flowing and Glowing in After Effects" and "Blowing Dust in After Effects," Jeremy Fuksa gives you some practical lessons in text animation and treatment..
- The Internet EYE Graphic Design Magazine and Mac Design Online feature a goodly number of older but useful tutorials.
- XtReMe-is-back has a decent set of WMV tutorials on basics, 3D, expressions, and effects.
- Ben Bardens offers a basic introduction to After Effects at the Editors Guild, with exercises that will help you practice a wide variety of animation and compositing techniques.
- The HOMEWORK site by Belief provides a place to see how ideas come from way different places.
- Mylenium.de has a good number of AE tutorials, as well as ones on Maya, Modo, and Lightwave.
- Video Copilot is a resource for visual effects and digital post production offering free tutorials in association with Creative Cow, as well as inexpensive for-sale tutorials, AE presets, and stock footage. Video Copilot joins LayerLab in offering presets and projects: one set, "Film Magic Pro," offers film look coloring.
- Harry J Frank posts helpful movie tutorials, including: "Creating a Camera Shake Using Motion Tile and Expressions", "Using the 'Set Matte' filter with the AE Type tool", and "Expression Driven Pie Charts".
Live support
- Support Farm (415.462.1982) helps production professionals can find application professionals and the applications they are seeking advice on. Once connected, professionals can receive telephone assistance to help them complete their time-critical project. Applications supported include: After Effects, Photoshop, Commotion, Composite Wizard, Image Lounge, Knoll Light Factory, Magic Bullet, Primatte Keyer.
Training classes
- Classes are offered at colleges almost everywhere, especially art schools and multimedia programs. Most notable are Trish Meyer's classes at AFI (American Film Institute).
- Adobe Certified Training Providers are "certified by Adobe as training experts on Adobe software products. Most provide regularly scheduled training courses and on-site training, as well as contract training services."
- The Accelerated Learning Group will be presenting a 3-day hands-on training class with Trish Meyer for advanced techniques in After Effects. This class was scheduled to take place in Dallas, TX on February 25-27, 2004. Cost for this exclusive event was $1,495.00. This class was limited to 8 students maximum each with their own fully equipped workstation. The same group also produced the Creative Explosion Tour- After Effects in summer 2003, which featured Trish and Chris Meyer in day-long AE sessions in 11 US cities.
- "After Effects Training" by Ledet & Associates offers Adobe Authorized instructor-led hands-on training classes around the country, as well as instructor certification.
Books, video, and other tutorials (visit Tips too!)
While some prefer a hands-on instructor to help, you might do as well with books, video tapes, and the tutorials listed/linked on this site. This of course depends on how well your current level matches the course offering: you can't ask questions to a book or tape, but you can spend much more time with them and not worry about being slowed down by other students.
- There are a few books with CD tutorials. The definitive book (in 2 volumes) Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects,by Trish and Chris Meyer, is described at the Cybermotion site. Their other book, After Effects in Production is also very good.
- A great newer book, Adobe After Effects 6.5 Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen with Stu Maschwitz and Brendan Bolles, looks at advanced techniques for visual effects rather than motion graphics. It's not for beginners but enables some to get up to speed very quickly!
- Brian Maffitt's video tutorials on AE, FEC filters and other DV topics are available from Total Training. Total AE and the others are expensive, but video is easier to learn with than books and allows you to review the material any time unlike a class (ILM has been known to give TotalAE tapes to newer compositors). Brian also offered a couple of good free tutorials from the AOL forum days.
- Lynda.com, offers a ton of multimedia training, including significant chunks on AE. Look for View Free Sample Movies and a 30-day trial offer.
- DMTS (Digital Media Traing Series) produces inexpensive DVD training for Apple, Adobe and related SW, including AE. DMTS training movies and projects are a fast, easy way to learn creative software. See also the Zoom In DVD series, a DVD magazine for creative professionals with insights from industry leaders, tips from pros, and best practices. Check out the free samples for both series.
- Philip Hodgetts debuted the "After Effects Companion," an additional help system for work in After Effects, at the DV Expo in October 2000. It's searchable and contains numerous creative techniques and previews (e.g., showing what each AE filter does). The Pro Apps Hub (for Apple FCP, etc.) debuted in 2004.
- No book explains technique as well as the Meyers' book, though After Effects Magic by Nathan Moody and Mark Christiansen does offer uniques approaches by a different group of artists, and has useful info on expressions and effects. There's also an older standout book is Adobe After Effects 4.0: Classroom in a Book, June 1997 (a new one for AE 5+ is available but the content has changed). This CIB was written by some the leading users of AE, and edited and tested by Adobe's training department. New users should see especially technical appendix and Lynda Weinman's tutorial that introduces the simplicity and power of the Time Layout window by animating cats on pogo sticks. In this tutorial, Lynda shows AE's timing controls and how to duplicate and offset layers and keyframes to speed the animation process.
