FreeForm User Manual freeform | created by mettle.com

Contents 3 Installation 4 Controls 6 Controls - cont’d 8 Controls - cont’d 11 Support 14 Application

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FreeForm The FreeForm plugin for After Effects increases your 3D design options, allowing you to bend or warp any layer in 3D space. Digieffects FreeForm (Created by www.mettle.com)—included with After Effects for the first time in Creative Suite 5—vastly increases your 3D design options, allowing you to do more in After Effects without requiring a side trip into dedicated 3D software. This powerful plug-in allows you to use a user-controllable mesh of points or another layer as a displacement map for bending and warping.

Resources

Video Tutorials Check out project techniques from DigiUsers just like you.

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The Reviews See what others are saying about DE’s latest releases, plugin effects, and more.

Installation System Requirements: FreeForm is a plugin to After Effects CS5, created by www.mettle.com. It has been tested with Snow Leopard and Windows 7.

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Project Gallery DE software and plugins in action.

Installing

1 Locate the Install file. 2 Double-click the installation program and follow the instructions. 3 The first time you attempt to run FreeForm, you will be asked for your serial number. Search, view, and download the latest presets and videos or submit your own.

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http://www.digieffects.com/support/installation_guide

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Controls FreeForm automatically responds to 3D cameras and lights in After Effects, making it easy to integrate the results of this effect into any 3D scene.

About

Shows information about Digieffects and the FreeForm (created by www.mettle.com) plugin version.

Reset

Resets the parameters to their factory default.

Animation Presets

Contain groups of parameter settings you would like to keep for future use. The list is empty until you save a group of parameters as a Preset.

What you’ll need

A layer you will be warping with FreeForm Optionally, you can use a 3D camera, a null object, and some lights. NOTE: Magnification and Resolution should be set to 50% and (Half ) respectively for faster working.

Digieffects FreeForm places a layer in 3D space, and presents a grid of control points for you to warp. Grid points can be dragged to pull the Grid in different directions.

Grid

Grid allows you to create meshes the way you can with Adobe After Effects’ Mesh Warp; you can add as many as 20 Rows and 20 Columns on the Grid to play with. Rows – Sets the number of rows of the Grid. Columns – Same as rows, but columns, to deform vertically. Mesh Distortion – Keyframes the state of the FreeForm deformation at a given time. ®

FreeForm is a Digieffects plugin for After Effects, created by www.mettle.com.

Editing Controls

Manipulation – allows you to restrict your warps to the X, Y, or Z axis. Tangent Alignment – When checked allows you to create curves. When unchecked, moving tangents forms sharp angled corners. NOTE: The “tangent handles” stay in line with each other when checked, so that tangents move in an independent or co-dependent manner.

3D Mesh Controls

Position – Regardless whether the Grid has been deformed, this lets you control where the Layer appears in 3D space. Rotation – Controls the rotation of the Layer in 3D. Anchors – Changes the position of the 3D anchor point that controls the axis along which the Layer moves and rotates.

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Controls - cont’d Surface Controls

Diffuse – Adjusts the surface color’s ability to reflect or absorb light. Higher values make the surface brighter without adding a hard specular kick. Lower values make the surface look darker. Specular – Controls the specular highlights (intensity) of the Layer. Higher values create a more metallic look and a brighter, harder highlight. Roughness – Roughness controls how hard or soft the edges of the specular highlight are — as opposed to intensity. NOTE: The shading algorithm used by FreeForm is based on the Blinn-Phong shading algorithm and the roughness control is related to the exponent value (but not directly).

Backside Controls

Backside Controls allow you to assign any other layer to the back of the FreeForm layer. The next controls allow you to create the perfect backside. Layer – You can choose a different layer from within the composition to be the backside of your 3D mesh. Shade – This will only add a solid color as the backside instead of an image, e.g. if you don’t have an image to put there AND don’t want the frontside displayed as the back.

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FreeForm is a Digieffects plugin for After Effects, created by www.mettle.com.

3D Mesh Quality

Mesh subdivision – Sets the density of your mesh. Lower values (30-300) are good for less detailed deforms like hills and wavy water. Higher values (300-600) are needed for sharp corners/ edges and details. You can go as high as 1000, but higher values increase render time. Rendering: Full – Renders the layer as a full color image. Shade – Renders the layer as a single solid color. Wireframe – Renders the layer as a wireframe image. This is the fasted to update & render but has the least visual information of the three. Antialiasing – Removes jagged edges from your warps. It works like font antialiasing. Image Filtering – Acts like a Bicubic filter setting when resizing an image in Photoshop, i.e. it helps create smooth looks when downscaling or upscaling. NOTE: Multi Processing uses FreeForm’s own multiprocessing code independent of After Effects. If you have a multi-core machine, this can speed up the plug-in’s responsiveness. However, it can sometimes introduce artifacting on the FreeForm layer. If you notice any artifacting, uncheck Multiprocessing and see if it fixes the problem.

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Controls - cont’d Displacement Controls

After creating a displacement map, load it by selecting it from the Displace Layer menu. Displacement Layer – The layer you are going to use as a displacement map. This can be a still image or an animated movie or pre-comp. User Layer’s – This option sets a channel used for displacement. RGB(luma) should be used for black & white images. You may select Red, Green, Blue or Alpha as other possible values. If your source is an RGB image, each channel can give you a slightly to drastically different result. Use Alpha as Mask – If you check this control and your displacement layer has transparency, FreeForm will cut out your layer using that transparency information. For example, if you use text as a Displacement Layer, the result would be text that looks engraved in the FreeForm layer. Displace Height – Sets the distance the Displacement layer will deform your mesh in 3D space. NOTE: In FreeForm, displacement is done with luminance values. Black doesn’t displace pixels at all. White offers maximum displacement and shades of gray have less and less influence as they get closer to black. The Displace Height adjusts how high the whites are pushed, the grays scale accordingly. If you rendered black & white clouds, your resulting displacement would look like a 3D mountain range. Higher Displacement Height values would make for taller mountains. A very small value would make for something like a calm ocean texture.

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FreeForm is a Digieffects plugin for After Effects, created by www.mettle.com.

Grid and Controls Colors

Grid Color – Color of the grid. Control Color – Color of the grab handles of the Grid. Tangent Color – Color of the mesh bezier curve controls. Anchor Color – Color of the layer anchors. Grid and Controls Display – Check to see all controls and the Grid.

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Plugins, 3D layers, and the After Effects Warning Dialog Box

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