The votes have been tallied and the winner of the AE Tuts+ Logo Reveal Competition, sponsored by Toolfarm, is Morten Kühl Christensen and two-penguins.com. It's a gorgeous piece. Morten is the winner of these wonderful prizes!
Software: 1 x Trapcode Suite 2009 (worth $899)
Training: 1 x Class On Demand Complete Training for Trapcode Particular (worth $95)
1 x Toolfarm Trapcode 3S Training (New Release) worth $39)
1 x Trapcode Form Training with Harry J. Frank (worth $24)
Plus membership: 1 x 1 year Plus membership (worth $117)
A perfect compliment to the Red Giant Motion Graphics Bundle that is 50% Off today, and for the Trapcode Suite and Reality Bundle from earlier in the week, we bring you Rerendered templates for Adobe After Effects. These are gorgeous and inexpensive and can of course, be reverse engineered. Click the movie you like to see the template
Don't miss out! Well... if you do... all is not lost. At 12am PST, the Trapcode Reality Bundle will go on sale at half price. That bundle includes Lux, Form, Horizon and Particular. All One Day Sales information is here.
When you order Trapcode Suite 2008, you will receive a serial number that will work with multiple hosts, including Adobe After Effects, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Premiere Pro and Avid**.
In addition to the Red Giant and Trapcode Bundles, we're offering Complete training for Trapcode Particular from Class on Demand. (DVD | Download).
Although not included in the sale, here are some great items to extend the Trapcode Suite. Trapcode Form Training with Harry J. Frank is a MUST HAVE, as well as TONS of Trapcode Presets from LME that are highly affordable and completely reverse engineerable (I coined a new word!)
Get the fantastic Making It Look Great training series as downloads! The popular and proven Making It Look Great video workshop series has been designed to answer that question. Throughout these in-depth DVD workshops, professional motion graphics designers demonstrate techniques essential to their daily work and give the design decisions and rationale that support them.
The featured projects are demonstrated step-by-step from start to finish, giving priceless insight into what it takes to design and produce professional broadcast motion graphics.
Making It Look Great 1 with John Dickinson has been available as a download at Toolfarm for a while. Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks ProAnimator.
Making it Look Great 2 with Alan Shisko - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects and Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator Pro.
Making It Look Great 3 with Harry J. Frank - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks 3D Invigorator Pro, Trapcode Particular and Trapcode Form.
Making It Look Great 4 with John Dickinson - Design and Production Techniques for Adobe After Effects, Zaxwerks ProAnimator and Zaxwerks 3D Flag
So why would you want a download, instead of a DVD? Here are a few reasons:
No wait for shipping
No shipping costs, which is especially great to our international customers who can get hit with large shipping costs
LME has been gracious enough to offer free templates and a tutorial for Trapcode Form! The files will work in After Effects 7+. There are two presets included. Note: if you already downloaded them, one had some errors. There are now three presets and two are new. See the video sample below.
These samples are free downloads from LME, which are similar to the content you'd get with LME Trapcode Form Presets and Comps but is not included with the package. LME Trapcode Form Presets and Comps includes 112 Trapcode Form Projects, Comps and 99 Presets!
Trapcode Form creates a special kind of eye candy that no other plug-in can produce and LME has put in hundreds of hours of experimentation to offer you an unprecedented spectrum of possibilities.
LME Templates for Trapcode Form is a collection of Form configurations that can be used for a multitude of broadcast design projects and presentations: high tech, medical, scientific, extreme energy and any design that needs brilliant effects to give it that added punch.
The collection comes with 99 presets and several custom objects that can be used as particles. View the Form Preset Gallery (Pops)
Pratt Manhattan 144 West 14th Street (b/w 6th and 7th Ave), Room 213
Pizza and soda/water served. Thanks to Adobe and Pratt, the meeting is FREE.
The Lineup Includes: Design Junkie and Motion Graphics artist Sean Cusson of Qmedia will be flying down from Canada to share his workflow, and show some of the cool tips and techniques he's developed and learned while animating up north. Get ready to say "Man, that was awesome, eh?"
