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Expressing The Camera Rick Gerard presents a five minute tutorial movie as the second in a series that teaches basic After Effects Camera animation. In this example you'll learn how to simplify animating a camera over a still image and how to orient the camera along a path using expressions to gain compete complete control. Adobe After Effects |
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Creating Powerful Motion with Simple Expressions In this tutorial, Talid Al Khatib demonstrates that simple expressions can create powerful motions. In this case, we create a "rose" which could be used as a background or design element. Talid also points out that we often think that expressions only relate to the layer properties (scale, opacity, positon, anchor point and rotation) but actually, they can work great with effects too, in our tutorial, we applied expressions on two effects (grid and Hue/saturation). |
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Expressions Without the Math Recently Doug Bassett was working on a promo and tried to follow Fred Lewis' connection scripts but couldn't follow the math. In this article, Doug demonstrates a new approach which uses expressions but without the math...and he finished the promo in a minimal amount of time. |
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noise() – After Effects hidden gem of the week The After Effects expression language has a seldom-used random number generator that is really quite a gem. Dan Ebberts says “seldom-used” because he doesn't believe he's ever seen it used in a single expression he's seen posted on the internet. It’s not the easiest command to understand and the documentation is pretty sparse but once you get past that it’s very cool. |
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Exploring Expressions in After Effects 6 With After Effects 6.0, Adobe has introduced some wonderful new functionality to the world of expressions. Most of this is the result of spectacular new features that have been added to After Effects that were not necessarily aimed at expressions but nonetheless dramatically increase the power available to the expression writer. There have also been a few changes and enhancements to the expression language itself. In this article, Dan Ebberts walks us through some of the new features. |
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Building a 3D Particle Generator In this tutorial, Dan Ebberts explores how you can use expressions in After Effects 5.5 to build a fairly sophisticated 3D particle generator. Our particles will respond to initial velocity, gravity, wind, drag, and much more. Using this particle generator, we'll look at how you might create explosions, smoke, a fire blast, falling snow, and even a liquid-like flow. We'll explore how to make each particle re-usable, which will allow us to simulate fountain-like particle streams. This one is quite advanced and is not for the faint of heart. |
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2002: An AE Odyssey Dave LaRonde shares his experiences with upgrading from AE 3.1 to AE 5.5, and the production bundle no less. What would he do first? He gave himself an assignment: A fictional client arrives with a starfield and two animations, both movies of a planet and a moon rotating on their axes. My task: the moon must revolve around the planet, and it must look CONVINCING, as if it were a time lapse from the Hubble Space Telescope. Armed only with the manual, he demonstrates both the old and the new: Masks, Transfer Modes, Track Mattes, Time Remapping for a little bit of fun, and as it turns out… Expressions! |
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Building the World's Greatest Cameraman With version 5.5 of After Effects, Adobe added the wonderful world of the powerful new Expression Controls. In this tutorial, Dan Ebberts looks at several different ways that expression controls can be useful in your projects. (This is an Advanced Tutorial.) |
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Synchronizing Animation to Audio Using After Effects' Layer Markers and Expressions In after Effects 5.5, Adobe has added the capability for expressions to access keyframe and marker data. In this tutorial, Dan Ebberts will focus on how to use this new capability to synchronize an animation to an audio track using layer markers and expressions. |
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Generating Random Motion Using AE 5.5's Expressions In this tutorial, Dan Ebberts demonstrates a method of generating motion that is random in both time and space and allows you to quickly assemble a composition with a pleasantly fluid, chaotic movement. |
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Dan Ebberts demonstrates Animating a Walk-Cycle With version 5.5 of After Effects, Adobe has included some new keyframe-looping expressions that can be very useful for cyclic animation and layer-looping. In this tutorial, Dan Ebberts walks us through the basics of how to set up and use these expressions and then use one to loop a walk-cycle as you might do in a simple character animation. |
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Creating an Audio LED Meter In this tutorial, Roland Kahlenberg demonstrates creating an 'as real as you want it to be' audio LED meter using Motion Math and Expressions. At the bottom of the page is a sample of its use in Roland's demo reel -- just to give you a 'real world' example. |
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Parenting and Expressions in After Effects Dan Ebberts demonstrates setting up an animation of a piston, crank, and wheel using parenting and expressions so that we only have to keyframe one of the pieces and the others follow along. In this case we'll be using the wheel to drive the animation so we will have to develop expressions for the piston and the crank. We will then set keyframes for the rotation of the wheel and (hopefully) the crank and piston will animate automatically. |
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Animating Without Keyframes Expressions in After Effects by Roland R. Kahlenberg As many of you know by now, AE 5.0 has introduced a new feature called Expressions. Experienced users akin it to Motion Math, although they are quite different. In this tutorial, Roland Kahlenberg, who is a non-programmer, intends to show other similarly inclined users of AE 5.0 that Expressions do offer quite a bit to the toolset of the conventional designer. |
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Expressions Are Fun!
In this tutorial, Ben Unguren will show you one way to control expressions in Adobe After Effects 5, by using another layer as a "controller" of a layer with a simple wiggling expression, giving you a great deal more control. If you are unfamiliar with expressions in After Effects 5, you may want to read the chapter "Creating Expressions" in the After Effects 5.0 manual before continuing with this tutorial. |
J.J. Gifford's After Effects Expressions
And don't forget to search the Cow's After Effects forum -- keyword: expressions. There are ton's of mini-tutorials, and expression help from our members.
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