The first and only After Effects User Group in the Twin Cities Metro Area. All are welcome in the Minnesota After Effects User Group.

Our group consists of a wide range of students and industry professionals who use (and LOVE) After Effects for everything from just compositing a 3D scene or animating some text to scripting, expression driven effects and puppeteering!! Come and meet some new people, network, find others who have the answers to your questions, or those who use After Effects in a similar way you do, or share your knowledge with others. Most of all come for fun, learning, giveaways and a chance to speak geek with others fluent in your native tongue!!

The Minnesota After Effects User Group meets every third Thursday, every other month beginning March 18th, 2009 @ EaselSolutions.com located at 23 Empire Dr. St. Paul MN. The Art Institute Minneapolis has also graciously offered us some space as well that we will use on our off months from EaselSolutions.com for fun contests, competitions and collaborations.

Also connect with us via facebook

JOB OPENING: FACULTY (PART TIME & ADJUNCT) - VISUAL EFFECTS & MOTION GRAPHICS
Entry posted on Mar 14 by Scott A Cornell

Also David Wilharm at the Art Institute is looking to hire and instructor ASAP. Are you interested or know someone that may be? Please pass this along.

https://edmc.hua.hrsmart.com/ats/js_job_details.php?reqid=15513

FYI Take Advantage of the FCPX Release
Entry posted on Jul 05 by Scott A Cornell

Save 50% off Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium or Adobe Premiere Pro
CS5.5 if you own Apple Final Cut Pro or Avid Media Composer with offer
code SWITCH. Offer ends September 30, 2011.
http://www.adobe.com/special/offers.html?PID=552179

DigiEffects Discount
Entry posted on Jan 07 by Scott A Cornell

25% discount off of Buena Depth Cue v2 for one week (1/10/11 - 1/17/11)! The code that you can use for this promotion is "UG-BDCV2". 

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #01 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #02 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #03 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #04 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #05 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #06 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

AE Challenge #001 Green Eggs & Ham Kinetic Typography Entry #07 from MN After Effects User Group on Vimeo.

2.5 hours, this video youtube.com/​watch?v=NHqXBZFZ6OA and a couple examples of kinetic typography is all that was given as parameters.

This is 1 of 7 entries submitted.

Character Animation using Expressions
Video posted on Jan 20 by Scott A Cornell

Video:
Link: Character Animation using Expressions

Free Stock Video 1
Bookmark posted on Sep 16 by Scott A Cornell

Brian Michael's Puppet Tool demo material
File posted on Jun 02 by ragecgi

Thumbnail:

Ultimate Motion Graphics Tutorials Round-up
Bookmark posted on May 26 by Scott A Cornell

GrayMachine AfterEffects Tutorials
Bookmark posted on May 19 by Scott A Cornell

Aetuts+ LOTR Series: Eye of Sauron – Tuts+ Premium - 1:00PM

Continuing the Lord of the Rings series, we will be creating the Eye of Sauron with fractal noise, vector blurs and CG fire. This will then be exported into Maya and composited back in after effects with the CG tower, lighting and background HDRI.

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Aetuts+ Use Projected Plates To Clean Up Your Shot - May 15

In this tutorial we´re going to adopt a fairly common technique used in 3d compositing tools such as Nuke. We will start off by tracking the shot using the After Effects CameraTracker plug-in by The Foundry to get our 3d Camera properly solved. With this data we extend this shot and create a clean plate, which we´ll use to project onto our “proxy geometry” to clean up the shot. We´ll build a fairly simple “projector rig” with some expressions to make life easier.

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Tutorial

Aetuts+ Simulate An Old School X-ray Vision Shot – Parts 4 & 5 - May 14

In the Aetuts+ section of this tutorial we’ll be compositing our render passes that were created in Maya. We will then use every tool in our arsenal to dirty up the image to make it look a hybrid of 50′s scifi and 80′s television. To view Parts 1, 2, and 3, head over to our sister site Cgtuts+ where James covers the Maya section.

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Part 3.5

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Part 4

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Part 5

Aetuts+ How to Create a Glitchy Interface Animation - May 11

This tutorial will teach you how to recreate a stylized Glitch Interface Animation that resembles a high tech control system, with an analog monitor startup. Anthony Errisuriz provides his step by step process for creating this amazing effect with design from Illustrator and animating in After Effects.