Get ready to do battle with aliens, vikings, Santa Clause and sketchy fruit! Dan Opsal, Editor for CableVision's Gameplay HD, will debut his animated short "Billy Bombo," a stylized work that will make you sorry you threw away your old Nintendo Entertainment System.
Toolfarm is giving away a few prizes at the meeting.
Trapcode Form Training - Trapcode Form 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. Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, beta tested Trapcode Form and shows you how to get comfortable with Form very quickly. You'll be spinning out gorgeous textures and eye candy in no time.
Professional Video Templates Weekly Weather Report This high-quality template for Adobe After Effects shows a weather report with seasonal opens. A classy addition to a television station or website. It is sized SD NTSC and Pal.
AE Expressions Tutorials Bundle 1 & 2 Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, goes over the basics of Expressions – Expressions for the average designer. The tutorials are in 6 parts - 20 minutes each: Introduction to Expressions, Introduction to Arrays and Variables, 3D Text.
Here I am at Denver International waiting for my connection and there's free wifi! I thought this might be a good opportunity to tell you about my experience at NAB 2008. I have about 10 minutes until I board, and I'll have to put up the photos later. Enjoy.
Sunday, April 13 - Arriving in Las Vegas
Alicia VanHeulen (fellow Toolfarmer) and I got into Vegas around 6pm and caught a taxi in the organized chaos outside the airport. I hate cabs. Hate em. I always get a weird cab driver who wants to come to my house or has some strange hobby he wants to tell me all about. This time, we got to spend 25 minutes hearing about how to prepare Lake Superior Whitefish.
We checked in at the Sahara, which was chosen souly on the fact that you don't have to walk through a casino to get to the monorail. We had plans to go to the FMC party on Sunday evening with John Kerr from Red Giant. It was $85 to get into the rooftop party at Pure at Caesar's Palace, however, RG was a sponsor, so we told them we were guests of John Kerr and they let us in with no problem. We had to walk through about a mile of corridors and stairways to get up to the roof where they had a small buffet of carved beef, shrimp on skewers and spring rolls, which were completely gone. We did have some refreshingly tasty drinks of vodka, cranberry, sprite, and grapefruit juice. There was a woman whose body was being painted on the patio, some people carrying around gobs of hula hoops, as well a big giveaway, that we didn't enter, unfortunately. We met some really cool people from Hawaii (Hi Shanti). We did finally meet up with John Kerr, Sean Safreed and Jeremy Hill from Red Giant, as well as our good friend Seth Hancock from ICVA and his lovely wife Lisa.
After the party, we headed to Mesa, Bobby Flay's restaurant, with the Red Giant guys and had a nice dinner. By the time we left, it was 3:00am our time, so we were tired, to say the least.
Monday, April 14 - Day one of the convention
7:45am - We took the monorail to the convention center. This was our first day on the convention center floor, and Alicia's first NAB ever. I took her to the doorway and pointed her to the Digieffects booth where she was starting her day, but I couldn't get in to the show floor due to the fact that I never received my badge! I had a printout receipt that I had registered in December. It took a while at registration but somehow they lost my registration. After 45 minutes, I was badged.
I headed over to Red Giant, where I had a presentation on Magic Bullet Looks at 10am. Looks is very easy to demo and lots of fun to use, and I have to say, the presentation went pretty well. I've just learned to get through the spiel within 10 minutes because people were standing and I wasn't giving a tutorial, but an overview. The Looks Theatre sold it for a lot of people. It was really great seeing everyone at the RG booth and meeting the new RG employees. Thanks for the nuts and popcorn, Beth! Delicious.
