Thursday, October 11, 2012

Video Copilot: 3-D Elements


Video Copilot is a website that showcases after effects plug-ins. After effects is great editing software program that has a wide variety of capabilities for creating visual effects. Video Copilot has a variety of products, tutorials and information about visual effects editing. New plug-ins are being created and added to this site all of the time and can be purchased at their website, videocopilot.net With each new plug-in that they add, there is at least one tutorial that takes you step by step through the process of using the new tools that are made available with the new plug-in. Most of the newer plug-ins have multiple purposes and therefore have more than one tutorial.

I find these tutorials very helpful and informational. The only downside to some of these tutorials is that sometimes they will lead you through the first half of the project and then let you know that you will need a second plug-in to complete the particular visual effect. That’s where they get you hooked. You get to see what they can create but you have to purchase more plug-ins in order to do the same. I came across this dilemma not too long ago. I was following along with a tutorial on creating the Biohazard Logo using the Element 3D plug-in, and a little over halfway through the tutorial, they require a separate plug-in to create what they have made in the demo. Now I want to get this new plug-in but getting more and more of these plug-ins add up pretty quick. 





This short video is an example of Video Copilot's new plug-in, 3-D Elements package and it shows some of the new thing that you can do to manipulate an image. This plug-in is great because you can take your basic 2-D elements and convert them into 3-D images.