Advice on which After Effects Plug-in to buy – Invigorator Pro, Element 3D or Shapeshifter

[Brent Willett]

Hi Anastacia.

It’s great to hear that you are having a good experience delving into new plugins. That’s what I have always loved about working in After Effects. It such a versatile tool, especially with all the 3rd party plugins, scripts, and presets that really open up the creative possibilities.

At first glance, ProAnimator might seem limiting since it’s timeline is apart from the After Effects timeline. But it’s easy to go in and out of the setup window. And after you get used to it, it really does offer more possibilities.

You could think of the setup window kind of like a pre-comp. In After Effects you could have a comp with a bunch of things animating that you have nested inside of another comp. To adjust the animations of the items in the pre-comp, you have to go into that comp to move the keyframes around. The workflow for ProAnimator is very much like that.

But like I said in a previous post, you can’t go wrong with either ProAnimator or Invigorator. And it’s great that you can try them out to see which one will work the best for you.

Here is a link to my YouTube channel with a bunch of examples of my work: https://www.youtube.com/user/brentcwillett

The “IPTV Sports…” open starts off with a combination of ProAnimator (for the state of Iowa) and Serpentine. And at the end of that open I incorporated some instances of Flag with the ProAnimator elements.

In the “WHO-TV 13 Soundoff Open” I used Serpentine throughout, but at the end I used ProAnimator, Serpentine, Flag, and even Zaxwerks Reflector all together. And in the part where the camera flies through the tube as the logo comes together, I used ProAnimator’s fragmentation capabilities to break that part of the logo up and have the pieces fly together.

The “WHO-TV 13 Breaking News Open” is a good example of using Serpentine with ProAnimator. The shiny “ribbons” were all Serpentine.

There are other examples in there too. Feel free free to poke around. 🙂

I have not done any tutorials. It’s something I’ve though about doing, but I’ve never gotten around to it for various reasons.

Once, a long time ago, I ran into a site that had put together a bunch of materials for Zaxwerks, but unfortunately I don’t remember any more where that was. Other than that, I have never seen anywhere that has Zaxwerks materials either for free or for sale. Luckily their materials are very easy to make. You can find lots of free textures available on the internet, and it’s very easy to create your own materials using any image you want.

Good luck with your continued exploration!
Brent

[Brent Willett]

It looks like the link to my YouTube channel didn’t show up in the post.

To find my channel, go to YouTube, do a search for my name – “Brent Willett” – and look for the logo you see at the top of my posts. All of my videos are motion graphics; mostly show opens.

Thanks,
Brent

[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

Wow, this post has really taken off! It’s nice to see all the discussion on the different products that are available in After Effects. Like Brent said, there are so many creative options to choose from and really makes it a lot of fun being a 3D artist.

It’s great to hear that you’re having fun with the stained glass piece you are working with! If you need help with anything, just let me know. One thing you were talking to Brent about was shattering the glass. This is a feature of ProAnimator and is not available if you are working with Invigorator PRO. ProAnimator will allow you to apply fragmentation to any of the Object Tracks you are working with. The great thing is that once you apply fragmentation, it’s very easy to apply a random spread on the Object Track and have the pieces fly out in different directions.

One other thing I wanted to bring up about ProAnimator is that you are not editing blind while you are in the ProAnimator Set-Up window. We have a feature called the Editor Background. This control is located in the Effect Controls Window when you have the ProAnimator layer selected in After Effects. With the Editor Background, you can select any After Effects layer or Pre-Comp and have that act as the “background” in the ProAnimator Set-Up window. If you are using a Pre-Comp as the Editor Background, you can see all the changes of the Pre-Comp while scrubbing the ProAnimator timeline. This means, you can line up your ProAnimator objects with the After Effects elements without having to go back and forth from After Effects.

In addition, as Brent has brought up, you are able to track/parent any of your ProAnimator objects to After Effects layers. The cool thing about this is that even though the ProAnimator objects are tracking After Effects layers, you can still apply some Actions such as rotations, etc.

