OCEntertainment

If there’s one thing that any video/effects/design person can’t get enough of, it’s free materials. Especially royalty free. So, just for you folks, here’s a collection of some sites that offer up a ton of stuff that’s either free or free with simple conditions (mostly just attribute original author).

Jamendo — (Music) - A web collection of music all licensed under Creative Commons. Which means, among other things, all the music on the site is free to download. Not all of the music is free to use in a video, but some of it is. Use advanced search for options to specifically find music you can reuse. There’s some pretty good stuff out there that merely asks you give credit to the artist. Right now I’m hooked on Chronique, but that’s just me.

Soundsnap — (Sound FX) - I’ve just discovered this site recently, so I haven’t had much chance to use it, but their collection of royalty-free sound effects is ample to say the least. May take some sifting to find the best ones. (Courtesy of Lifehacker.)

Stock Exchange — (Stock Photos) - This site requires a log in to use, but contains a large number of free or mostly free images. Some restrictions apply. Also, as Tutorial 9 pointed out a while back, the Stock Exchange can be used to find some pretty amazing, free to use textures. Don’t forget that!

Brusheezy — (Photoshop Brushes) - Free to download Photoshop brushes. Having a full arsenal of brushes can give you a huge amount of flexibility when designing an image. Of course, I find that half the brushes I download, I don’t ever even install, much less use. Nonetheless, you’ll be incredibly glad you have this site in your repertoire. Be sure to check licenses for individual brushes just in case.

Dafont — (Fonts) - Huge collection of mostly free fonts. Some are free for personal use, others are just free, so be sure to check. BONUS: I’ve also recently become aware that, when searching, you can enter your own custom text and see your text generated in all the fonts you preview. Very handy if you wanna get a better idea of just how a font will look for your project. (Which, of course, you do, don’t you?)

Video Copilot — (After Effects) - It should go without saying, a toolbox is only as good as the knowledge you use it with. Video Copilot makes it on the list of free stuff because it does, in fact, have some free presets (Tutorials tab, Presets….at least get the Lightsabre preset), but the real helpful stuff is the tutorials. If you’re learning After Effects, I suggest you get started on the basics, and then, come here. (Conveniently, you can also learn the basics here.)

Art of the Title — (Inspiration) - There’s plenty of design and design theory books and websites out there that will give you inspiration in the form of still images, teaching you about layout, colors, shapes and so on, blah de bloo. But the one thing you can’t learn from a book is movement. Enter Art of the Title. This website is nothing more than a collection of movie title sequences. Very handy for inspiration. Also, check out the Submarine Channel. I haven’t looked through it yet, but a teacher of mine highly recommends it.

If you know of any other good free stuff around, do let me know. And share with others! Several of the sites listed above all have ways to contribute your own creations back to the community of multimedia folk. So, have at it.

Previously, I went over how to set up an open source DVD Server. Well, not a day after I finished that article did I discover an excellent piece of software that allows you to build a custom Linux distribution out of your current setup.

Well, once again, thanks to my good buddy Tommy for letting me experiment with his system. This discovery just happened to come on the heels of setting up his DVD server, so he granted me an extra day of experimentation. And look what it turned out! A pre-built DVD storage/playback system! Why, I’ve managed to render my previous tutorial useless in a single day!

Feels good.

I currently have his computer running the LiveDVD (too big for a CD). Which means the Live disc is running on the same hardware setup as it came from. I’d like to do a few more tests, but after that, I could distribute this Live disc to anyone who wants a copy.

So, precompiled Linux distribution specialized for ripping, storing, and playing back DVDs anyone?

P.S.
I’m still working on the Crew of Funk After Effects tutorial. Don’t worry, it’s coming.

So, I’ve talked about this DVD Server a few times online, and in real life a bunch. I figure it’s high time I lay out how it’s done.

The system I’m going to outline is built on entirely free software. Given a spare computer with decent specs, albeit a pretty huge hard drive, you could put this together for absolutely nothing. So let’s get to it shall we?

The operating system we’re using is Ubuntu 8.10, also called Intrepid Ibex, the current version as of this writing. I’m not gonna go over installation of the operating system, as there’s plenty of documentation for that, and honestly, it’s pretty straightforward.

