Recommended Plug-ins for Adobe After Effects 7.0
by Chris Lieber (BajaPosse)
on
May 8, 2008 at 11:09:42 pm
does anyone have some recommendations for Adobe AE plug-ins? I know there are tons of plug-ins so I will try to be a little more specific.
some of the plug-ins I am looking for are related to spicing up trailers (specifically for the horror genre). I also wanted to try and get the "Film Burn" effect (not a fire effect) and a text type effect (an effect that types the letters in a word like a typewriter without having to add all of the letters one at a time as separate layers and then time them all.)
Are there certain companies that make plug-in packages that are "must have's?" Or are all of them in disparate packages? I am trying to get some ideas on what I might want to add to my editing software....
Are there other plug-in effects that are staples for any editor? I am trying to gather some information that I can use to research the next software package I want to buy.
Re: Recommended Plug-ins for Adobe After Effects 7.0 by Grant Swanson on May 8, 2008 at 11:44:14 pm
Hi Chris,
My two favorite After Effects plug-ins are the Sapphire plugins by Genarts, and Magic Bullet Looks. With these two and everything already bundled in After Effects, you can do just about anything. Particular by Trapcode is also pretty good, as far as particle generators go.
You can quite easily do the "type writer" effect you're talking about in one text layer just using the range selector.
Re: Recommended Plug-ins for Adobe After Effects 7.0 by Grant Swanson on May 9, 2008 at 2:08:56 am
Hi Chris,
For the typewriter effect, just create your text layer, and type whatever it is that you want. Then twirl down the options for the layer, twirl down the text parameters, and click Animate-->Opacity. Twirl down the Animator 1 options, and set the opacity to 0% (Be sure you're not setting the opacity of the layer to zero, just the opacity of the animator, the text itself). Hit the stopwatch for the "Start" of the range selector, and then go to the point in time where want the text to be completely typed out and set the start value to 100% (you can also drag the range selector in the Composition Window, if you like to do things visually).
Next, twirl down the Advanced options, and set the smoothness to 0%. Do a RAM preview to see if the timing is working out. Drag the last keyframe around in time to fine-tune the timing of the typing. You can also create more than just the beginning and ending keyframes for this animation for even more control.
I'm sure that both Magic Bullet Looks and the Sapphire plugins come with and "old-film look" preset. Although, you could do this easily in After Effects without a plugin. Just add some noise and grain (you can play around with which ones you like best in the "Noise and Grain" submenu of the Effects menu. Then just add the Hue & Saturation Effect (Effect-->Color Correction-->Hue & Saturation. Check the box for "Colorize" and drag the value to around 20 or so degrees. Then I would probably bring the Colorize Saturation down to around -20 or so. Again, just play around with the results until you have something you like.