One other thing is that everything you set up in ProAnimator is completely customizable. So, if you ever need to make changes to the animation, any of your shapes, any of your materials, you can do so without having to worry about re-creating the entire animation. You brought up that you were not sure how customizable the ProAnimator Poses are, so rest assured, you can make any change at any time. You can even make changes while the animation plays back and the changes update on the fly!

You may have already noticed this, but if not, we have over 200 materials that we provide with ProAnimator. This includes a lot of metals, wood, and other textures that may be helpful for your projects. As Brent mentioned, it is also easy to load any image to use as your texture map. Also, you can use Pre-Comps as a texture map as well. What is really nice about using Pre-Comps is that you can load the Pre-Comp as the texture map, and make as many changes as you like to the Pre-Comp. You don’t have to worry about re-loading the Pre-Comp and doing anything to the material. The material will update automatically and you’ll be able to see the changes to the object. So, with your stained glass project, you can also load the stained glass into a Pre-Comp and apply that as a Layer Map onto the object you created. Then, you can animate the Pre-Comp such as applying different color changes to the stained glass, fading/wiping to another image, etc for a really cool look.

Lastly, you mentioned working with a 2.5D character animation. One feature you may not be aware of is our Layer Cycling Object. A Layer Cycling Object allows you to import multiple layers from Illustrator similar to how old school animations were created. This means, you can change the look of your Illustrator object layer by layer and the Layer Cycling Object will change frame by frame. Think of it like the program is flipping through, or playing back your Illustrator layer frame by frame. To do this, simply enable the options “Open By Layers” and “As Layer Cycling Objects” when you are importing the Illustrator file. Then, once you have imported the Illustrator file, simply scrub through the ProAnimator timeline and you can see animation play back. What’s fun is that the Layer Cycling Object is an extruded 3D object so you have a full 3D object with depth and bevel. This may or may not help with what you are looking to do, but is a neat process to play with nonetheless.

There were a lot of topics being discussed and I hope I covered each one. If I am missing anything, please let me know and I’ll be happy to help.

Best,
Edward

[Anastacia Tohill]

Hi Brent

Sorry for delay in getting back to you. Wow, I looked at your website link and your work is amazing, you are clearly very talented and it is good to see what software can do. I hope one day I can do motion graphics like this.

I think you should do some tutorials as I think a lot of people would be interested in how you create your work. I think tutorials are an excellent way to learn.

Thanks for the info about Animator Pro. I am still ploughing through tutorials but had to stop for a while as been so busy. Ed also sent me the tutorial guide which is really good to start with. I really like the interface as it is so intuitive. Not tried AnimatorPro yet but will do. When I have done all the tutorials I will post what I have decided to buy and why.

Thanks again for all your help and support. This really is a great forum and people are so helpful and I have learnt so much.

Will be in touch.

Anastacia

[Anastacia Tohill]

Hi Ed

Have been corresponding with you by email which is great. Still working through tutorials. Yes this thread has taken off and I did not expect that so thanks to everyone for your help.

Thanks for the info about the shattering glass as that is something I need to create and it is good to know you can do that effect in ProAnimator. I just concentrated on the frame to start with but I have created all the individual coloured layers in photoshop but I will probably have to redo them in illustrator. Thanks for offering to help me that is kind of you and will contact you when I get round to do this.

That is good to know about the background and not working blind as that is something I was worried about as you have to see the rest of your scene. I am looking forward to trying ProAnimator so will post what I have found about both programs. Been somewhat delayed with stop motion puppets so will get back to the tutorials this week and continue.

Are there any tutorials on the Cycling object feature you are talking about? The characters I am going to animate will be created in Photoshop with layers. I intend then using Duik tools to animate the Character which is an amazing piece of software for character animation. Or I will try some of the plug-ins I bought from aescripts and aeplugins – iExpressions, which is very easy to use and similar. I then intend using Freeform Pro for the head and features using scripting in AE. Well that is the plan anyway. I am not sure that I would need the ProAnimator to animate the character.