We’ve got three main programs we need to install (hope you’re comfortable with the command line, but don’t get scared if you’re not, I’ll walk you through it). The first is the DVD ripping program called k9copy.

k9copy requires a few special packages to rip commercial DVDs (which you’ll likely want to rip). Fortunately, most of these packages are conveniently wrapped up in the Medibuntu repository. A repository is simply a place where one stores software packages. Most Linux distributions use repositories for all their software. Follow the above link to read about the Medibuntu repository, or issue the following three commands, one at a time, into a command line (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)

sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/intrepid.list –output-documents=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list

Once this has finished, enter the second command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get update

It will ask you if you want to proceed. Type “y”. Don’t worry, Medibuntu is trustworthy. I’ll vouch for them. I promise. Next, one more command:

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2

Between these three, you will have all the necessary packages installed in your system. Now, k9copy has all the tools it needs to rip DVDs. You just need to install k9copy. To do that, run this command from the terminal:

sudo apt-get install k9copy

It’s just that freaking simple. It’ll take a little bit of time to install, but then k9copy should appear in your applications list under Applications > Sound and Video > k9copy.

Ripping Movies with k9copy:

Run k9copy, load a DVD in the tray, and press the big “Open” button on the upper left side of the window. This will bring up the DVD menu tree. You can select individual parts of the DVD to include in this view, but I prefer to stick with the entire thing. Click the topmost check box in the tree, then click “Copy” in the toolbar. It will ask you where to save the .iso image you’re about to create. I’d suggest coming up with an organizational scheme early. The .iso file will be no bigger than 4.4 GB by default, though you can alter the max file size in k9copy’s settings.

In the interest of full-disclosure:

In my time using k9copy, I’ve found that it’s pretty flakey about how often it works. In ripping my collection, it would rip 2-3 movies, then refuse to open until I’d rebooted my machine. Admittedly, this was back on 8.04, and I don’t know if they’ve upgraded k9copy since then. I’m open to alternative methods for ripping DVDs, but now that my whole collection is in, I think I’ll stick with this and trust the software will get better as time goes by.

Alright, so now we’ve got a bunch of .isos floating around your hard drive, but we need a way to play them.

Enter VLC

VLC is, simply put, the only media player you will ever need, at all, forever and ever, till the end of the digital age. VLC will play anything. Fortuntaly for us, this includes .isos, even maintaining the interactive menu structure.

For 8.10, installing VLC is pretty simple. Run the following two commands in a terminal:

sudo apt-get update

Then:

sudo apt-get install vlc vlc-plugin-esd mozilla-plugin-vlc

If you’re using an older version of Ubuntu, you may need to enable a universe or multiverse repository. As this guide is for 8.10, I’ll leave that part out for now.

You can now open the .isos in VLC and play them as any standard DVD player would.

In all practicality, this is all you need. But let’s face it. This interface isn’t pretty. So let’s make it pretty.

The last program we’re gonna install is GCStar. This program will be mostly useless to you without an internet connection, as a warning.

The Star of the Show

Forgive my pun. I’m required by law to use at least three a year. I’d made two so far, and it’s already November. Anyways, installing GCStar was surprisingly simple, given their download sections instructions. Ok, are you ready for this:

sudo apt-get install gcstar

This might not be the best advice, but honestly, when I find a well-made piece of software with an installation that seems unnecessarily complex, first thing I try is “sudo apt-get install softwarename“. It’s a bit hit or miss, and this time, it was a hit.

Using GCStar

GCStar is first and foremost a library software. Which means you can keep track of more than just your movies. Books, music, board games, video games, even your wine collection. For us, though, select Movie Collection. Select File > Add to begin adding movies.

This will open a new panel. The top most search bar is your power tool. Enter the name of a movie here and press enter (or “Fetch Information”). By default this will bring up a list of places to search from. I find Amazon and IMDb among the most effective searches.

Though, they’re not perfect. For example, as an experiment, I used Amazon to search for the movie Jumper. It brought me back the cover art for Iron Man. Go figure.

But I digress.

Once you get your search correct, you’ll have a ton if metadata, and things start looking pretty. But there’s a couple more things we wanna do.

