StrongMocha

Creative Cow together with Aharon Rabinowitz, Pete O’Connell and Eran Stern has released three new After Effects Video Tutorials.

1. Advanced Rotoscoping Techniques for Adobe After Effects by Pete O’Connell
2. After Effects: The Next Level, vol, 2: CS 3 Tips and Techniques by Aharon Rabinowitz
3. Motion Design with Adobe After Effects by Eran Stern

Film compositor Pete O’Connell shows you the secrets of advanced rotoscoping that will save you hours, even days, on your toughest jobs. Eran Stern has quickly become one of the Cow’s most popular authors; here he presents tutorials for real-world motion graphics that you can start using right away. And Aharon Rabinowitz, one of the world’s true AE masters, leads you through AE CS3

Trapcode Horizon is a camera-aware color gradient and image mapping tool. It is a fairly straightforward utility plug-in. It is meant to be used on the bottom layer in a 3D comp. It generates a background that corresponds to the camera’s viewing direction.

To get yourself started with the Trapcode Horizon Tutorial

Trapcode Horizon can be used for example when a 3D camera move leaves the viewer confused; Trapcode Horizon can help generating a background that corresponds to the camera move and thus help the viewer understand what is actually going on. Or it can be used just for fun!

Trapcode Horizon is a great companion to the other 3D plugs from Trapcode, such as Particular and Form etc.

Supported Hosts: Adobe After Effects 7.0 and higher (Mac OSX/Windows)

Earlier news: Trapcode Horizon - After Effects plugin (updated)

Trapcode Horizon costs currently 99 USD: Buy Trapcode

Creative director Steve Holmes (Energi Design) shows you in this video tutorial how using PhotoShop CS3 vanishing points,Vanishing Point exchange and still images you could compose a clip or short movie. The clip is from NAB 2008 and I saw it before, but talking to someone I figured that this little gem and more which are available either in Adobe TV or on the Adobe NAB 2008 web site is not known to all.

A new imagineer systems mocha / mocha-AE video tutorial covers advanced techniques:

• Adjust track module
• Obscured track objects
• Offscreen tracking
• Import workflow to After Effects

imagineer systems mocha is a stand alone 2D tracking tool packed with features that make the effects compositors life easier.

imagineer system mocha-AE is custom designed and priced for the After Effects community

Akama studio made this great Lacoste Ad “Tennis in 2083” and how the gesture will evolve. Of course all in Lacoste. The Ad was produced for the www.lacoste-future.com web site. Everything wa done by Akama studio with 3DS MAX, Vray, Adobe After Effects.

Jerzy Drozda Jr (aka Maltaannon)  a multimedia, motion graphics and vfx artist shows you in his latest after effects video tutorial how to create a 3D earth in After Effects CS3. You can find some earth textures and how it should look at NASA’s Visible Earth

Give your compositions what they’ve been missing with this unique mapping tool. The Trapcode Horizon plug-in is a camera-aware image mapping tool that ties your After Effects camera to a 3D world.

By applying images or gradients to the inside of a giant sphere, Horizon creates an infinite background. No matter where your camera is directed, the simple controls make photorealistic backgrounds or sky gradients a snap.

Features of Trapcode Horizon:

Trapcode Horizon runs only in Adobe After Effects CS3, 7.

You can buy Horizon here

Update: Some early examples from the beta version: Example 1, Example 2, Example 3.