Software: Page 174

In this 3-part series on Displacement Mapping, Creative Cow Leader Aharon Rabinowitz covers the basics of using this effect in both After Effects 6.5 and 7. This highly detailed tutorial will get you started on distorting your footage with displacement maps. Please note, you must have After Effects PRO to do these effects.

In part one of this two-part tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz introduces you to Exponential scale, a keyframe assistant used to counter the issues that occur naturally in After Effects when scaling from very high values. In the second part, you'll learn how to ease the values of Exponential Scale to create a smooth end to your layer's scale animation. This is a better way to create easing in and easing out effects on animations.

This excellent tutorial shows you how easy it is to make a crowd out of a few people. Using the Trapcode plug-in particular, Mike Goedecke from the design firm Belief, teaches us how to do it. Turn a small group into a mass of people.

Ever wanted to create a cavernous tunnel in After Effects? This tutorial takes you through the steps. Learn lighting techniques and how to place layers in 3D space.

Create the famous Star Wars text scroll using the corner pinning tool in After Effects.

If you have a website, and would like to direct people to it via your free ebook, you might want to include an Internal Page Link in it. In this Adobe Acrobat video tutorial you will learn how to create an Internal Page Link by adding a link action, setting default page scale, and saving and viewing the working link. Make sure to hit "play tutorial" in the top left corner of the video to start the video. There is no sound, so you'll need to watch the pop-up directions.

Many designers love hot, glowing looks. However, the After Effects Glow plug-in is available only in the Professional edition, and is not all that intuitive to use. This two-part module demonstrates how to use the same plug-in to get two quite different looks: "inside" glows for full-frame footage, and "outside" glows to create a halo or aura text, logos, and any other object with an alpha channel. It also demonstrates a quick and easy way to get glow-like halos for those who do not have the...

In this video series, watch as computer, internet and software expert Matt Nichols teaches how to use BearShare to download music. Learn the basics of BearShare software, how to download BearShare, how to install BearShare, how to search for songs to download, how to download music, how to get a monthly subscription to BearShare, how to use the playlist, how to burn CD's using BearShare, and how to use BearShare for social networking. File-sharing is a great way to learn about new music and...

In this music recording software video tutorial, learn how to use one of the latest programs for bands and musicians: Apple Logic Pro. This software allows the user to record a song from beginning to end, bounce tracks, master, and do a final mix down to CD, mp3, and other desired formats. Our expert, Bill Macpherson, will walk you through the operations you need to understand to create audio tracks, lay down drums, keyboard, and a bass part, edit and master them, and mix to a final song. This...

In this online Cubase tutorial, you'll learn how to record you own music using the basic features of this digital recording program.

In this series of instructional software videos, our computer animation expert demonstrates how to create 3D animation in CINEMA 4D. John Carstarphen starts with the basics of opening the software and setting up the workspace, then guides you through the menus and windows, as well as the basic file structure of the program.

In this series of instructional software videos, our computer animation expert demonstrates some of the more advanced features in CINEMA 4D.

Are you a Star War fan? This is a a tutorial on making light sabers in Photoshop. Learn to use Gaussian blur and Color Balance to create the glowing effect of the sabers.

Problems playing certain formats of video and audio on you computer? It could be because of codec issues. The Lab Rats, Andy Walker and Sean Carruthers, talk about what codecs are and teach you how to troubleshoot codecs to solve your audio and video playback problems. This is a great video to explore that could help you with many WonderHowTo problems!

If you have ever seen the motion graphics stream across the screen on your favorite TV show, news cast or game show, and dreamed of having that on your own videos, your prayers have been answered. Final Cut Pro, part of Final Cut Studio 2, lets you add some extremely cool and highly customizable Motion templates to your footage to add some pizzazz. David Basulto shows you how to create lower thirds in this tutorial.

In this video, Justin Seeley shows how to use a Wacom tablet to create photo collages in Photoshop CS3 Extended. He shows how to blend photographs together using the Wacom pen to create a print ad type image. He shows how to increase the size of the brush, change the opacity, blend the image, and lightly paint into the image to control the amount of the fade.

This video explains in 60 seconds a trick to change brush sizes in Flash using a combination of the paint brush tool, and zooming. For added stroke variance Tony is using a Wacom Graphire.

