Understanding Expression in After Effects

Hello everyone. Here's another After Effects post on "Understanding Expressions". Here, I'm going to be explaining a few things about expressions and using them.

Long Time Exposure

Hey!
So a while back I did a post on taking streaking lights and recently I got an interesting idea... but first, let me explain how I got it!

When we was doing the fight parody video, which worked quite well but we had issues with planning, we were using a tripod and an unevenly lit room. So I was feeling cool and set the camera to "M" (manual), and I was messing around with the aperture.
I set the f number to something like f-29 (I think) and with the standard shutter of 1/15, the image came out BLACK!
So, I immediately learnt that I didn't know as much about aperture as I thought (I always figured it was a depth-of-field thing and it didn't affect light that much), so you can imagine the shock I got.

So, I got to thinking:
For a long exposure shot, could I set the ISO to 100, set the aperture, or rather the f-number, to as high a value as possible, and then use BULB to shoot some excessively long exposures?

Well, let's say it did come to be true! It worked out great, I'll have the photos up soon, but it was an interesting realization. I was, however, going through Cambridge in Colour and I found this interesting article about using large f-numbers! Check it out here:

5 of 53 - King City Colorize

Here's my 5th submission for 53!

http://davdalx.deviantart.com/#/d39fgtx
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davdalx/5440528525/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/53/

4 of 53 - Invader

Here's my 4th submission for 53.
Inspired by the classic Space Invaders game.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/davdalx/5374923179/
http://davdalx.deviantart.com/#/d37ouif

http://www.flickr.com/groups/53/

3 of 53

Here's my 3rd submission for 53
http://davdalx.deviantart.com/#/d376171
http://www.flickr.com/photos/davdalx/5354626433/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/53/

{test_reel} Teleport

Hello everyone!
So I have a new video here, but before we watch, I'd like to say that we've gotten some great applications from great people, and we're still sifting through people's work so we'll have the news out soon.
In the mean time, I'm still working with silent footage :-S

Sad stuff!

Anyway, check it out here:



I'd also like to introduce you all to INTERFERE! An upcoming preset for my Presets Pack. It was used to create the offset and RGB-split effect for the intro logos.

INTERFERE will be available soon, if you'd like to beta test (or even use in its current state), drop a comment below! Here's another example:



Also, I learnt quite a bit while creating this video:

• Hold keyframes can create a great twitchy effect.
• CHOP DOWN LAYERS! I had this problem when I came back to it a day later and realizing I needed to change something, as well as when I revisited one of my first test videos, all the layers spanned from the beginning to the end. Use alt+[ and alt+] to chop down layers to the current time, or use [ and ] to reposition their start points. Also, nifty shortcut, I and O will take you to the IN and OUT points of the selected layer respectively.

{The worst part is, each layer in the project above is only visible for a few seconds/frames.
[the chopped ones are actually footage]}

CLICK TO ENLARGE: {over 50 layers!! Managing wasn't so difficult, but imagine if they all spanned full time as above!}

• TIP OF THE DAY saves lives! That pop-up everytime you open AE, read that ish. That's how I learnt the above point.
• CAMERA TURN! It screwed me over once again, it did the same for the Deathmatch video. if you turn a camera, the edges tend to be distorted and so you need to do some distortion to fix it. I'll explain this in an upcoming tut video!

Please drop any questions/sugggestion in the comment section below, or on the video on Youtube!

Thanks for stopping by!

davdalx

Presets pack

Hello everyone!
I've been working on my presets. If you remember a while back i released scan, which was a linear scanner, coming soon is radial scan, interfere and 3dfy! And they'll be free :-)
Stay tuned for more info

53 - Progress

What's up everyone!!

So, project 53 has been going very well. Since it came first, the Flickr group so far has the most submissions from the 13 members that have joined!
Thanks everyone for joining in the fun!



As you remember, I themed February around valentines. To make things interesting :-D

If you haven't joined yet, it's never too late. You can continue from where we are or submit all the stuff your missing at once and carry on. We are on deviantArt as #Project-53 and on Flickr.

If you'd like 53 on any other site, please drop a comment below and I'll get on creating it there!! :-D

Thanks again!
davdalx