At 1:00pm each day I demoed Boris Continuum Complete and Boris Final Effects Complete at the Boris FX booth. This booth was on the middle aisle of the show floor in a highly trafficked area. Boris FX had a theatre set up with about 25 seats. It was the Motion Key plug-in for BCC that really seemed to get a lot of attention. I'll be putting together a tutorial for Motion Key in the next few weeks, because it really is an amazingly cool plug-in. It garnered lots of ooh's and aah's as a silver car driving across a busy street scene is removed from the shot with ease. I showed off the BCC UpRez plug-in, which converts SD to HD and uses a nifty feature called Magic Sharpen. I demoed the BCC Pan & Zoom which makes the Ken Burns style effects. I showed a few other BCC plug-ins and Final Effects Complete (FEC). Did you know all FEC plug-ins contain motion trackers and a feature called Pixel Chooser, which is a built-in masking tool? If you would've known that during the presentation, you could have won a Boris hat or training Class on Demand Boris Continuum Complete Training DVD.
Digieffects and Red Giant's booths were directly behind each other in the Plug-in Pavillion, which made things very nice for us. Digieffects was demoing the new Damage, as well as the Simulate and Natural Forces plug-ins for After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Combusion and Boris Red, which will be out in 4-6 weeks. We hadn't seen the new plug-ins at all yet, so it was a big difficult to answer questions. We ended up setting up little comps with examples, but then found the best way to demo was by using the little blue button. What is this little blue button? It's the randomizer. Shin Kurokawa, the engineer at Digieffects explained that he put the button in for testing purposes so he could see the range of values for each parameter without having to change all of the sliders each time, and soon realized that it's brilliant for getting ideas and seeing what variety of looks that the plug-in can produce. Tim Kolb, David Vieria and Robert Sharp were also at the booth with us all week. Robert... smart move on the couch rental. You can't go wrong with a big comfy couch, especially after you've been on the show floor all day.
Monday night was the IMUG Media Motion Ball 2008 at the Sahara Hotel, which I've attended the last 4 years. The crowd is generally IMUG and AE-List people. Brian Maffitt of Total Training was the speaker and once again and he was hilarious! Brian is a collector of crazy movie memorabilia and marketing gimmicks from William Castle fims. The presentation was about brilliant marketing campaigns for these movies. Macabre with the tagline 'So Terrifying We Insure You For $1000 against Death By Fright! (Not valid for persons with heart or nervous conditions)'. He showed us an original Tingler (filmed in "Percepto"). The best film of all, The House on Haunted Hill, filmed in "Emergo", in which an inflatable skeleton would pop out over the scene. Well, Brian had one of these inflatable skeletons with him at the dinner! We laughed, we cried, it was better than The Tingler.
Dinner at the Media Motion Ball was delicious as always. It was antipasto, salad and several Italian dishes. The highlight was definitely the dessert. Steve Kahn had arranged a surprise for everyone and that was Bananas (and strawberries) Foster over ice cream. Fabulous. I think overall I gained 5 pounds in Las Vegas, but I probably walked it off.
Alicia and I dined with Mark Spencer, author of Apple Pro Training Series: Motion 3, which I highly recommend. Also at the table was Niclas Bahn of Noise Industries on crutches, Niclas' girlfriend, Peter Wiggins and a few others from Noise Industries. Straight across from me was the guy who looks like Andy Samberg from SNL (who incedently ended up winning a Boris Training DVD during my presentation).
It was great to see everyone again at the MMB - it's kind of like a reunion every year. I get to meet up with Keith and Alan, the Plugged-in Podcast guys, Jim Kanter, who is one of our forum experts, a lot of the plug-in developers and those wild and crazy guys from Anchorage. They had gobs of giveaways, including several donated by Toolfarm. I didn't win anything, but I got to go on stage and draw a few names. The first name I drew was Lisa Hancock, who took home Maxon Cinema 4D. Toolfarm did give away lots of prizes, including several bundles of Professional Video Templates, Harry Frank's Expressions Training and his Trapcode Form Training, and two copies of Digieffects Damage.
We cabbed over to the party with Harry Frank and left the MMB early to go to Peder Norrby's party (Peder Norrby is the man behind Trapcode). Sadly, Ko Maruyama told us that not long after we left the MMB, Harry Frank's name was drawn for the big prize of the night, but since he left, he couldn't claim it. Bummer.