If you are trying to auto-fill an area defined by a shape or line that is not closed and the gap is too large for the Flash paint bucket to fill, you will love this tutorial. Watch and see the trick Tony uses in Flash to auto-fill non-closed shapes.

Adobe Gamma is a screen calibration utility that used to install with Photoshop. Many say that it no longer comes with CS3, and that it is not compatible with Windows Vista. LIES!! Chad will show you the hidden truth in this movie.

This movie shows you how to create actual 3D objects in After Effects without expressions or 3rd party software. This example uses the shatter tool and some text, but you don't have to stick just to text.

Watch this series of video tutorials to see how the particle rendering system Krakatoa from Frantic Films works. Krakatoa is a high-volume point-based particle rendering, manipulation and management toolkit available as a plug-in for Autodesk 3ds Max running on Windows. Krakatoa enables VFX artists to create dust, smoke, silt, ocean surface foam, plasma and even solid objects, all at unprecedented speeds.

This tutorial shows a variety of tools within Frantic Films' Awake plug-in package for eyeon Fusion, including the lens distortion, digital film noise and workflow enhancements for stereoscopic imaging.

Larry Jordan demonstrates the basics of audio repair using Apple's Final Cut Pro including raising soft recordings without distortion. This is a great tutorial for beginners.

Larry Jordan explains the advantages and trade-offs of various external drive solutions, compares data rates or FireWire drives vs. SATA drives, what solutions work the best and how to avoid clogging your Final Cut Pro workflow.

Producer/editor Paul Mitton of Creation Trek Productions demonstrates audio editing, mixing, effects and creating a soundtrack within Avid Liquid 7.

In this After Effects tutorial you will learn how to use blur, median, and levels to make individual pieces of art blend together to look natural, as well as get pointers for starting character animation. It will help if you already know a bit about After Effects.

Mark Schoennagel, senior 3D animator at Softimage|XSI, shows how to use the Generalized Attribute Transfer Operator (GATOR) in XSI to transfer UV coordinates and shape animations to and from completely different characters.

Producer/editor Paul Mitton of Creation Trek Productions demonstrates a number of visual effects techniques in Avid Liquid including color correction, animated text and keyframing. Scroll down and click the "watch this video" link.

Producer/editor Paul Mitton of Creation Trek Productions demonstrates how to capture video from a camcorder directly into Avid Liquid. Scroll down and click the "watch the video" link.

Paul Mitton of Creation Trek Productions demonstrates how to use different editing techniques in Avid Liquid. Scroll down and click the "watch the video" link.

This Maya tutorial shows you how to create a chalice. The basic idea is using a curve to create the profile of your object and sweep or revolve the curve for your object. Get creative and find other objects to make.

This tutorial demonstrates how to use high dynamic imaging (HDR) in Maya in conjunction with the Mental Ray renderer. This is helpful in creating realistic lighting for your scenes.

This tutorial shows how to create simple scanlines in Photoshop that can be used in numerous ways.

There is no sound, but this tutorial shows you very clearly how easy it is to turn a photo into a sketch using Photoshop.

This tutorial shows a very common method used by many graphic designers in order to create a retro effect from an image using Photoshop.

In this Microsoft Outlook video tutorial, learn how to use Microsoft Outlook from systems administrator and MS Outlook expert Gary Zier. Gary will teach you Microsoft Outlook techniques such as how to permanently delete items in MS Outlook, how to selectively send read receipts in Outlook, how to prevent multiple prefixes in emails, how to create and save searches in Microsoft Outlook, how to configure the desktop alert in Outlook, how to print select pages from an email, and how to create...

In this video series, watch as computer and music specialist Matt Nichols teaches how to use Virtual DJ.

Autodesk's Maya is a 3D computer graphics and 3D modeling software used in the film, TV, computer and video game industries. This video series shows you how to use it.

Every good illustrator knows the advantage of using a Wacom tablet with Adobe Illustrator. When you plug in a Wacom tablet it doesn't automatically set your tools to be pressure sensitive. Terry White will show you how to set your brushes to really take advantage of your new tablet.

The best part about this video is that it not only teaches you how to sing multipart audio by yourself using Audacity, but you'll have perfect timing and pitch as well! Even if you're not a great singer this can still be fun.