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I've found that Bridge is a really useful tool for viewing effects and image sequences before importing them within your composition. 'ffx' files in AE allow Bridge to preview all sorts of presets for synthetics, text, transitions, audio, etc, and i believe it is the only software that can.


Previewing effects rapes my hard-drive to bits, so this method is much more efficient for my computer, and also saves time.

Knoll Light Factory

This is another useful effects suite/plug-in I've looked into for animated graphics. It utilizes high-fidelity simulations of flared light effects, which simulate reflections from a very bright light source as seen through a camera's lens - all customizable. It also contains 'automatic tracking', a feature that tracks multiple points and adds multiple identical lighting points to a scene - similar to the match moving software seen in Druskq's work.

Particular

A short by Druskq for photoshops 'See What's Possible' contest that was made fully in After Effects, with the use of a particle plug-in called 'Particular'. Flowers were hand-drawn and used within that effects-engine, but the rest is basic camera movement parenting to nulls.

Match-Moving

In cinematography, match moving is a visual effects technology to allow the insertion of virtual objects into real footage with the correct position, scale, orientation and motion in relation to the photographed objects in the scene.

This is really nice work by Druskq again. The footage is essentially tracked and rebuilt into a 3D environment using a powerful piece of match moving software called 'Boujou'. It allows you to completely duplicate both camera movement and depth, and to also composit CG-elements (the light beams in this instance) into the scene.



For example, points closer to the camera move faster, relative to points further away, and based on this difference in speed, the program will be able to derive the relative distance. You end up with a scene full of tracked points (or Nulls), and you'll be able to use these to reference where any CG-elements have been positioned.

The light strokes were actually created in After Effects - moving a light emitter and particular through 3D space. I'm going to run with this over reading week, and see if i can get into a decent position with it for when we get back.