Peder threw yet another swanky party! The suite was very modern and silver and on one of the top floors of the hotel. From the main room you could see in the bathroom through a window and there was even a stripper pole in the shower! Crazy stuff. I have a feeling Paris Hilton had stayed in that very room last weekend. There were lots of people from the plug-in industry in attendance and a DJ spinning some great house music. Peder has a new product coming out called Trapcode Horizon, which helps AE users work in 3D space. He presented it at the Red Giant booth, but unfortunately, I missed his presentations. He wasn't showing anything at the party, just socializing. Horizon will be out near the end of summer, so stay tuned.
Tuesday, April 15
The second day on the show floor was busier than the first. I did another presentation for both Red Giant and Boris FX and each went smoother the second time around. Alicia and I also worked at the Digieffects booth showing the new plug-ins. I caught a couple of great presentations at the Adobe Booth - one about After Effects, presented by Steve Holmes, and one about working with video in Photoshop, presented by Richard Harrington. I use these programs day in and day out and they both managed to show me new things about the software. I took notes during both presentations and both really got the wheels in my head spinning.
I walked around and got a nice demo of GridIron Flow from Jim Geduldick. The GridIron booth was freakin' huge. Andrew Kramer, Aharon Rabinowitz and Mark Coleran were also hanging around the booth, demoing the GridIron goods. They were also giving away cool GridIron yo-yo's. You know the first yo-yo's were used as weapons? I learned that one from a tv commercial.
Pete from RE:Vision Effects gave us a nice demo on DE:Noise and Shade/Shape, and we also spent a some time with Jim Tierney of Digital Anarchy, as he walked us through ToonIt and some of their other offerings.
I also sat in on an awesome presentation by Harry Frank at the Red Giant booth. He showed off some cool projects that he did using Trapcode Form and Trapcode Particular. He broke down his technique into little bit-sized pieces. It was really amazing work. Harry is just so darn talented.
Colin and Jason Sharp from Toolfarm flew in Tuesday and the Toolfarm crew went to a fabulous dinner at B&B, Mario Batali's place. I tried the most amazing octopus appetizer, and had sweet potato ravioli with sage butter, as well as squab with beet risotto. Did I mentioned I think I gained weight? :-) Afterward we met up with some friends from Boris FX/Channel Wolves and walked a bit around the Venetian.
Wednesday, April 16
Another day on the show floor and boy, are my dogs tired! More presentations for Red Giant, Digieffects and Boris FX. By this time, I'm pretty good with the presentations. Also, this is Alicia's birthday. Happy Birthday! What did Alicia do on her birthday? Presented Magic Bullet Frames at Red Giant's booth. Now how many people get to do that on their birthday!? Haha. I also met Bert Kish at the RG booth. Bert was the winner of the MyToolfarm Red Giant NAB contest. He presented his winning video and also showed what went into the project.
On Wednesday night I ended up going out with Boris and his crew. We ate at an Italian place in the Venetian. I ate some really interesting pear ravioli with a bechemel sauce and some asparagus. Yummo. I just love the guys from Boris. They are all such nice guys. The food was fantastic as well.
Thursday, April 17
It's the last day of the show, so we got up nice and early and met Kevin Bourke who handles PR for the likes of Automatic Duck and Imagineer Systems for breakfast at the EGO Cafe, right outside the convention center. He told me about Imagineer mogul so as soon as I got into the show I went in to check it out. It was a private screening room and the presentation was given by CE and Alan Jaenicke of Imagineer. I am not entirely sure what information they'd like to be shared about this product, but I can tell you it's a subscription based product that includes software and hardware and is something that is in dire need. This product is going to be massive. Huge.
I also stopped by to see the GenArts booth and talked with Anish and Laurie. Lastly, we sat in on a private demo of Nuke at The Foundry's booth. It's awesome. I want it. We did get some free training DVDs on Nuke and we can download the demo. Too bad I am not doing any work that requires such a splendid piece of software. I didn't have much time to see anything else because we had to get to the airport.
What I learned at NAB 2008
I've learned a few tricks over the past few years at NAB that I think are worth sharing.
