Red Giant

So this week I came across Red Giant, an awesome resource in terms of software, plugins, and tutorials. They have tools for motion graphics artists, editors, VFX artists, filmmakers, colorists, and compositors. Some of their more notable tools are Pluraleyes and Colorista. Pluraleyes is a powerful tool that will automatically sync audio and video as well as multiple cameras for multclipping.

 Red Giant splits it's software into bundles they call suites. They have 5 different suites: the Trapcode Suite which includes plugins for After Effects, the Magic Bullet Suite with color correcting and finishing tools, the Shooter Suite for the early stages of post production, the Effects Suite, and the Keying Suite for compositing. Unfortunately, these are all pretty pricey however they do offer discounts for students and teachers. They also offer free trials of their software. I highly recommend checking them out. http://www.redgiant.com/

Different Ways to Work with Particles

While I was researching different tutorials for After Effects I found a new way to use the particle animation that we talked about in class. Someone actually posted the tutorial that we saw in class on this blog, but just for those who didn't see it, its from VideoCopilot and it demonstrates how to create particle animation.

Well, on Greymachine there is a tutorial on fairytale lighting that illustrates a whole other way to create particle animation. Rather than using the Particle World effect, go to "Effect" then "Trapcode" and select "Particular." It allows for a whole new usage and control of particle animation. Now I wasn't able to figure out whether or not the tutorial was done on CS4 or CS5 but I still found it to be an informative tutorial in terms of lighting.


Red Giant QuickTip #39: Fairytale Lighting in After Effects from Red Giant on Vimeo.

There is also a new Trapcode Form 2 which is seen in this tutorial that would be really interesting to work with for different projects. It allows for a different format of particles that Harry Frank goes on to explore during the tutorial.



Getting Started with Trapcode Form 2 from Red Giant on Vimeo.