Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!

Steve Lidrbauch

©2013 CreativeCOW.net. All rights reserved.

In this tutorial, Steve will show you how to give your text or logos the appearance of having reflections that interact movement! And you can do all of this in After Effects without using any plug-ins!

Comments

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Re: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by Nathan Walters

This is such a great tutorial.

Nathan Walters
Halo Union Productions
http://www.HaloUnionProductions.com

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Re: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by John Sale

OK, that was a great Tutorial. I am an advanced Photoshop user and 3D artist. Migrating into AE and I must say the fundamental concepts are very nicely presented. A brief question on the use of a Solid with a Cloud/Noise texture with blur... could a fisheye image with motion blur or a perhaps a cropped and stretched wide angle/panorama image be dropped into the text for a reflection? I look forward to jumping in on this one.

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@John Sale
by Steve Lidrbauch

Hey John,

You bring up a great question, as does William's comment below. I was doing a little more work with the effect, and not only can you use a fisheye image, but I have also figured out a way to create a sphere map for complete 360 degree reflections. I would like to post a brief, follow-up tutorial on this.

@ William,
you can definitely use a photo instead of fractal noise!

Thanks so much to both of you for the inspiration!

Steve Lidrbauch

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Re: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by William Mitchell

Thanks for this tutorial. Such an effective and smart way of acheiving reflections. Never thought of putting a Noise and Grain on there. I wonder if you could simulate reflection like chrome with a photo and blur it. Pretty sweet tutorial. Thanks

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Re: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by Steve Lidrbauch

Thanks for sharing Tero,

True, one might do that! But I see many other useful reasons why one might want to consider this effect:

-AE raytrace can really slow your system down, especially if you only need a stylized effect for something that doesn't need to be truly 3D

-some users may not have CS6

-some users do not have access to 3rd party plug-ins or 3D software.

-some may also wish to access certain 2D effects that AE's 3D raytrace will not yet allow you to use in combination.

-For some new users, it might just be a good opportunity to understand how certain effects/processes work, such as precomping & how that relates to applied effects, cameras, animating, etc.

Just my two cents!

Steve Lidrbauch

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Re: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by Joseph W. Bourke

I'm with you on using a challenge as an opportunity to better understand what's under the hood with AE. There's also a free plugin from VideoCopilot which works for many versions of AE:

http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/reflection_plug-in/

And it's good for those who might not be able to afford a more expensive alternative.

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

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Re: Tutorial: Creating Reflections in After Effects WITHOUT Plug-ins!
by Tero Ahlfors

One might also make this effect with the new ray trace 3D renderer using environment layers.

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