[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Could be- it will work out nice with my AquaPack.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can get pretty good water surface using all the new features of FF Pro. The trick for the “drain hole” is to work out a displacement map that can animate a rotating “Milky Way” type spiral shape that gets darker towards the center. Playing with the transition between black and white (gray values) is key- the smoother it is the better. So working at 32bit color depth will help.
You can also try to animate a point on the grid that goes down in 3d space and thus creates a distortion in the plane.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

One more thing to add to the advice you’ve been given- work at 32bit color depth. You will get much more refined glows and feathered transitions.
If you have Trapcode Shine you can use that to create the burning glow look for the runes.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Interesting tutorial idea- I’ll give it a shot once I am finished with the Aqua Pack and the last part of the tunnel tutorial.
As far as improvements from the base version:
Only the Generator would be a major improvement, but you get Material controls, a much more refined displacement mapping, Reflection mapping, Depth map and finer controls over 3d distortion. AND it’s much faster!

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

My suggestion is that for best results you work at a HD resolution since the Navori player can support full HD playback:

“Most content can be played at their native resolution (SD, HD and Full HD).

Adobe Flash (SWF), Flash Video (FLV)
Windows® Media, QuickTime, MPEG 2 and 4, DivX”

I would suggest MPEG 2 1080p 50Mb/s

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I presume you are referring to the continuously rasterize box and the Puppet Tool.
If you have vectors and the continuously rasterize switch is on, then you should get really sharp graphics regardless of how small the size of the AI objects is. Maybe you are previewing them at a lower resolution and not at 100%?
AE is not happy when you use Puppet Tool on vectors. My suggestion is to pre-render the layers once you position them and work out the rest of the animation, and then use the Puppet Tool for the refined animation on these layers in a different project.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

you can find tutorials here on the Cow and a review:

https://library.creativecow.net/jelescu_tudor/AE-3D-tunnels-FreeForm-Pro-1/1

https://library.creativecow.net/jelescu_tudor/AE-3D-tunnels-FreeForm-Pro-2/1

https://library.creativecow.net/jelescu_tudor/FreeForm-Pro-review/1

If you have any specific questions or tutorials you would like to see, just let Chris Bobotis and myself know about it.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Card Dance and Plane Space can help you in this also.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Do you have the latest upgrade to CS4 (it came out after cs5 was released)?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

“No, I am unable to make any selection in the color settings, any idea why?”

Sorry, no idea- Dave, Todd, Walter…?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist