StrongMocha

Andrew Kramer who is the key person behind the famous After Effects Video Tutorial site videocopilot.net released in the last few days two new After Effects Video tutorials. In 3D Offset you can learn how you can animate layers with intelligent shifting. In the second new After Effects Video Tutorial Speed Particles you learn how to create a dynamic particle system that emits based on the speed of a layer. Trapcode’s Particular is used in the Speed Particles tutorial. As all other plugins Trapcode offers we strongly recommend to look into Particular and the other Trapcode plugins, they make your live so much easier and allow you to generate effects you have been looking for.

Videocopilot.net offers even more After Effects Video Tutorials most of them are free to watch, if you do benefit from the great free after effects tutorials please don’t forget to check out the great products and DVDs videocopilot.net offers.

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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

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:

Coverage Controls

With controls for horizontal and vertical coverage of the sphere, you can determine how much of the virtual sphere to map—especially useful for using non-panoramic images or video.

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Controlled Zoom

Mapping in Horizon depends on the Field of View in After Effects, so you can create a zoom effect by animating the field of view of the After Effects camera.

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.

Trapcode did release three new short clips showing work two of their clients did produce.

The new clips are made by Barbecue Mediendesign GmbH and Crew Creative Advertising

Barbecue Mediendesign GmbH did create two great clips “Lexus” and “Lexus LFA” (car). Crew Creative Advertising created the trailer Life Before Her Eyes Trailer

Life Before Her Eyes Trailer (quote from trapcode)
Trapcode plugins have always been a staple product in Crew Creative’s motion graphics pipeline, so we were excited to get our hands on Form. With a mixture of Particular, Starglow, Form and 3d Stroke (driving the Form map layer), Lead Motion Graphics Designer, Adam Franklin, achieved the visual look and feel desired for this trailer.

All three clips show the powerful results you can achieve with the fine plugins from trapcode.

Trapcode Form has been released. It is a grid-based 3D particle system with a twist. It can be used to create fluid, organic patterns, complex geometric structures and swirling stringy animations etc and it can be used to visualize audio. Form works in AE 7 and later.

Trapcode Forms features:

• Uses AE’s comp camera
• Audio visualizer features
• Controls to easily make seamless loops
• Supports Depth of Field
• Fast rendering
• Works in 16bit and 8bit per channel color depths
• Handles non-square pixel aspect ratio correctly
• Built-in motion blur
• Available for Mac OSX (PPC+Intel) and Windows

You can read the online help and learn more about the presets that come with Trapcode Form.

More info, examples and video tutorials are available to you in the online help.

The price is USD 199 and owners of Trapcode Particular can get a USD 50 discount when purchasing Trapcode Form before Dec 15th, use this link.