Avoid cabs if at all possible, unless you're looking for Lake Superior whitefish recipes and restaurant recommendations for Beverly Hills. Trust me. So, you ask, if you're avoiding cabs, how do you get around? There is a shuttle that goes between the convention center and the aiport that is free. That will save you $25 right there.
There is also a monorail. We bought monorail passes before the show and had them mailed to us. It was cheaper to buy 3 single day passes than it was to buy a three day pass. Weird. Now here's a great from Alicia. If you have single day passes, they are good for 24 hours. To maximize your usage, get to the station a few minutes earlier each day. If you use your card for the first time at 8:26am on Monday, you can use it at 8:23am the next day. You can start your next single day pass on the way back.
When registering for your NAB pass, it doesn't hurt to register twice! NAB will hate me for saying so, but I would have saved myself 45 minutes at registration on Monday morning if I would have registered again when I didn't receive my badge by mail.
Wear comfortable shoes and bring bandaids. Sunglasses are also mandatory, as well as a little bottle of vitamin E to rub on chapped hands and lips. The desert is incredibly dry and flying doesn't help matters.
Keep a pen with you to make notes on the back of people's business cards. This will help you keep them straight when you get back.
Free wifi is a bit hard to come by in Las Vegas. If they can make money off of something in Vegas, they will. One place you can get free wifi, or even check your email at one of their computers, is the Sprint Center at the monorail station at the convention center. Las Vegas' McCarran Airport (and Denver Airport which we flew through) also has free wifi. I love free wifi, but I'm Dutch, so I like anything free. :-)
Time to recover. A massage sounds really good right now.
The MyToolfarm Red Giant NAB Contest finished last week. We had some terrific entries and we want to thank everyone who participated. The entries needed to use Trapcode Form or Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks in their video. Here are the winners:
Grand Prize
B The Product - Submitted by Bert Kish
First runner up
Timex tv spot - Submitted by Nervo.tv (Nando Costa)
Second Runner Up
Tori Amos Greenscreen - Submitted by Mark Jeschke
We're a little late at announcing the winners to the public, but the winners were contacted on March 29.
use YouSendIt and send your files to john@redgiantsoftware.com. Please zip your movie file with a text file which includes your name and contact information, a description of your video and the plug-ins used.
Contest rules and information is right here. You must use either Trapcode Form or Magic Bullet Looks. The rest is up to you! All entries are due March 24. Don't miss out! You could win a trip to NAB in Las Vegas this April and show your work at the Red Giant booth on the show floor.
I give Trapcode Form Training with Harry Frank a whopping 5/5 stars for well explained training and ROI. You can pick up the training at ToolFarm.com. I highly recommend Trapcode Form Training with Harry Frank for anyone wanting to get going with Form fast.
Congratulations on the great review, Harry. Trapcode has also endorsed the training. It is really good.
San Francisco, CA - Red Giant Software is sponsoring a contest to let users submit their best work using Red Giant Software's Magic Bullet Looks or Trapcode Form tools and win a chance to show their work at NAB 2008.
Users will upload their videos to the My Toolfarm web site where other users can vote on the submission from now until March 24th. The winner will get to fly to NAB and present their work at the Red Giant Software booth at NAB 2008. Winners will be determined by user scores on the My Toolfarm web site and by a panel of Red Giant Software judges.
To enter and get detailed eligibility information go to: MyToolfarm
Prizes and Eligibility
Winner:
One round trip airline ticket to NAB 2008 held in Las Vegas, NV, April 14-17, 2008. The prize includes airfare and two days and one night in a hotel on The Strip.
2 hour showroom floor presentation at Red Giant's booth to promote your work;
Feature spot on Red Giant's Community site
One free Red Giant product OR free upgrade.
1st Runner Up:
Feature spot on Red Giant's 'Our Community' site
One free Red Giant product OR free upgrade.
2nd Runner Up:
Feature spot on Red Giant's 'Our Community' site
One free Red Giant product OR free upgrade.