August of 2009

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Tutorial

Aetuts+ A Simple Puzzle Animation With The Shatter Plug-in - May 10

Hello everyone! In this tutorial we’re gonna show you how to create a really cool looking puzzle animation in After Effects.You don’t need any external plugins (The optical flares animation is just an extra visual improvement it’s not necessary to have.However I included the optical flares version project file to those of you who want to modify the flare for example). I think this effect is really versatile so this will be a really useful stuff for you. Let’s dive in.

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Tutorial

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Step 1

Create a new composition clicking by Menu->Composition->New Composition. Name it as Puzzle Animation, change the resolution to1280×720 and set the duration to 7 seconds.

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Step 2

Create a new solid clicking by Menu->Layer->New->Solid. The color is doesn’t matter. Change the resolution to 1280×720 and name it as ‘BG’.

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Step 3

With the BG layer selected go to Effect->Generate->Ramp and apply the Ramp effect to it. Let’s change the properties. First set the colors. Start Color: #43324A End Color:#110E13 and let’s change the ramp shape to radial ramp.

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Step 4

I’m not sure that you can see clearly in the picture below bot most of the time when we’re dealing with the ramp effect, we can get a weird artifact error.It’s looks like a whole bunch of colorful rings which is not too good.To avoid or fix this problem we have to apply the following effect: Noise.

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Step 5

Go to Effect->Noise&Grain->Noise and apply it and change the Amount of Noise value to 1%.

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Step 6

The noise will reduce the opacity of the banding artifact error but it will be still noticeable so you have to increase the color depth as well by alt+left clicking on the 8 bpc "button". Change this value to 32 and it will fix a problem.

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Step 7

Let’s import the Aetuts+ logo and put it over the BG layer and with the Aetuts+ logo layer selected go to Layer->Pre-Compose and select the Move all attributes into the new composition option.

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Step 8

With the Logo composition selected, let’s turn the 3D switch on.

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Step 9

With the LOGO composition selected go to Effect->Simulation->Shatter and let’s change the following properties. By the way, as you can see we have 2 error messages. The first triangle icon means that this effect doesn’t supports the 32 bit color depth and the second has appeared because we just turned on the 3D switch without a camera. It’s not a big deal everything will work fine don’t worry. Other important thing is you can change the thickness of the puzzle pieces by changing the extrusion depth property. If you want more pieces then increase the repetitions value.

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Step 10

Let’s change the following properties: Under the Force 1 section, the Radius value is important because if your logo is bigger than the default Aetuts+ logo which I used in this tutorial then you have to increase this value to make a bigger puzzle surface. Also keep that in mind under the Physics properties you will find a Randomness property. This will randomize the puzzle pieces, however at the end of the animation this values must be 0 because if it’s higher than 0 you will see a weird puzzle piece with huge gaps. Let me just show you what I mean.

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Step 11

If the randomness value is not 0 then at the end of the animation you can see the pieces doesn’t match perfectly with each other. Currently this is not a huge problem because we will fix it later.

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Step 12

Under the Textures tab you can add a color or a texture to your puzzle piece. Keep that in mind if you are trying to use a texture (like a real photo texture) then you have to Pre-compose it first otherwise this won’t work. In this example I just used a simple color #616063 and I set this color to the Side and Back mode. Under the lightning option let’s change the Light Type to First Comp Light.

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Step 13

Go to Effect->Perspective->Bevel Alpha and apply it with the following properties. It just gives a little extra highlight on the edge of the puzzle pieces.

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Step 14

Let’s add a new light. Go to Layer->New->Light. You can play around with the light distance or you can use my settings below. This will make a more believable 3D looking scene with a little shadow falloff.

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Step 15

Let’s set the following position properties of the light.

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Step 16

We have to reverse the puzzle animation so select the LOGO composition and right click on it and select Time-Reverse Layer.

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Step 17

We have a little problem. The animation is works fine, but at the end the whole animated logo piece disappears. The time remapping and the freeze frame solution is doesn’t work. I don’t know why, but we need an other solution. We can do two things. The first is really simple and primitive. With this logo layer selected, go to the last frame on the timeline (You can see the picture below) and hit the n and b keys on the keyboard. After that let’s render out this frame as a .jpg file. When the render is done, import this .jpg into after effects and put it over the LOGO composition layer. Let’s offset it to the end of the Logo composition layer. So basically the logo won’t disappear anymore, but what if the Background is animated? Here’s a better solution.

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Step 18

The second idea is a little bit different. You have to duplicate the LOGO layer. I rename the duplicated version to Freeze logo. You have to go to the last frame and you have to trim it. After that open the Shatter plug-in properties and under the physics tab let’s change the randomness to 0.

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Step 19

Let’s open the Shatter effect properties on the new duplicated freeze logo layer and the original logo layer as well. I just used the pickwhip tool to make a simple expression to connect the radius properties with the original logo composition. It’s important because if we use a different logo which is bigger than the current logo then we have to change the radius properties on every duplicate, but because of the expression everything will work fine.

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Step 20

The expression part is done so we have to duplicate and offset the freeze logo composition.

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Step 21

I made a lot of duplicates so I just turned on the shy button to hide all of these layers.

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Step 22

Go to Layer->New->Camera and add a new camera.

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Step 23

I just made a really simple camera animation. Go to the first frame and change the z property to -991, after that, go 4 seconds and change this value to -1789 and that’s it.

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Conclusion

So this is it! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and learned some new things. Try your own variations or customize the free project file that you can download at the top. My name is Tibor Miklos, thanks a lot for your attention and I’ll see ya next time! Oh and if you have any questions or you just get stuck then just write me an e-mail. sir.tibor.miklos@gmail.com.

 

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Final Image

Video Copilot Tutorials Mid-Air Emergency! - Mar 21
Composite footage into Airplane interior    Build wing from 2D elements and add pyro

Video Copilot Tutorials Grenade Throw - Jan 16
Composite a super-slow motion grenade to live footage    Use 2D Tracking on a camera to match a nodal pan.

Video Copilot Tutorials Magical Hits - 12/13/11
Composite stock footage elements to create magic hits    Use ripple distortion to enhance blast effect

Video Copilot Tutorials Dynamic Machine Gun - 11/28/11
Create a machine gun with dynamic ricochets types    Use Expressions to emit unique particles on each surface

Video Copilot Tutorials Epic Shatter - 11/21/11
Use 3DS Max to create a ball shattering with RayFire    Composite the passes in AE with DOF & Displacement

graymachine | The Art and Science of Motion Red Giant TV Live – Episode 10: Let it Flow - Mar 22
Trapcode Particlar and Form are very similar in many ways. Sometimes, you might even want the organic look of Form with the 3D position control of Particular. We’ll discuss how to get detailed control over particle grids to create something … Continue reading →

graymachine | The Art and Science of Motion Alien Attack II: They are Coming! - Mar 22
In this episode of Red Giant TV, let’s bring back the Alien Apocalypse! Only this time, it’s coming to a neighborhood near you. Staying entirely within After Effects, we’ll create a composite of a UFO flying overhead.

graymachine | The Art and Science of Motion RGTV Live #9: Working with Fractal Fields - Jan 23
Trapcode Form and Particular have some complex controls over the fractal fields. In episode 9 of RGTV Live, we’ll demystify these controls and show you how to use them in your design.

graymachine | The Art and Science of Motion Red Giant TV Episode 65: Warp Projection - 12/07/11
In this multidimensional episode of Red Giant TV, designer I’ll walk you through creating a 3D environment from a 2D image, all in After Effects. This won't be using traditional camera projection techniques – nor will it use vanishing point … Continue reading →

graymachine | The Art and Science of Motion Creating a Rocket Ship Trail of Letters - 12/05/11
In this QuickTip, I’ll guide you through the set-up and expressions required to emit a paragraph of letters from a moving After Effects layer.

type	title			author	activity
Thread	Adobe Developers in Arden Hills want to Meet You	0	530	Charles VW	Mar 20
Thread	next meeting	6	6764	scottskaja	02/02/11
Thread	Would you like to see presentations on certain features? Which ones?	1	5680	Scott A Cornell	03/16/09
Thread	Meeting length	3	6043	minimoose82	05/31/09
Thread	Agenda Posted for MNAEUG Meeting #4 Thursday Nov. 19th @ Digital Pictures.	0	6466	Scott A Cornell	11/13/09
Thread	Polls	9	6863	Scott A Cornell	03/30/09
Thread	Render & Email Script	2	6736	scottskaja	07/11/09
Thread	General Group Discussion - What do you want out of this group?	5	7663	Scott A Cornell	03/16/09
Thread	THIS IS AN INCREDIBLE OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU!	0	7258	Scott A Cornell	02/05/10
Thread	After Effects and Maya	1	5998	robbiehalvorson	05/14/09

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