- There are a few affordable tapes of interest by Desktop Images. These include "VideoSyncrasies: The Motion Graphics Problem Solver" by Trish & Chris Meyer, and "After Effects Boot Camp" by Taz Goldstein.
- Of interest is The Masters of Visual Effects video series, which explains the how of special effects, rather than a step by step how-to in a specific application. Series 1 and 2 "covers introductory concepts in visual effects and includes: visual effects cues, film & video as digital images, commercial post production basics, pre-visualization and offline editing...image processing, image combination, rotoscoping, 2D painting, tracking & keying and matte creation. The tapes in this series are hosted by visual effects masters Stu Maschwitz, Scott Stewart and Ron Brinkmann."
- VTC "has over 1,000 hours of computer software training content [including AE] in the form of narrated full screen animated QuickTime movies, which you can watch while streaming over anything from a modem to a T1."
- Apex Web Media seems to offer the same package as VTC. Apex offers training CDs on After Effects 5 / 5.5 Essentials, which is guided by Jayse Hansen in 274 movies lasting 9.5 Hours.
- Sections of Total AE were available at the Adobe site, Toolfarm.com, and at Creative Mac. The "Adobe Digital Video Solutions CD" includes a Tryout of AE 5.5 and FREE stuff, including an expanded version of the first chapter of After Effects in Production, plus two hours of Brian Maffitt's AE training in Windows Media format.
- Digital-Tutors explains AE in a few hours, and offer other tutorials on Maya and other tools too.
- Steven Gotz offers a variety of useful links to tutorials and other info, especially for Premiere Pro.
- Dean Velez is offering After Effects Training ANVIL CDs released in monthly subscriptions.
- Rick Gerard produced AE training with his Mastering After Effects Collection training CDs and DVD; excerpts were seen around the net.
Plug-in tutorials
- Creative Cow, Creative Mac, Digital Producer and the WWUG all have tutorials and news on various filters. There are also special forums at the vendor site or at forum sites.
- Trapcode, Walker Effects and Digital Anarchy have developed good tutorials for their products.
- In this tutorial, "Chris Bobotis demonstrates twisting a filmstrip using Forge FreeForm in Adobe After Effects. This tutorial assumes you are comfortable with the notion of 'Pre-comping or 'nesting' and the After Effects 'Offset filter' + 'Ramp' filters. Forge also offered three tutorials and a manual in PDF format for FreeForm for After Effects. To download the FreeForm manual or one of the tutorials, go to the downloads section.
- DigiEffects Creative Tips is a three part series of tutorials.
- Panopticum Lens and Fire tutorials are promised but still in the planning stage.
- Brian Maffitt's excellent video tutorials on Final Effects and Studio Effects are available from Total Training. Some examples were posted on Plug-in Central; see one on Time Blend FX.
- Digital Anarchy's Psunami actually shipped with Total Training tutorials. Evolution is now part of AE5, but the tapes are still available, and now included in the latest Total AE tapes.
- Cult Effects tutorials for all 26 CE filters were available from Cycore. If Adobe makes them available again, check out the advanced tutorials and manual.
Portal tutorials - visit Tips too!
- (AE4) Opening a Door in After Effects -- This exercise explores "how things happen" when using the Basic 3D filter to simulate opening a door. You should acquire a basic understanding of both anchor points and the rendering pipeline. You wouldn't do this in AE5, but it is a good way to explore composition nesting.
- (AE4) Writing Text in After Effects: Or There are Always Too Many Ways to Do Things -- Here is a simple method to animate the writing of fancy text using the Write-on filter and a Track Matte. There's even acknowledgment of other ways to animate writing. In AE5, you can do this much easier using the Vector Paint filter.
- Clearcut Mattes -- Using mattes to put video inside layers in After Effects. Also explains the Rendering Pipeline in AE4.
- Masking Tutorial for Adobe After Effects 3.1 -- includes concise instructions for using the pen tool in AE 3.
- Gradients on a Path for Gradient Wipes -- With a little experimentation, it's easy to make custom gradients for After Effects or Premiere -- and especially fun when used in a realtime dual-stream NLE.
Have a tutorial to link?
Please send links (or even tutorials) to aefilter at yahoo.com
Synesthetic Media Connections
Many thanks to the SFSU Multimedia Studies Program for hosting this site.
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Copyright © Rich Young 1998-2006
rev 05/16/2006
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