Winners will be announced March 29, 2008
The grand prize will include expenses not to exceed a total of $1,300 US. The breakdown is as follows: Airfare capped at $700, hotel capped at $500, food/transportation capped at $100. The contest is open to Red Giant Software users of Magic Bullet Looks and Trapcode Form in North America. Void where prohibited.
About Red Giant Software Red Giant Software LLC (www.redgiantsoftware.com) is a San Francisco-based company that develops professional tools for digital video production. Products are available as plug-ins for popular video editing and effects applications including After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid. All tools are based on production-proven technology developed by visual effects veterans.
Well, the votes are tallied and Trapcode Form is the big winner of the Best New After Effect Plug-in of 2007. Only brand new plug-ins that were released in 2007 qualified, not new versions of older plug-ins. Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks and Zaxwerks Reflector ran a close race.
Harry has created a promo for his Trapcode Form training so you can watch it to see if it is something you want to buy. If you haven't played with Trapcode Form, let me tell you, it's so incredibly cool. It has dozens of settings and hundreds, if not millions, of variations you can create. All of these settings can be a bit daunting, so Harry has created a four part training series that will get you comfy with Trapcode Form.
Interested in Form but not sure where to start? Try this!
Trapcode Form 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. Using other layers as maps for various properties provides endless possibilities to create unique designs. Furthermore, Form can be used as an audio-visualizer, automatically generating stunning visuals for your audio.
Trapcode Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. Harry J. Frank, freelance motion graphics artist, instructor and Adobe Certified Expert, beta tested Trapcode Form and shows you how to get comfortable with Form very quickly. You'll be spinning out gorgeous textures and eye candy in no time. And, it's only $24!
I spoke to Harry just before his AE NY meeting yesterday and he was very excited. Jim Geduldick, one of the organizers of AE NY, tells me the meeting went splendidly and they had 150 people show up! Jim says "It was packed to the brim, standing room only, lots of fun. Harry was running back and forth between the screen and the podium. It got hot with all the people. Mate Steinforth showed some amazing (expletive) work and some Pysop work and showed his Advanced Beauty (Trapcode) Form stuff he did, all in AE. We gave away the most prizes we have ever had too!"
Sounds like a very successful meeting. Harry's new After Effects Expressions Series 2 training launched yesterday so it was great timing.
The demo link for the Trapcode plug-ins has changed. They are no longer hosted at Trapcode.com. If you'd like to try the new Trapcode Suite 2008 which now includes Trapcode Form, you can download it for free here.
Trapcode Suite 2008 includes 3D Stroke, Lux, Particular, Form, Starglow, Shine, Sound Keys and Echospace. Form was added to the bundle but the price did not increase. Gotta love that!
The Red Giant Suite has also been updated to include all of the Trapcode plug-ins and all of the Red Giant plug-ins including the recently released Magic Bullet Looks and the upcoming Magic Bullet Frames.
Exclusively at Toolfarm! This gorgeous collection of After Effects projects uses the new Trapcode Form plug-in.
All projects are generated 100% inside After Effects without any external footage sources. The only times when this happens is when linked audio files are used to drive animation. In these projects you only need to replace the audio and adjust the frequency ranges. Keep in mind that the perception of sound and music is different for everyone and that different types of music contain different frequencies and amplitudes, drastically changing the result of the output. View movies of Form presets.
Harry beta tested Form and he's just LOVING it. He posted some free presets at AE Freemart.com. The link sends you to the category page. I think I need to tweak the layout a bit but click the title for the full post with pictures
Create Organic 3D Shapes Synchronized with Audio in Adobe After Effects
San Francisco, CA, November 15, 2007 - Red Giant Software is pleased to announce the availability of Trapcode Form, an organic 3D shape generator that allows users to create a wide variety of wild animations, from text logos that blow away like sand to surfaces that move like rolling fire or billowing smoke. All the unique 3D designs in Form can also be driven by audio to create visions that move with the beat. Trapcode Form comes with 61 customizable presets, as well as the ability to tweak them to get just the right look. Full integration with After Effects' 3D environment allows users to fly cameras through and around the animated forms.
