How to create such effects ?

Hello everyone. I am new here. I am a hobbyist, Just waiting for the review of my 1st submitted media files. Mean while i was wandering in the forum and pond5 media collection and found so many inspiring amazing videos. I particulary take interest in after effects and found these creative videos represnting global networks-


and



Anyone can tell me how such videos can be created ? Is it possible with AE CS5.5, Trapcode particulars 2 and video copilot ?
Because i want to try making such videos and i have these 3 programs/plugin which i recently bought.

Welcome to this crazy place. :)

I would assume that at least the globe was done in some kind of 3D software like 3DStudioMAX or Maya - but something simple like Carrara would do the job, too. The rest could be done either in 3D as well or in AfterEffects, Combustion or some other compositing software.

Just don't assume it's easy or quickly done.

Thanks for the welcome varius. Yeah, I was keep trying something similar for the whole day but it appears to be very tough, specially for a hobbyist like me lol.

A lot of times people will list the software used. The first clip above credits - Source: Autodesk 3ds max.

Shooting video is my hobby and my profession is 3D animation. I am quite sure that the first clip took a skilled artist at least a couple of days to do. I don't have any real 3D animation in my collection because it takes so long to do something properly. Here is something VERY simple that I did;

https://www.pond5.com/ru/stock-footage/24742163

Model elements (Maya) = 2 hours
Animate elements (Maya) = 1 hour
Render 5 source layers = 4 hours
Compositing (After Effects) = 1 hour

My total time was 4 hours plus a few hours rendering.

My advice to someone interested in this sort of work is to take it slow and not get frustrated. Keep working on the same project until you understand your tools and how to get the results you want.

I agree akennedy. Yes this type of work is quite frustrating, specially when learning. But success at the end makes proud, and further sales will surely make the artist happier. You have beautiful collection of footage.

You also gain speed as you gain experience doing it. Time management is really key in the background market, because usually unless they are some thing like that globe you posted they don't sell for as much. The market has gotten really saturated with certain types of animation unfortunately.

Piece of advice keep your elements, your textures, scene files, renders, every thing. They may come in handy as an AE layer later on down the road. I really wish the market would switch from people wanting to buy completed backgrounds to more people wanting alpha elements to be used as layers, a kind of create your own style with someones bits and pieces...

Also learn if you don't know to set up a render server or render machine, work on elements for multiple days with the backgrounds you have floating around in your imagination, kick them out to the render machine and just let that thing chug along while you continue to make elements. Then when you have gotten allot of element renders complete bring all of that into AE and work with them until you get what you want.

It also helps to start off in the background business with a unified frame count, if all your elements are 480 frames, that way when your putting looping backgrounds together your elements all work with each other frame wise. Also don't forget 480 frames is really 479, in any looping background there will be a double frame, that's how you test the loop, hitting home end should look exactly the same, once you knock that frame off in the final AE render you can play it in QT and set it to loop.

Looping is interesting keyframe interpolation plays a big role in it. Linear is the way to go so you don't get a fast slow fast, or opposite type of motion.

Maya is great, but I would not want to use it to make animated backgrounds. Maya if you ask me and it's been years since I have used it is more geared towards character animation, it also has amazing modeling tools, and paint effects is fun... But it's slow work flow wise for this type of work. The great thing is pretty much all the major 3D packages have the same tools, they are just called different things. So once you learn one or two or three it just gets easier to pick up the next one and run with it.

Also I really don't like or last I used it, I didn't like Maya's particle systems. Particles if you ask me are key in backgrounds, randomly generated any thing you want, you can't beat that... You mean I can make anything come out of any object in any way I want it too! NICE!

Blender is a great tool for 3D too. It has also an NLE and a node compositor included. And itt's free!

Thank you Bryan and ionescu for suggestions. ionescu , I prefered to start with C4D and liking it.
Bryan ! Do you mean a pc when you say rendering server/machine ? Sorry but i am new to this animation world so unaware of technical terms like alpha elements.. I need to learn Do loop footage sell more than linear/straight ones?
After trying continuously for 3 days, i created a video clip with concept somewhat similar to above clips. Although both above 2 videos are far better than mine. Waiting for its approval now in pond5. Another site has already accepted it. http://footage.shutterstock.com/video.html?id=5579297 it is-

Not a bad knockoff, the problem is there are so many clips like that one. Try and not waste time on the knockoff that's not as good. I don't mean that in an offensive way. It's not bad, it's just with so many like it. Plus the time investment of 3 days is allot. It's still a great learning exercise so don't let me make you feel to bad about it.

C4D has become really big and popular, it must have a good render engine because I like allot of the renders I have seen come out of it. Ionescu is right, blender is great and free. It's amazing the work I have seen done in it.

Render server some times, and it's not in all programs you can do basically a thing that manages all your renders, like in a queue, so you can work and send the renders to that, even prioritize them, then when your done for the day you can green light them to do all renders while your sleeping. So it doesn't disrupt your work flow. Also there is the other option of getting a render machine a whole separate PC networked that will render non stop. It's amazing too, you don't need the most amazing machine to be a render server, a decent off the shelf minimal computer can be a good render machine as long as you don't load it down with a bunch of programs. For mine they are totally stripped of every thing but the render engine and software... Control alt delete if your on a PC and go to task manager and get rid of any thing you can that's using resources if you setup a render machine.

Alpha elements, are pre rendered elements with an alpha channel. Are you familiar with green screen at all? It's the same concept but without the need for the green screen. (Also if you do ever do green screen make sure it's all green, check your color, on the RGB scale zero R zero B values, all G...) So back to what alpha is, it allows you to basically drop say a globe over a background in AE and just get the nice round globe and still be able to see the background behind it. Try saving an image out of C4D PNG and put the settings with alpha. Not all image types have the ability to do alpha, if your submitting to the sites you want to do the QT Animation with the plus alpha.. If you have any more questions on that feel free to ask or message me.

The other thing you talked about is looping, here is the simplest first step to a loop to help you get the concept. Your animation goes from Zero to two hundred frames, you have a globe texture on a sphere, set the keyframe at frame zero for rotation on any axis, X, Y, or Z, then set the rotation at frame 200 to be 360, then in AE, in your final render make sure it says 0-199, after you checked that the home and the end frame are the same of coarse. This is just one way to loop some thing, there are many many others. You can even keyframe textures in some cases to loop via a texture offset of a whole value, but what that whole value is maybe program dependent. 0-1 or 0-100, your texture if not a "procedural texture" should be a "tile-able texture" If you don't know these terms it's best to look them up, I can explain if you do and still are confused if you would like.

Thank you Bryan for your input. Sent you a pm.