Under the Details tab of a movie, there’s a bunch of fun information here if you really get into dissecting your movies in a database style. But the important piece of info is Video File. Press the Open button next to this box, and navigate to your .iso that you have stored on your hard drive

Your movie is now directly linked to the entry on this page. You can now select the movie from your library list, click “Play”, and it will automatically launch.

Loose Ends

There’s a ton of fun ways to play around with these programs. You can modify your max file size in k9copy, or make use of the lending system in GCStar to keep track of who’s borrowing your movies. I’ll largely leave you to explore the programs on your own. But a couple more things need to be done, specifically in GCStar.

Go to Settings > Preferences. In the Paths tab, you can choose what application you start your movies in. Select “Use Specified Programs”, then click “Set Programs”. In the box marked Video player, enter “vlc” (no quotes), in place of “mplayer”.

This next one is a personal preference thing, but it’s worth showing, as I didn’t know it existed. Still in the Preferences menu, under the “Display” tab change the “Items list” setting from “Text” to “Image”. Select OK however many times you need to get back to the main page.

You now have a virtual shelf to display your movies. There are a couple of themes to choose from as well, under Preferences > Display tab > Items list settings. Personally, I like the Dark Glass skin the best.

The next (optional) thing. Open VLC (easiest to just launch a movie from GCStar). Then, go to Tools > Preferences. Under the Video tab, Display section, select Fullscreen. This one is a bit of a misnomer, as what it actually does is change VLC’s default behavior to open in fullscreen. Handy if we want to launch a movie from GCStar more seamlessly. Once in fullscreen mode, you can exit by double-clicking.

Finally, in the Preferences menu in VLC, under the Subtitles & OSD tab, deselect “Enable OSD”. This will get rid of an annoying little subtitle that feels the need to tell you what file you’re opening. This is new in this version of VLC.

And that’s all! Not that this isn’t enough, but the only thing left, really, is just adding all your movies. It’s a long process, made only longer by the size of your movie collection, but I find it’s worth it.

I wrote this article while setting up this very system on my friend’s computer. Special thanks to him, by the way, for letting me use his computer as a guinea pig for this set up. He’s gotten it twice now, and his computer has been in my possession for almost a month now. He’s been very supportive in helping me get this process refined.

If anyone has a problem with this setup, let me know, and I’ll see if I can figure it out. Or search online and let me know what solutions you come up with! ubuntuforums.org is a great resource for getting help. Probably more helpful than I’ll be.

Oh and apologies for the lack of screenshots. Unfortunately, I’m a bit unable at the moment.

Well, that’s all. If you do set this system up, do let me know. I’d love to hear about it.

Happy movie night!

While it may not be limited to a multimedia world, keyboard shortcuts can be an incredibly helpful way to get things done and done quickly. Here’s just a sample of some of the more common shortcuts that can help you increase productivity. Or at least, that’s what I hear the office folks are calling it these days.

Note on OSes:

There are some differences among keyboard shortcuts among the different operating systems. Most Windows shortcuts work fairly well on Linux machines as well. Of course, when you get to the Mac world, the first thing people will tell you is “We don’t use Control here. We use Command.” Trade secret: it’s the one with the Apple on it. For this list, assume the Mac version of the shortcut substitutes Command for Control unless otherwise noted.

Universal

Undo – Ctrl+Z - One of the two single most important keyboard shortcuts you’ll ever use.

Save — Ctrl+S - The other most important shortcut. It is a very good idea when you start working on projects (of any kind) to get in the habit of pressing this when you pause for even a second. Make yourself your own built-in autosave.

Close window (tab) — Ctrl+W - While other shortcuts will close entire programs, this one allows you to close a single window or tab in that program. It’s even better on Macs, where a window is not the entirety of the program.

Rotate Windows — Alt+Tab - One of the most helpful shortcuts, press and hold Alt and then press Tab to begin cycling through windows. As long as you have Alt held down, you can keep pressing Tab to select the open programs. I find this makes even more sense on the Mac OS, as it doesn’t cycle through each window, just each application (you can use Expose to see multiple windows within a single program). Holding down Shift while cycling through lets you move backwards.

Browsing

Due to the ADD nature of the internet, a lot of times being able to do tasks quickly without thinking helps a lot. The following shortcuts have been tested with Firefox. I don’t know if they’re the same on other browsers, but if you’re not using Firefox….use Firefox.

