In the 3D Text Extrude tutorial we will touch on using animated displacement maps in FreeForm.
By Chris Bobotis

Click on the image above to see animation

For this tutorial we will use After Effects inherent "Masking" Capabilities, ''Fast Blur'' and our own FreeForm AE.

Download the After Effects project files and follow along.

Mac 3d_extrude_project.sit PC 3d_extrude_project.zip

If you are already familar with animated Masking techniques, you can skip pages 1+ 2 and go directly to page 3.

Step 1
For this tutorial will create 3 compositions:

a) 1_Mask Anim Comp at 400 x 300 pixels - 5 seconds.
b) 2_Mask + Soild Comp at 400 x 300 pixels - 5 seconds.
c) 3_FreeForm AE Comp at 400 x 300 pixels - 5 seconds.

Step 2
Iin the "1_Mask Anim Comp", create a white solid at 400 x 300 pixels in size. Now we will add a series of After Effects Masks. Below are several depictions of what the Mask animation should look like:

At frame 0:10

At frame 1:22

At frame 4:00

At frame 5:00

Step 3
Once you have the basic mask animations set-up, you can now mask start and end time as well as the mask opacity for each mask. See below:

At frame 0:00

At frame 0:10

At frame 1:00

At frame 1:12

At frame 1:22

At frame 2:15

At frame 3:05

At frame 3:15

At frame 4:00

At frame 5:00

Once you have done this you can now go in and tweak the settings to your liking.

We can now move on to the next section of this tutorial.

Page 2

 

 

After Effects + Adobe are copyright of Adobe Systems Inc. Digital Fusion, copyright Eyeon Software, Maya Fusion, copyright Alias/Wavefront.

More FreeForm Tutorials...

Baby Steps
Express Yourself
Filmstrip
3D Text Extrude

More Tutorials coming soon