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VFX artist Roger Bolton has worked on films including The Lord of the Rings, Charlie & The Chocolate Factory and Kingdom of Heaven. He has also created effects for his own use -- in this case, a wide variety of 2D and 3D VU meters, automatically animated by the audio in your project. He now offers these 8 plug-ins to artists using Final Cut Pro, After Effects and Motion -- with no watermarks, no time limits, no pricetag. Please note: These plug-ins are Mac-only.
Editor's Note: Roger was kind enough to supply the elements for this article, but when I originally put them together, I failed to properly note what he had made very, very clear to me, that these plug-ins are Mac-only. The article has been updated to reflect that. My apologies for any confusion.
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Tim Wilson
Veeyou was originally created when wearing one of my other hats, as a live performance VJ.
For my work with the Inside-Us-All VJ team, I made a set of VU and EQ meters which reacted live to the audio for use on LED displays at some festivals in the UK: Secret Garden Party and Glade.
These effects were built using Apple's Mac-only Quartz technology for live display. A couple of months later I reworked them as plug-ins for Final Cut Pro and Motion, and now, for After Effects as well. The same Quartz technology and Core Image features in Mac OS X, makes them screaming fast on your desktop.
Plug-in descriptions:
VU Analog. An old school analog VU meter dial of the type seen on 1970's hifi's. Use the presets and drop downs to choose a variety of markings and background gradient combinations for different looks.
VU Digital. A digital VU which emulates a fixed LCD VU meter.
VU Rolling Gauge. An analog VU meter which acts like a physically rolling cylinder gauge.
EQ Six Way. A digital style EQ meter with six frequency bands. You can select from a variety of bar textures and gradient styles which are built into the plugin.
EQ 13 Way. A digital style EQ meter with thirteen frequency bands, includes the same bar textures and gradients as EQ Six Way.
EQ Simple 3D. This set of 6 way EQ bars offers control of the 3D camera position and a range of built in bar textures and gradient styles.
EQ Pixelstix 3D. This filter creates a set of EQ bars spread throughout 3D space with camera control and control of the color cycling and layout of the bars. It can create a huge variety of complex styles of 3D animation.
EQ Tower Cities 3D creates complex 3D EQ animations by repeating the six way EQ in various layouts and patterns. Try using the presets to see the huge range of styles this plugin can create.
What's the catch? There's not one. These aren't demos. They're fully functional plug-ins, offered with no watermarks, time restrictions or price tag.
If you're using Final Cut Pro or Final Cut Express, the next step is to install the free version of Noise Industry's FX Factory, which you can download here.
No need for that step if you're using After Effects or Motion, although After Effects users should note, these plug-ins are Mac-only.
For more information, including sample AE and Motion project file and a demo movie covering all the filters, visit CoreMelt.com.You'll also find there a link to download the Quartz Source files for veeyou to use as realtime FX in VJ programs such as Vidvox VDMX or Troikatronix Isadora.
I hope people find this an easier option than pointing a camera at your real world meters and recording it....
Vee You: 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion
Kenny, the Audio reaction works in different ways as follows:
In After Effects, you can choose a layer using the "Audio Layer" control and the plugins receive the audio information directly from the layer.
In Final Cut Pro there is unfortunately no way for plugins to receive the audio information so you can only keyframe animate them.
In Motion, you need to select one of the input controls, right click on it to add a behavior and then select "audio". Then adjust the controls for the audio behavior to select the audio layer and adjust the frequencies.
The steps above are shown in the tutorial video but it goes quite fast, sorry about that, so you might want to watch it a few times.
These differences are due to limitations in the information each plugin host provides, hopefully Apple will add direct audio access to plugins in a future update so they all can work as easily as they do in After Effects.
Vee You: 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion
I've followed the directions and watched the tutorial. Is there any reason why everything works EXCEPT the meters don't react to the music? I point it to the file it should be reacting to and I've played with every setting available. Am I doing something wrong or did I screw up the installation? I've experimented in both FCP and Motion. Same results.
Vee You: 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion
venner, sorry but the Veeyou plugins use both Quartz Composer and Core Image which are Mac OS X only technologies. A port is not impossible but it's not that easy either, I have some other projects planned and then I hope to get windows versions of several of my plugin packs out later this year.
Vee You: 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion
I was quite surprised (and disappointed naturally) to learn after downloading that this was a Mac-Only plugin. Normally it's quite the opposite of course if only one system is supported.
As far as I know, Quartz has nothing to do with it. I believe Quartz is only applicable for live-DJ software/hardware. So it seems like a port to Windows for After Effects, etc. would be a fairly simple one, correct?
In any case, it looks extremely nice and obviously I (and the majority of AE users) would love to see these ported. Keep up the great work, and thanks for making them free.
Vee You: 8 Free Mac Plug-ins for FCP, AE and Motion
THANK YOU for creating this plug-in; THANK YOU for making it free! Please consider making one avilable for Avid Express Pro. I'd love to have a VU meters instead of the LEDs.
Any chance of getting one for Avid? I'd certainly use it.
Thanks,
Joe
Nice that there are still people who give away things for free which have a certain quality (at least they look like it) unfortunately I'm also a PC user and I will probably not get to see it in action if it only works for MAC.
Digg it