New Tab — Ctrl+T - Self-explanatory. Oft-overlooked. WAY better than the menu.

Search Box — Ctrl+K - A quick way to get to the Google (or other search engine) box in the upper right corner of the browser. Combine Ctrl+T and Ctrl+K for quick searches. If you have multiple search engines, you can use Ctrl+Up and Down to cycle through them.

Download box — Ctrl+J - Pulls up your current/recent downloads box. This can actually be pretty handy, especially if you have your download box set to close once a download completes, but forget where you stashed your pretty new file. Also, remember that you can double click the items in the download manager to execute them without having to find them on your computer (may leave your computer a mess).

Cycle Tabs — Ctrl+Tab (All systems) - Much like Alt+Tab for entire programs, Ctrl+Tab and its counterpart allow you to move between Tabs. Word on the blogs is that in soon-to-be-released updates for Firefox 3, you’ll also get the heads-up-display of all tabs like you do with Alt-Tab for programs. This shortcut uses Control on Mac as well.

Bookmarks Menu — Ctrl+B - Opens the bookmarks sidebar. I don’t frequently use this, but I’m told it’s helpful. Shortcut veterans will notice that this overrides the Bold shortcut. Interesting, on the Mac, in a text editor (like the one I’m in to write this post), you can actually use Ctrl+B, +I, or +U for the text modifiers. Windows/Linux users are kinda stuck as far as I know. Unless you remap your keys.

Switch Tab — Ctrl+1-9 - New one to me, you can use this one to go to a specific tab you have open, “numbered” horizontally. Fine got a little finicky when I got to 9. But if you’ve got ten tabs open, and you use these shortcuts, I think you can figure out how to handle yourself.

Word Processing

It should go without saying that these are some of the most fundamental shortcuts that everyone should know.

Bold, Italics, and Underline — Ctrl-B, Ctrl+I, Ctrl+U - One of the biggest drags when making a document is when you want to italicize or bold a single word, and you have to take your hands off the keyboard, move the mouse up to the little “B” button, type really and then mouse up to…..yeah, even writing it is too long. Plus, it reduces the likelihood you’ll use CAPSLOCK for emphasis. Which is always good form. And you do want to use good form, don’t you?

Copy — Ctrl+C
Cut — Ctrl+X
Paste — Ctrl+V

You notice these most used shortcuts are all together on your keyboard in one little spot? Yep. They thought about this.

Miscellany

The rest of the stuff.

Screenshots — PrintScreen/Cmd+Shift+3 - Windows and Mac handle screenshots entirely different. On a Windows machine, press PrintScreen to copy an image of your entire desktop to your clipboard. You can then paste it into an image editor, like Paint. If you don’t paste it into an image, you will never see that screenshot.

On Mac, however, you take a screenshot with Cmd+Shift+3. This will actually create a .png on your desktop with the screenshot image.

You can also use Alt+PrintScreen/Cmd+Shift+4 to take a picture of a single window (Mac users will then select which window).

Show Desktop — Win+D - Similar to (but less pretty than) the Expose feature in Mac OSX, this shortcut will minimize all your windows to…well….show your desktop.

New Explorer Window — Win+E - Self-explanatory. To get (roughly) the same effect in OSX, Cmd+Tab to the Finder program, and then Cmd+N for a new window.

Wrap-Up

Next time I’ll go over some more power-user quickness methods. But for now, this will suffice, I think.

Aww, what the heck. One more.

Quit — Alt+F4 (Cmd+Q)

(Thanks to Thrash and Elmo Q. Shangnaster for teaching me some new shortcuts for this article.)

So, the National Film Challenge was kind of a blast. Only last night did I really unwind from it, and the rest of the busy-ness of life right now. Just in time for my car to break down. Go fig, right?

But life presses on! In much the same vein, I’m still looking for tutorial ideas. And I think I have just the one in mind:

This was an intro graphic built for the Crew of Funk. And I’m thinking it might make a nice series of tutorials. This actually encompasses After Effects and Blender. We’ll go through it piece by piece, the stroke, the particles, and the text. So stay tuned!

When last we left our hero, he was still just a blue orb. He could rotate a bit, but glass, he was not.