Create mesmerizing animations like the ones in Apple's iTunes visualizer, all within After Effects
With direct integration of After Effects 3D camera, Form offers true 3D surfaces and volumes
More than 60 presets to quickly create audio reactors, terrain flyovers, and more.
Audio Reactors Form offers built-in audio reactors where the bass beat, a tambourine hit, or a lilting voice track can drive the motion, color, opacity, displacement, and other variables to generate mind-blowing visuals.
Powerful Presets Presets offer an easy starting point for novices and motion graphics professionals alike. The 61 presets are divided into five categories, including animation set to audio, flight presets that generate 3D terrain flyovers, and unique animations perfect for lower third titles.
Customize It Form also offers fantastic flexibility with ability to drive color, displacement, size, and more with images sourced from any layer in After Effects. This lets you generate everything from a logo that blows away like sand to a full 3D model of the Earth.
Pricing and Availability
Trapcode Form is $199 USD and works with After Effects 7.0 / CS3 only on Mac OS X and Windows.
Trapcode Form is one of the plug-ins in the Trapcode Suite 2007 collection, which sells for $711 USD. (Note: Price has been updated.)
Current Trapcode Particular customers qualify for a $50 USD discount on Trapcode Form from now through December 15, 2007. To participate, users need to complete the following online form. After completing the form, users will receive the Coupon Code.
Online Form to Apply for $50 Discount: http://redgiantemail.com/download_form.cfm?ID=72
About Trapcode
Trapcode (http://trapcode.com) is a one-man company founded in 2001 by Peder Norrby. Over the years Trapcode's software tools have become part of the industry standard in motion graphics and visual effects. Trapcode focuses on creating groundbreaking, robust technology that is easy to start using for beginners and has many complex features for advanced users.
Trapcode is a privately held Aktiebolag (AB) based in Sweden. All sales and support are managed by Red Giant Software (http://redgiantsoftware.com).
About Red Giant Software
Red Giant Software LLC (http://www.redgiantsoftware.com) is a San Francisco-based company that develops professional tools for digital video production. Products are available as plug-ins for popular video editing and effects applications including After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Premiere Pro, and Avid. All tools are based on production-proven technology developed by visual effects veterans.
The long awaited Trapcode Form (codenamed Flux) is now available. Trapcode Form 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.
We'll have our Plug-in Finder page dressed to the nines with awesome examples and images later on today, in the meantime, Harry Frank has put together some great stuff for you at AE Freemart. Download a demo and take Trapcode Form for a spin.
I wasn't at the meeting since I'm clear across the country, so I'm living vicariously through those who were lucky enough to attend. First, Dave Basulto has posted some images from last night's MGLA meeting on his site.
Second, Chris Meyer of Cybermotion had some great things to say about the meeting in a post to the AE List. Imagineer Mocha was shown. It's a planar tracker that uses the technology in the more advanced Mokey and Monet. Chris says, " It did some pretty darn amazing things, including continuing tracks successfully when large portions of the tracked object went off screen."
Marco S. from Digital Anarchy showed PlasmaFX and ToonIt! Chris says about ToonIt! " It was also an excellent example of the role frame rate plays in whether we perceive something as real or fantasy; keeping the result at normal video rate didn't look like you would expect it to."
Peder Norrby showed Trapcode Form (codename Flux). Form is the plug-in that people are really keyed up for the release, which will hopefully still happen this summer. It's similar to Particular but does lots of other cool things. Chris says "The couple of examples Peder showed using displacement maps and alpha mattes were particularly impressive".
Sean Safreed showedMagic Bullet 3 at the meeting. Chris says "...the new UI... it makes things soooo much easier for quick, broad strokes to get the look you're after without having to come to terms with a bunch of sliders (however useful they are)."
, which I highly recommend. Also at the table was Niclas Bahn of Noise Industries on crutches, Niclas' girlfriend, Peter Wiggins and a few others from 
Well, the votes are tallied and 
Trapcode Form is phenomenally cool but also extremely complex. 