Will be in touch and thanks for all your help.
Anastacia

[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

Right, I understand that animating in ProAnimator may be a concern because you may think that it will be hard to integrate with the After Effects elements, so that is why we have the Editor Background feature.

As for Layer Cycling, we don’t have a tutorial available, but if you check the ProAnimator folder that you’ve downloaded, you will see a Layer Cycling Examples folder. Import the file into ProAnimator, and scrub through the timeline and you will see the objects being animated. Then, you can open the file in Illustrator to see how the layers are set up. It should be a pretty simple process with most of the work done through Illustrator. If you have any questions though, I’d be happy to help.

You can also check out an animation with Layer Cycling objects in action. Check out Eugene Gonzales’s video:
https://www.zaxwerks.com/movies/media/eugene_smart_bid.mp4

It has a nice character that moves and jumps fluidly. Have fun!

Best,
Edward

[Anastacia Tohill]

Hi Everyone

Just thought I would update you all on the software I decided to purchase.

I bought Zaxwerks ProAnimator in the end and I have to say it is brilliant. I decided to buy this software mainly because of the easy interface which is very intuitive to use. It is also amazingly fast at rendering 3D and being able to bring Adobe Illustrator files into the interface and convert them into 3D objects very easily is another reason for my decision.

It was really making my mind up between Invigorator or ProAnimator which was really hard as they are both really good. I decided to take the plunge with ProAnimator after using the trial versions as the animating and speed seemed so good and easy to use. Using poses instead of keyframes wasn’t too bad and it is just a matter of getting used to it. Having said that I would not mind buying Invigorator as well in the future because I like the way that you can animate within the AE timeline and you have a lot of control with keyframes – depends what you are doing.

For my particular project I am trying to use 3D animated objects within ProAnimator with a animated 2D character in AE so I have not found that easy – to get the character to interact with the objects is quite hard but I have done some research and found expressions with nulls but it is limited. The customer support from Zaxwerks has been brilliant and so I am sure there is a way around it which I will post. I have spent quite a long time initially getting my files ready in Illustrator and mapping Photoshop images onto the 3D objects which is really easy to do after a little practise.

I think Zaxwerks software is really good and wouldn’t mind buying the 3D flag as well as some of their other products. Their software is so intuitive and for people who aren’t experienced in 3D or technical it is a great way to get introduced to the amazing 3D world of animation. They often offer discounts on their products which is brilliant.

I will post more comments as I use the software, had a break due to other commitments but so far I think it is really good and enjoying learning this software.

Anastacia

[Brent Willett]

Thanks for the update, Anastacia.

That’s a great endorsement too!

I don’t know if this applies to your situation, but one thing that might help in using After Effects nulls to control ProAnimator tracks is to keep the objects in the ProAnimator track at the starting center point (at least to begin with). The the track you assign to a null will jump to the position of the null in After Effects, however you won’t see any change in position in ProAnimator. It takes a little bit to get used to, since things aren’t necessarily in the same relative position in the ProAnimator setup window as they are in After Effects. If you need to adjust the position after it is parented, you can move it in ProAnimator. But most of the time, the whole process is easier if you start with everything that’s to be parented to an After Effects null at the zero point of the ProAnimator scene.

Brent

[Edward Wu]

Hi Anastacia,

I’m happy to hear that you’re having a great time learning and using the software. Like you said, ProAnimator has an initial learning curve, but after learning the controls, it is very easy to set up 3D animations even if you had little or no 3D experience previously.

As Brent mentioned with tying in the 2D and 3D objects together, it may take a little playing around to get used to how things tie in together. If you are able to bring the 2D elements into the ProAnimator scene, that would make everything a lot easier for you as they would all be in the same 3D space. I’m not sure if this may be possible for you since I haven’t seen your project yet, but it may help with what you are doing. If you’re having any problems, please do not hesitate to send the project file to me. I’ll be happy to assist with your project any way that I can.

Have fun and we would love to see what you come up with in the end.

Best,
Edward