This is ok for an orb of mystical power. Of course, it’s also ok for a decent-looking water planet. For something that’s supposed to be glass, it needs to have few more things. Better reflections, for one. And it needs to be a little more see-through.

Let’s start with the transparency part, as that will dictate how we do a lot of our lighting later. This process is startlingly simple (as with a lot of things in After Effects).

First, begin by duplicating the Marble layer in the Orb comp. Press Cmd+D (Ctrl+D) or go to Edit > Duplicate. Name the new (top) layer “Marble Outside” and the old (lower) layer “Marble Inside”. You can do this by selecting the layer and pressing Return (Enter on main keyboard).

Now, to make this name change make more sense. Select the Marble Outside layer, and go to that layers’ CC Sphere settings (F3). Change the Render setting for the Marble Outside layer to Outside, and Marble Inside to….can you guess it? Yes. Inside. Very good. Gold star.

Amazing isn’t it? You’ve gone from a funky blue orb, to the same funky blue orb with a slight blue line around the right edge. (If you don’t, don’t worry. That is really not important at this point.)

But if you were to turn off the layers individually, you will notice that, instead of a single orb, you now have an inner and outer half of an orb, rotating together (because they both have the same rotation keyframes), and yet completely independent.

Alright, next step, change the transfer mode of the Marble Outside layer to Add. This should give you a noticeable difference now.

Alright, now we’re gonna begin to mess with the lighting settings. Select the Marble Inside layer, and pull up the CC Sphere effects settings (F3)

Twirl up the Rotation settings and twirl down Light and Shading, if they’re not already. And for this part, go ahead and turn off visibility of the Marble Outside layer.

Feel free to play around with the Light and Shading settings on your CC Sphere filter. When you’re done, though, set them to the following:

Make sure that the Light Direction is negative 61, and the Roughness is set to point 107. Also don’t forget the Reflection Map and Internal Shadows settings.

Next, turn the Marble Outside layer back on, and give it the following settings:

Again, do not forget the Reflection Map, but this time, leave Internal Shadows unchecked.

You should at this point have something very similar to this:

We’re almost there. This is starting to look a lot more like something Saruman and Sauron would be using to chat online. But there’s still that annoying little edge on the right side. If you don’t have that line, go ahead and do this next step anyway.

Select the Marble Inside layer, and then add a Gaussian Blur, either by using the search box or, Effect > Blur & Sharpen > Gaussian Blur…

You won’t notice an effect right away. Don’t worry. Most blurs in AE come in with no bluriness level set. Modify that in your effects settings panel. Change the blurriness level to 30. Leave the Blur Dimensions at Horizontal and Vertical.

This affords us a couple of things. First off, remember that seam we talked about in the first tutorial? Well, if during this tutorial you tried to see your animation in action, you would have seen it gliding across the rear of the sphere (no rhyme intended). And while, technically, it’s still present, it’s hardly noticable.

Additionally, if this were a true glass sphere, then the texture on opposite side of the glass should not be as clear (unless that’s some REALLY pure glass). This helps (a little) the illusion that you’re actually looking through a solid material, and not just empty space that happens to have a texture wrapped around it.

But the best part of this is that now you could put an element inside the sphere by simply inserting that element in between the two marble layers.

If you’d like to use this as a single object inside a bigger animation, select both the Marble Outside and Inside layers and Pre-Compose them (see previous tutorial). Now you can move around the sphere as a single layer, while it retains all of the animation and attributes it had previously.

You will find some interesting things if you try to move that layer around in 3D space, but that’s another tutorial. Thanks for participating!

Project files available:

Glass Orb
Palintir w/ bonus Eye of Sauron!!

Today marks the first of a two part tutorial for After Effects. This is the first AE tutorial I’ve written and hopefully it won’t be the last. For the first part, we’re going to create a blue, marble orb. Part II will deal with making it all glass looking.

This could be used as an element in an animation, or possibly as David Bowie’s glass balls from the Labyrinth.

Being my first tutorial, I will elaborate on some beginner After Effects controls. For more basic training, though, I highly recommend Andrew Kramer’s series on Video Copilot. Or, if you’re more for the paid-type training, check out Dean Valez’ site, the Motion Graphics Lab. They both also have some fun free stuff on their sites sometimes, so be sure to poke around.

