With a Little Help From My CoPilot

Of the effects that we were learning this week in Adobe After Effects, the one that stood out the most for me was Monday's exercise with the Sure Target plug in. When I saw the film Star Trek Into Darkness over the summer I was captivated by JJ Abrams' retelling of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I was even more drawn by the closing credits they created for this movie.

As we worked with sure target this past Monday, my mind instantly went to this particular credit sequence. While sure target was a small element that made up this credit sequence, it was encouraging to see one of the techniques we learned in class being used in big productions as one of the basic parts to function.

The other reason this credit sequence stood out for me was the fact that it was made by by some of the members of the video copilot website. Some of the other plug ins I saw used to make this sequence was Elements 3D, the particle replicator along with different particle effects to make the illusion of the solar flames on the planet. One of things that I was hoping Video Copilot would mention, was how they created some of the 3D objects like the various planets and asteroids. I understand that they only had a limited amount of time to present the information they did, but this would have been another element of this intriguing sequence I would have loved to know how they created.