TypeMonkey After Effects Script

typemonkeyartA big part of motion graphics for worship is animated type.  Whether it’s lyrics to a song or a powerful Bible verse, at some point you’ll want to create moving text.  While there are some great presets built into After Effects I just found out about a script add-on that takes it to the next level.

TypeMonkey is a script for After Effects that takes the tedious process of animating a lot of text and makes it easy and quick!  It offers a lot of cool features and has a lot of options making it pretty versatile.  Now it’s not a cure all, but it looks like it’s something that will work well in a lot of cases.

Head on over to AEScripts.com and check out TypeMonkey.  It’s on sale until the end of the month!

Greyscale Gorilla Cinema 4D Tutorials

I’ve been starting to dive into Cinema 4D lately.  Mainly for the purposes of motion graphics but one day to hopefully be able to create some cool projection mapping stuff as well.  Baby steps first.

I was looking for the Cinema 4D equivalent of VideoCopilot.com in order to learn the basics and eventually the more intense stuff.  If you haven’t checked out Video Copilot it’s headed up by Andrew Kramer.  He is one of those rare people with a crazy amount of knowledge and creativity who can teach others in a way that’s fun and easy to listen to.

I started some tutorials on Lynda.com and they were good for starting from nothing.  They helped with the very basics of navigating the interface and were very helpful for that part.  As time went on though they got a little laborious and hard to follow (I’m trying not to say boring, ha ha).

GSGThe more I searched for Cinema 4D info the more I came across GreyscaleGorilla.com.  They have a couple of guys doing their tutorials and each one I’ve seen so far has been very good.  Informative, easy to follow, and almost most importantly, fun and engaging!

So all that to say go check out their site if you’re interesting in diving into Cinema 4D.  Especially now that C4D is included with After Effects I highly recommend at least knowing the basics.  Well timed with the launch of the integration between AE and C4D is a new tutorial series on Greyscale Gorilla, Introduction to Cinema 4D.

While I haven’t gone through that series yet (I’m about to).  From my experience on their site so far I’m sure it will be great!

Much like Video Copilot they offer unique products at a reasonable price.  This helps offset all of their tutorials being free.  At some point I’m sure I’ll be picking up some of their stuff.

So go and check out their site and start creating!

Welcome To MinistryAV.com

This site was created with the hope of helping the ministry AV community by sharing info that is worthwhile and will help others.  Along the way I’ll post what I’ve been up to at my home church, Calvary Chapel Fort Lauderdale and anything else I think is cool.

Got a project or helpful information worth sharing?  Reach me through the contact page, I would love to hear from you!

Rich

Cinema 4D And After Effects

433505036_640I’ve been using Adobe Creative Cloud for about a year now.  For a flat fee monthly subscription I get every Adobe product.  It’s awesome!  Instead of forking out thousands of dollars for everything, and then paying for upgrades every year, I pay one flat fee and I always have the latest and greatest.

And it’s that last part that makes CC awesome.  The newest big upgrade to After Effects is its deep integration with Cinema 4D using a new plugin Cineware.  If you don’t know Cinema 4D is a high end 3D program.  It’s been used in lots of movies and TV programs.  It also has a lot of motion graphics uses.

Like any program there’s a learning curve but it is one of the industry standard 3D programs and it’s not exorbitantly priced so it’s a good one to learn.  Since it is a standard there are many resources out there to learn from.  GreyscaleGorilla.com is one worth checking out.

With the recent CC upgrade After Effects now comes with Cinema 4D Lite, for free!  With the Lite version you get a lot of features and you can get your feet wet in the world of 3D software without any extra investment.

Cineware eliminates the need to render out before sending things to After Effects.  This makes the whole process a lot faster and a lot easier!  Plus if you need to make a change you just go back to Cinema 4D and make the change.  Those changes then go to After Effects in real time, no re-rendering!

While you may not use Cinema 4D for everything it is very powerful.  Even if you’re not making 3D movies it’s still a great compositing tool for creating stills.  Once you try it and learn the basics you’ll find lots of uses for it.

On a side note I recently made a couple of things with Cinema 4D, check them out!

Where To Crank, Red Black

The Show 2013 Lighting Setup

Screen Shot 2013-06-09 at 5.50.26 PMHey everyone, I just wanted to share a little more from The Show 2013.  This year we had lots of lighting elements working together to help give us some variety.  For those moments when we really wanted a big look we had plenty of fixtures to get the job done!

In this video is just a brief overview of the setup and a couple of clips from The Show.  Over the next week or so I’ll post up some more pictures and videos from this awesome event.

The Show 2013 Ableton Live Show Control

Screen Shot 2013-06-09 at 5.50.26 PMI can’t believe we just got done with The Show 2013, just doesn’t seem like another year has passed!  Will Doggett from LoopsInWorship.com and myself put together a video showing how we controlled everything for The Show.

Once again everything centered around Ableton Live and it worked great!  All 3 nights went very well considering the hundreds of cues that were happening.  Check it out!