Also, I am working on After Effects CS3. Most of the controls should be the same or similar in other versions. Let me know if there’s a difference!

Moving on!

First thing, create a new Composition. Either press Cmd+N (Ctrl+N) or navigate to “Composition > New Composition…” This will bring up the following dialog box:

Now, there’s a lot of helpful info in here, but all we really care about to start with is the Name, Preset, and the Duration. Name this comp “Orb”, set the Preset to “NTSC D1″ and the Duration to “1000″. This will set the duration to ten seconds. After Effects allows you to simply enter the digits of the timecode and fills in the colons for you. So ten seconds and zero frames becomes “1000″, and then move on!

A Word About Compositions:

A composition, in After Effects, is a lot like a regular .PSD in Photoshop. It is a blank canvas, you can have multiple layers, and you can apply effects to individual or multiple layers, or apply transfer modes. One major difference is that you don’t have brush tools to paint or draw directly on a layer. If this panics you, don’t worry. You can make your layers in Photoshop, and import them into After Effects and they retain most or all of their original characteristics, depending on which version you use. CS3 includes even the ability to keep (and keyframe) your layer styles from Photoshop.

One major advantage, however, is that you can nest compositions. This means you can create an entire composition in AE, and then use it as a single layer in a bigger composition. It’s almost like grouping your layers in Photoshop, except that nested comps are treated as layers unto themselves, with the ability to add effects and so forth. But more on that later.

Alright, so we’ve got this blank comp, but no layers? Well, where do we start?

With a solid. Solids are AE objects that have only the most basic properties. Size, position, rotation, opacity. Oh, and a single color. But they also act as a starting point for effects. Which you’ll see here.

To create a new solid, press Cmd+Y (Ctrl+Y), or go to “Layer > New > Solid…”

In this dialog, you can choose (and later modify) the settings of a solid. For now, simply click “Make Comp Size” if it’s not already. And while it doesn’t really matter which color you choose at this point for the solid, feel free to play around with the color picker. I’ll give you a hint though, it’s identical to the one in Photoshop. Also, name this solid “Marble Texture”. When you’re done, click OK.

Now, you’re working area should look TONS different. Now, instead of a black box in the center, you have  a black box with resizing handles on the edges and corners. Unless you changed your color, in which case, you may have a blue or even green box. Well, aren’t you mister fancy pants! Lah-dee-freaking-dah!

*Ahem*. Ok, moving on.

You now have your first layer in your comp. In the timeline view, you can set various settings for this layer.

Your four primary properties you can animate are position, scale, rotation, and opacity. With a layer selected, you can bring up any of these properties with the “P”, “S”, “R”, and “T” keys, respectively. Yes, opacity is brought up with the letter T, no one knows why. If you’d like to bring up more than one of them, simply press the corresponding letter for the first property, and then hold down Shift and press the letters for all subsequent properties. So, if you want to see both Position and Rotation, you would press P, and then Shift+R (or R and then Shift-P).

Feel free to experiment with these properties you have here. But for now, I’m going to move on, as we have a lot to cover. Don’t worry, we’ll talk more about animating properties in a bit.

Now, we’re going to start the orb texture with one of my favorite effects, Fractal Noise.

You can add an effect in one of two ways. You begin by selecting the layer, and then either navigate through the menus to find the effect (Effect > Noise & Grain > Fractal Noise) or, if you have CS3 or later, you can use the effect search box in the Effects and Presets pane, and then double click the effect.

Personally, I never use the effects menu unless I’m browsing. This search box is just too simple and quick.

So, with the Marble Texture layer selected, add the Fractal Noise filter.

Seasoned Photoshop users will probably find this filter pretty familiar. It’s reminiscient of the Clouds filter that is used to generate a cloud pattern (duh), that can be used for a variety of effects in Photoshop. Well, AE takes this a bit further.

I highly recommend playing around with this effect, as it has a ton of fun options. When you’re done, though, here’s the settings we’ll need (and what some of them do):

Fractal Type: This setting gives you the greatest degree of variation. Much like blending modes in Photoshop, there’s no good non-technical way of explaining the difference between them. Just change between them, see what they all do, and see which ones work best for this project. At the end, set this one to Dynamic. Noise Type is also good for making variations of a Fractal Type. Set this one to Soft Linear.

