[Yumology]

well I’m new to AE also, and I think it looks good. The only thing that you might want to retouch would be the map zooming. It starts out good with the red square as the area to zoom, then it zooms in one level (gets a little to pixelated), maybe add another red square and maybe a crosshairs to zoom into next level then crosshairs at building to indicate target.

Overall I think it’s great though. I can tell it wasn’t just thrown together. Spot on job with the keying too.

[Yumology]

!#!$!@#$ genius!

yikesmikes you opened me up to a whole new option i was not aware of.

I indeed am trying to make a bucket effect, but more like a glass of milk, and I got the top of the liquid to look ok by using advanced lightning, but couldn’t figure out how to color only below it.

I just followed your notes and sure thing, it worked right away, thanks so much!

[Yumology]

Hi. To get the effect itself, I’m thinking start with a solid, add a ramp, and colorama, and maybe a fractal noise for texture, then add a cc sphere effect. Lay it over the subject, turn opacity down, change mode to add or multiply, make the solid a displacement map for the character.

to learn about displacement maps aharon rabinowitz has a great 3 part displacement map tutorial at https://cowcast.creativecow.net/after_effects/index.html

oh yeah, for the fireblast coming from the character, i think the beam effect will work good, make it nice and thick, you can even adjust the starting vs ending thickness, add a fractal noise to it (so that you can make keyframes in the fractal noise effect to simulate the blast moving, and a texture on the beam will look better), change mode to add. make it a displacement map for the background too.

then animate it. heh

[Yumology]

so it doesn’t bother anyone else that there’s been no free tutorials made in the last, i dunno 8 months. does that mean vegas is dead?

i’ve been using vegas since 5.0 and i always thought vegas was equally as powerful as premier, or avid. i upgraded to 7.0 and am getting back into the scene, but there is no scene. i’m just fed up with the lack of community support. i think it’s time to move to a powerful NLE already.

there is certainly no lack of free tutorials/tricks/tips/tools/effects/videos for after effects.