Category Archives: After Effects

Beautiful new AI mograph explorations

After Effects, AI/ML

Check out this new work from Alex Patrascu. As generative video tools continue to improve in power & precision, what’ll be the role of traditional apps like After Effects? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A love letter to splats

3D, After Effects, AI/ML, NeRF

Paul Trillo relentlessly redefines what’s possible in VFX—in this case scanning his back yard to tour a magical tiny world:

Here he gives a peek behind the scenes: 

And here’s the After Effects plugin he used:

“Hundreds of Beavers”: A bizarre, AE-infused romp

After Effects

I haven’t yet seen Hundreds of Beavers, but it looks gloriously weird:

I particularly enjoyed this Movie Mindset podcast episode, which in part plays as a fantastic tribute to the power of After Effects:

We sit down with Mike Cheslik, the director of the new(ish) silent comedy action farce Hundreds of Beavers. We discuss his Wisconsin influences, ultra-DIY approach to filmmaking, making your film exactly as stupid as it needs to be, and the inherent humor of watching a guy in a mascot costume get wrecked on camera.

After Effects + Midjourney + Runway = Harry Potter magic

After Effects, AI/ML

It’s bonkers what one person can now create—bonkers!

I edited out ziplines to make a Harry Potter flying video, added something special at the end
byu/moviemaker887 inAfterEffects

I took a video of a guy zip lining in full Harry Potter costume and edited out the zip lines to make it look like he was flying. I mainly used Content Aware Fill and the free Redgiant/Maxon script 3D Plane Stamp to achieve this.

For the surprise bit at the end, I used Midjourney and Runway’s Motion Brush to generate and animate the clothing.

Trapcode Particular was used for the rain in the final shot.

I also did a full sky replacement in each shot and used assets from ProductionCrate for the lighting and magic wand blast.

[Via Victoria Nece]

Adobe announces new Firefly plans for video

Adobe Firefly, After Effects, AI/ML, Typography

Our friends in Digital Video & Audio have lots of interesting irons in the fire!

From the team blog post:

To start, we’re exploring a range of concepts, including:

  • Text to color enhancements: Change color schemes, time of day, or even the seasons in already-recorded videos, instantly altering the mood and setting to evoke a specific tone and feel. With a simple prompt like “Make this scene feel warm and inviting,” the time between imagination and final product can all but disappear.
  • Advanced music and sound effects: Creators can easily generate royalty-free custom sounds and music to reflect a certain feeling or scene for both temporary and final tracks.
  • Stunning fonts, text effects, graphics, and logos: With a few simple words and in a matter of minutes, creators can generate subtitles, logos and title cards and custom contextual animations.
  • Powerful script and B-roll capabilities: Creators can dramatically accelerate pre-production, production and post-production workflows using AI analysis of script to text to automatically create storyboards and previsualizations, as well as recommending b-roll clips for rough or final cuts.
  • Creative assistants and co-pilots: With personalized generative AI-powered “how-tos,” users can master new skills and accelerate processes from initial vision to creation and editing.

A pair of cute Firefly animations

Adobe Firefly, After Effects

O.G. animator Chris Georgenes has been making great stuff since the 90’s (anybody else remember Home Movies?), and now he’s embracing Adobe Firefly. He’s using it with both Adobe Animate…

…and After Effects:

Generative dancing about architecture

After Effects

Paul Trillo is back at it, extending a Chinese restaurant via Stable Diffusion, After Effects, and Runway:

Elsewhere, check out this mutating structure. (Next up: Falling Water made of actual falling water?)

More DALL•E + After Effects magic

After Effects, AI/ML, DALL•E

Creator Paul Trillo (see previous) is back at it. Here’s new work + a peek into how it’s made:

Frame.io is now available in Premiere & AE

After Effects

To quote this really cool Adobe video PM who also lives in my house 😌, and who just happens to have helped bring Frame.io into Adobe,

Super excited to announce that Frame.io is now included with your Creative Cloud subscription. Frame panels are now included in After Effects and Premiere Pro. Check it out!

From the integration FAQ:

Frame.io for Creative Cloud includes real-time review and approval tools with commenting and frame-accurate annotations, accelerated file transfers for fast uploading and downloading of media, 100GB of dedicated Frame.io cloud storage, the ability to work on up to 5 different projects with another user, free sharing with an unlimited number of reviewers, and Camera to Cloud.


A modern take on “Take On Me”

After Effects

Back in 2013 I found myself on a bus full of USC film students, and I slowly realized that the guy seated next to me had created the Take On Me vid. Not long after I was at Google & my friend recreated the effect in realtime AR. Perhaps needless to say, they didn’t do anything with it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

In any event, now Action Movie Dad Daniel Hashimoto has created a loving homage as a tutorial video (!).

https://twitter.com/ActionMovieKid/status/1422668050210320386

Here’s the full-length version:

Special hat tip on the old CoSA vibes:

Say it -> Select it: Runway ML promises semantic video segmentation

After Effects, AI/ML

I find myself recalling something that Twitter founder Evan Williams wrote about “value moving up the stack“:

As industries evolve, core infrastructure gets built and commoditized, and differentiation moves up the hierarchy of needs from basic functionality to non-basic functionality, to design, and even to fashion.

For example, there was a time when chief buying concerns included how well a watch might tell time and how durable a pair of jeans was.

Now apps like FaceTune deliver what used to be Photoshop-only levels of power to millions of people, and Runway ML promises to let you just type words to select & track objects in video—using just a Web browser. 👀

New eng & marketing opportunities in Adobe video

After Effects

Come join my wife & her badass team!

Roto Brush 2: Semantic Boogaloo

After Effects

Back in 2018 I wrote,

Wanna feel like walking directly into the ocean? Try painstakingly isolating an object in frame after frame of video. Learning how to do this in the 90’s (using stone knives & bear skins, naturally), I just as quickly learned that I never wanted to do it again. 

Happily the AE crew has kept improving automated tools, and they’ve just rolled out Roto Brush 2 in beta form. Ian Sansevera shows (below) how it compares & how to use it, and John Columbo provides a nice written overview.

In this After Effects tutorial I will explore and show you how to use Rotobrush 2 (which is insane by the way). Powered by Sensei, Roto Brush 2 will select and track the object, frame by frame, isolating the subject automatically.