Complexity: This setting allows you to, as the name suggests, add complexity to your fractal. We don’t need much for this one, however, if you want something more vein-y or webbish, you could turn up the complexity for a different effect.

Evolution: Evolution allows for the motion of a fractal. If you modify the evolution values, you will see the fractal change shape, morph. While we won’t be using evolution settings for this project, we actually could, and perhaps get an interesting effect. However, in most of the motion backgrounds I’ve done, I use a keyframed Evolution setting to achieve movement. More on keyframing later.

Those are some of the most powerful options in this effect, but play around with everything. The best thing of all is that every setting is animate-able, including brightness and contrast.

Alright, so now we’ve got this kind of marble-ish pattern, but what kind of marble is black and white? This has got to change. One way to do it would be with a Hue and Saturation effect, but we’re gonna use a different filter that affords us a little more control.

Effect > Color Correction > Tritone…

With the Tritone filter, you can colorize the highlights, midtones, and shadows individually. We’re going to give this orb a blue-ish tone to it. Set the colors to the following hex codes:

Highlights : 00148B
Midtones : 9ABBFF
Shadows : 000325

Leave Blend with Origin at 0% for now.

So, you should have something like this.

Now, for that nesting of comps thing we talked about.

What we have right now is a single Solid layer (Marble Texture) inside a comp called Orb. From here select the Marble Texture layer. Then choose Layer > Pre-Compose. Or press Cmd+Shift+C (Ctrl+Shift+C).

You should now see the above dialog box. Make sure the “Move all attributes into new composition” button is selected. Name this comp “Marble” and click OK.

You should now have a single comp called “Marble” inside the “Orb” comp. If you want to go back and edit the Marble settings, simply Option+Click (Alt+Click) the Marble comp in the timeline panel, or double-click it in the Project Panel, and it will open it up.

This was probably unnecessary for this project, but if you had a more complex object, say a map layer, and then a cloud layer on top, this would come in handy. Remember to keep things organized.

Alright, here’s where things start getting really fun.

If it isn’t already, select the Marble layer (comp) in the Orb comp. Then, add the filter CC Sphere (Effect > Perspective > CC Sphere)

As you can see, this takes the marble texture and wraps it around an imaginary sphere, to create the orb effect.

Those of you with an overabundant attention to detail may ask, “But what about the edges? It’s not a repeating pattern, so there should be a seam somewhere.” Well, you’re right. And on the “back” of this sphere, you will find it. Additionally, you’ll see a stretching effect towards the top and bottom.

But we can still get some spin out of this. To do that, we gotta do a bit of keyframing. Begin by going to your Effect Controls panel. You can find it by pressing F3.

These are the settings for your effects, in this case, CC Sphere. We’ll get to the Lighting and Shading sections in part two, but for now, play around with the X, Y, and Z rotation settings. You may find the distortions we were talking about earlier. When you’re done, put all three rotation settings back to 0.

Make sure that your playhead is on the first frame (called home) of your composition. Then click the stopwatch icon next to the Rotation Y setting. Then set the degrees rotation to +95.

Note: There are two numbers for rotation keyframes. Number of rotations, and degrees of rotation, in that order. The first will rotate the object a full 360 degree turns the specified number of times. This doesn’t tend to matter in still images, but when animating, can make a huge difference. An object rotating 0 rotations and 90 degrees is a huge difference from rotating 3 rotations and 90 degrees. Be sure you put the correct number in the correct setting.

Clicking the stopwatch sets your first keyframe. From then on, any changes you make down the timeline will set keyframes for that setting automatically. (To see all keyframes for a layer, select the layer and press U.)

Move your playhead to the end of your timeline (timecode in the top left corner of your timeline panel should read “0;00;09;29″), and set your Y rotation setting to -100 degrees. (That is negative one hundred.)

You can RAM preview your animation by pressing the zero key (0) on your number pad. Specifically the number pad zero, not the regular one.

So, this is already looking pretty good. And if you were in a tight spot and needed a rotating orb in a hurry (as we all do at some point in the day), and quality wasn’t a huge issue, this would do fine.

There’s still more we can do, though. However, I’m gonna save that for Part II of this tutorial, as this is getting quite long, and I’d like to post it already.

