3d Screencasting: Episode VI – Ultra Cool Shadows & Motion Blur
Posted by brooks in After Effects, Screencasting, Tutorials, video on Aug 4th, 2010 | 5 commentsShadows are the sizzle to the steak of your 3d lighting and camera moves. They add elegance and style, truly creating the illusion of depth and space. You definitely want them in your 3d screencasts and you want them to be bad azz. Speaking of illusions, we really want to sell the reality of our window’s animation and that means applying some subtle tweaks and gloss in the form of motion blur and easing. You’ll be amazed at how big a difference these spit and polish techniques make to our finished product. Let’s get the lead out and learn how in the final installment of this 3d screencasting series!
Video runs 3:57.
If you’d like to use the assets in this tutorial and view a completed After Effects sample project you can download the files here.
3d Screencasting Episodes
- Episode I – It Ain’t Your Daddy’s Screencasting
- Episode II – Rotoscope Our Problems Away
- Episode III – Building a Screenshot / Screen Video Sandwich
- Episode IV – The Magic of Inverted Masks
- Episode V – Killer Animated Windows
- Episode VI – Ultra Cool Shadows & Motion Blur
5 Responses to “ “3d Screencasting: Episode VI – Ultra Cool Shadows & Motion Blur”
Leave a Reply
Great series! I’m interested in when you would use these techniques. Is there a particular type of content that would most benefit from the extra work?
[Harry] – Thanks for taking the time to leave a comment. When to use these techniques? That’s a good question. In a lot of ways this is still very experimental stuff and each situation and producer is going to have a a different set of criteria. That said, I think any time you really care about whether the audience is watching and engaged you should think about using techniques like those in this series.
Screencasting, with all of the free, zero-editing tools (Jing, Screenr, et al), is increasingly becoming a commodity. Any time you want your work to stand apart, you need to really show you care by taking the time to do things that will bring and keep an audience. Finally, size of the audience plays a huge role. If the audience is 1-10 people over the course of 2 days then you likely can’t justify a whole bunch of effort.
I’m hopeful that as a community we can pioneer and refine some of these techniques. That should help reduce the production time. I’d also love to see the dedicated screencasting tool vendors develop solutions / workflows that would help streamline this type of work.
Maybe that’s too generic of an answer? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
I think that when you want users to try new features and increase their skills, it helps to use cinematic techniques that get their attention and make them want to see more. I’m currently wrestling with how to do that, and how to get good information into an entertaining format. It’s content that falls between technical writing and marketing, so it’s not easy to find a place for it in established channels.
I tend to fit the teaching part into a story, with effects in the story around the screencast but not actually in the screencast. But I don’t know how effective it is; like you say, it’s early in the experimental stage, and it’s hard to get meaningful feedback beyond the comments of a small number of viewers.
Hi Brooks,
I love your blog and wanted to say that from the outset. I’m a Reference and Instruction librarian at a college in Brooklyn, NY, where I’m responsible for creating screencast tutorials. I just signed up for JingPro and am learning iMovie. Here’s my question: Can I zoom in on a part of the screen in iMovie so the zoom is seen in the output, the way Camtasia allows you to do? I want students to be able to see what I’m typing without going “full screen”. Thanks a lot.
[Alex] – Thanks for the kind words. I just checked out your site and I’m a fan–thanks for taking the time to comment. ;-)
I’m no iMovie expert, but you might be able to pull off the zooming with the Ken Burns effect cropping / animating feature it has. Then again, since I’m and After Effects / Premiere guy who only has iMovie ’08 you might want not want to trust me…