Plugged In 2: Three Cool After Effects Plug-Ins
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Tinderbox 2
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Echo Fire 2
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Elements of Anarchy: Text
By Peter Bohush
JULY 2001 --- Adobe After Effects is a great program, made
even better by the ability to add 3rd-party filters to extend its functionality.
Below, three add-on products are reviewed: Tinderbox, EchoFire 2 and Elements of
Anarchy: Text.
EchoFire 2
Tinderbox 2
Tinderbox 2 for Mac/PC, from England’s The
Foundry, is a set of
20 new filters for After Effects. This is not a version upgrade from the popular
and useful Tinderbox 1. T2 is a sequel and entirely new product.
While there is some overlap in T2 with other products in the
AE plug-in market, this collection provides some unique effects and new twists
on familiar ones. All of the filters have a common control panel, which makes
for a shallow learning curve.
Not found together in other collections are effects such as
Blob, Kaleidoscope, Newsprint and Night Sky. Blob creates shaded spheres (from
one to many) that stick, deform and can move independently. Think of this as
your own little Flubber machine. Kaleid turns an image into a kaleidoscope, with
controls over the shape, position and movement of the “mirrors.”
Newsprint will screen your image into grayscale or colored
screens, representative of the dots that make up newspaper photos. And Night Sky
creates numerous star fields and constellations, with movements like spinning,
clustering and forward/reverse. With Night Sky, sending your starship into warp
speed or through a galactic wormhole is easier than saying “Take us home, Mr.
Chekov.”
The grain, blur and painting filters in Tinderbox 2 are
similar to those in other products, including AE 5’s included effects. But the
common interface and a few different implementations provide users with new
choices in old standby effects. For example, you can find numerous Gaussian blur
filters, but T2’s BlurMasked filter uses a mask to control the size of the
blur. This is a quick way to create accurate depth of field or rack focus shots.
T2 also includes lens flare, color bars, glass, ripple,
stutter, wobble, swirl and other filters. This package has so many neat filters
that with T2 you could create your own, well “T2.”
Elements of Anarchy: Text
If you need to create hip text effects, such as those in “The
Matrix” or on The Weather Channel (nothing hipper than that!), Digital Anarchy’s
Elements
of Anarchy: Text is
for you.
Designed to make the random text elements used in backgrounds
of commercials and films, Elements of Anarchy: Text (Mac/PC) provides the
quickest way to create and control these text elements. Although you can use
keyframes for precise control, the three effects have numerous settings so the
user doesn’t need to set hundreds of keyframes.
The three filters in EofA:T include Text Matrix, Screen Text
and Text Grid. Within each, the controls offer almost unlimited tweaking to
create unique effects whose only limits are the imaginations of the artists.
At $79 for EofA:T, it’s probably one of the best bargains in
AE plug-ins. EofA:T can also be purchased with DigiEffects’ VideoLook for
about $100 or with DigiEffects’ Aurorix for under $300.
EchoFire 2.0
The biggest complaint I had about After Effects 5 was that I
couldn’t preview my work on an NTSC monitor to see what it really looks like
output to video. EchoFire 2.0 (Mac only) from Synthetic
Aperture solves that
problem and a few more.
How can anyone live without this product? Installed as a
system extension and control panel, EchoFire outputs the comp window from After
Effects projects or the document window from Photoshop to an external monitor
via FireWire or other video card, such as a Targa, Media 100 or Digital Voodoo.
In addition, any QuickTime-enabled application can output
video and audio via FireWire. Or any supported video file can be output using
EchoFire’s drag-and-drop movie player. EchoFire supports 4:3, 16:9 and 14:9
aspect ratios and is compatible with NTSC and PAL. You can overlay a waveform
monitor, vectorscope, safe title, action areas and test patterns on the video
output.
I found EchoFire worked extremely well. The output was clean
and fast, and it made a big difference being able to check my After Effects
projects on a real monitor.
Since it’s a system extension, and considering the
complexity of interfacing with numerous QuickTime-enabled applications, I did
encounter a few hiccups and freezes, and wasn’t always sure why EchoFire was
or wasn’t outputting video to the external monitor.
For example, viewing a streaming video from the web in
QuickTime caused some problems and a system freeze. And my version of Toast
wouldn’t recognize my CD writer until I disabled EchoFire and restarted. These
are the kind of kooky problems that are difficult to predict during product
testing; and another user’s system may not react the same way mine did. But
using EchoFire within the appropriate situations was generally functional and
problem-free.
Summary
If you had to choose between EchoFire, Tinderbox 2 or Elements
of Anarchy: Text, I would say don’t settle for anything less than getting all
three. You can never have too many After Effects filters, and EchoFire is the
best way to preview your work on the monitors your finished projects will be
viewed on.
Get ‘em all!
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Peter Bohush often has difficulty choosing, like between
writing and directing. That’s why his website is www.WriterDirector.com.
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