Yes, I am impatient. What can I say?

Hang on to a copy of that project file, though, and play around with it some. See you in a little while with part II. And if I don’t see you before then, wish us luck at the NFC!

The National Film Challenge begins this weekend. The Crew of Funk will be spending the weekend writing, shooting, editing, and blowing our brains out. Donations of energy drinks, fruit smoothies, and cookies are most welcome.

Before then, though, I will hopefully have finished my first After Effects tutorial. Here’s what we’ll be building:

A rotating glass orb. An element for a motion graphic. Not so secretly, an element I’ll be using in a project I’m working on. Though I haven’t decided if I’m going to use this, or the same thing built in Blender, instead. If I use the Blender version, though, I’ll make a tutorial for that, too.

Also, check out Jamendo.com. Jamendo is a site that hosts music licensed under Creative Commons. Which means, among other things, you are free to download it. Yes. For real.

I’ve been looking through their library in preparation for the NFC. Some of the music is also freely licensed to be used in other art forms. Including crazy weekend video productions. So yay.

This has been an interesting couple of weeks. I just started a new job last week. I’m now the video editor for a private investigation firm. Don’t worry, it sounds a lot more exciting than it really is. But, it’s steady work. Which means, among other things, I can focus on doing projects I actually want to do, and not have to spend all my time trying to get projects for money.

Currently, I’m working on a video for TIH Homes. We’ll be showing it tomorrow night at the youth group. Premieres are always fun. Here’s hoping I’m awake for it.

But perhaps the most exciting news of all, we’ve finally amassed a crew for the National Film Challenge. On October 24th, the Crew of Funk will be assembling to write, shoot, edit, and output a short film in a single weekend (October 24th-27th). This is looking to be a very fun weekend.

I still want to keep up with media stuffs. Time’s a little bit short right now. But there’s a video project in the works right now. When it’s finished, there should be plenty of stuff to share. Both in the area of materials and information. I’m really excited about this project.

But for now, I really gotta edit.

I’ve finally collected all the necessary software to put the finishing touches on my custom-built DVD Server. The hardware is still up in the air, but fortunately, I have a friend with the necessary hardware who has been acting as my guinea pig for the perfect, completed system.

But of course, this begs the question, what is a DVD server?

A DVD Server, simply put, is a single machine that holds one’s entire movie collection stored in a digital format, and can play them all.

The objective for this particular machine was lofty. I wanted it to store every movie as a disc image file. This simply means that I would have one file that represented the entire disc and, when played would have all menus, audio tracks, and special features still intact. It would also have a library system that would allow one to browse through the movies. And, most of all, it would be built on all open source software.

I had two of these things. But today I found the last piece of the puzzle. The library software.

It’s a program called GCStar. It allows to create entries for all of your movies. Moreover, it queries the Internet Movie Database to get all extra information, including director, running time, ratings and, most of all, cover art.

The ripping program is called k9copy. It took a bit of doing to get it set up properly. This isn’t a guide (yet), so I won’t go through all the details, but suffice to say it’s required you find quite a few various codecs in order to rip commercial DVDs.

And finally, VLC Media Player for playing back the movies. This program is extremely flexible and will play just about every format known to man. And several known to monkeys. Including .iso files, which is the format that the DVDs rip into.

Additionally, the .iso files are a standard disc file format. Meaning it’s very simple to burn an .iso to a disc. Just about every operating system comes with a program for burning an .iso to a disc standard.

GCStar allows you to accompany a video file to your movie library entries, and choose a default program to play it. Meaning that, once your library is imported, GCStar is the only program you need to start manually.

The entire machine is built on open source software. Which means that all of the software used here is free to download and modify. The only cost is the hardware, which admittedly can get expensive for large movie collections. My friend (who has the hardware) has a movie collection in the hundreds. He bought a Terabyte hard drive. For starters.

I’d love to do a guide, sometime, on how to set up this DVD server set up. But for now, I’m quite pleased that the software library is finally complete. Now all I need to do is get an HDTV so that I can finally hook it up to something besides this dinky little monitor.

Oh, and did I mention that it’s running Ubuntu, equipped with the Compiz Fusion window environment? Which means, yes…my desktop is a cube.