Lollipopland Bad Skin Weights?

So I’ve moved onto rigging the child/ice cream character. Unfortunately, the way I’ve modeled him, skinning and weights are causing issues. Although everything seems fine in IK, when I switch to FK and apply some test animation clips (like the above ballet clip), I run into some bad skinning issues.

Even after applying delta mush, I can’t seem to get the body to have a more volumetric look. I may try applying tension deformer to see if that helps. As I want to eventually be able to bake this down to the skin weights, I am holding off from applying pose space deformation or correctional blend shapes.

Share this post!

Flyer Comp



Finished modeling and texturing this exploration of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. About 8 hours of work putting in hour long stints whenever I could over the past week. I ended up rendering in Arnold as the shading options in Photoshop were too restrictive, however, I did complete the compositing in Photoshop, adding some glow and a color grade. I still created the file textures, two of them, in Photoshop 3D using a process I’ve refined and intend to cover in a future tutorial!

Share this post!

Visual Typography

It’s been a while since my last post. Life happens. It’s been a busy year. So sorry for the extended hiatus and I promise to come around more often!

Recently, I’ve been challenging myself during the few chances I have for experimentation to create short 5 second visual typography clips. A colleague of mine mentioned a Reddit game identifying movies from a single word uttered in the movie (without uttering the title, of course).

I tried to do similar creating short clips designing around a single word and completing within an hour or two. Here are four examples of what I’ve done so far.




Share this post!

Pixel Cloud updated to 1.7 and Compatible with CC 2015

Pixel Cloud

Pixel Cloud has recently been updated to unify the licensing scheme with the AEScripts framework and it is compatible with After Effects CC 2015. Also, the plugin has been removed from the installer. It does require the user to manually install the plugin into the plug-ins folder, but it will make releasing updates easier and therefore will ultimately be better for the user.

If you have purchased a license before, you will need to uninstall the previous version of Pixel Cloud before installing the update. Mac users can simply move the plugin from the plug-ins folder into the trash. Windows users will need to uninstall the plugin from the Programs and Features category in the Control Panel. The plugin has been tested and is compatible After Effects CC 2015. If you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment on the product page‘s Comments section or submit a ticket and I will get back to you asap!

Share this post!

Pixel Cloud updated to version 1.4 !

Hey guys, just wanted to drop a note that the Pixel Cloud plugin has been updated to version 1.4! This update can be downloaded from AEScripts + Aeplugins. Following is a list of what the update does:

  • Added Adaptive Preview to speed up UI interactions
  • Fixed Position Pass Render Mode
  • Added Pixel Cloud presets for Maya, C4D, and Depth Matte
  • Added 3D Sampler Preset
  • Fixed Windows Installer for Multi-language
  • New Mac OS X Installer
  • Various optimizations and bug fixes
  • Removing support for AE versions CS4, CS5

The adaptive preview speeds up the way you interact with the plugin in After Effects by deferring full rendering when you are interacting with the composition window with your mouse and while After Effects’ own adaptive preview enables. This allows for faster interaction while moving lights, cameras and interacting with other layers. A preview mode without antialiasing and lower resolutions is used while performing these actions in the composition window. When you are finished interacting then the plugin will render a proper frame.

The position pass render mode now outputs a proper position pass so that one can convert things like a depth matte into a position pass. Also presets for Maya, C4D and depth mattes have been added! Support for CS5 and CS5 have been removed to quicken the pace of these updates as well as to take advantage of the falloff lighting parameters available since CS5.5!

Get the plugin here!

Share this post!

Duplicate with Connections Updated: Property Index with Layer Names

As requested by users, the Duplicate with Connections script has been updated to include using the property index while still using the layer name in the expressions. It can be downloaded at AEScripts + AEplugins. This update provides separate dialogs for using property indices and layer indices versus using property names and layer names.

Share this post!

On the YouTubes!

Yeah! After some soul searching, I’ve moved all the blog videos onto YouTube! Our YouTube channel is at TheBlurrypixel. Of course all the videos are still embedded in the posts so no need to go directly to the channel but I will be posting some bonus extra videos on there that may not be on the blog so show us your support and Subscribe!

Share this post!

World in Miniature


This recent video of the Tokyo Art Center and surrounding landscape by Darwinfish105 (who is well known for an exquisite Gundam video that went viral last year). I love authentic tilt-shift photography and this video is a breathtaking view of the Tokyo landscape. As creatives we have to constantly view the world through a different lens than the norm to inspire ourselves. We may find that the world is not as big as it might seem…

Share this post!

Plugin Demo for Pixel Cloud

Fantastic progress being done on the up and coming plugin for After Effects. I was recently able to stitch a video together to showcase what else this plugin can do besides compositing images from 3D packages. You can implement your own position pass as a displacement matte for a planar image. And it need not be 32 bit either. 8-bit does just fine.

Share this post!

Hosted on AEScripts

Fantastic news! If you’re here, you’ve probably already known AEScripts for a while now. Well, AEScripts is now hosting my scripts on their site. AEScripts is a repository and marketplace of high-end scripts and plugins for After Effects. This is a fantastic opportunity to get these scripts out there. These scripts are distributed under a “Name your own price” model which means that you decide how valuable these scripts are for you! It makes these scripts available for you at the price that you want and it makes sharing the fruits of labor by developers and artists with others worthwhile.

Share this post!

Recursive Scale Comp

A very helpful script for scaling the resolution of your project. Simply changing the size of your composition will not change the size of its contents. And if the layers inside the composition are nested compositions, changing the scale is simply stretching out a smaller image, definitely so if the scale amount goes above 100%. This script can fix those issues by maintaining the best image quality for your scaled project. And it does it all in one click.

Recursive Scale Comp

Share this post!