Pro Editing @ Home

by Kevin P McAuliffe
February 17, 2009

As an editor and motion graphic artist, I love plug-ins, and every once in a while (sometimes a long while) a plug-in pack comes along that either pushes the bounds of what we know a program can do, or it takes an existing idea and improves on it. Boris Continuum Complete 6 AE has done both of those. Let's find out how they have done it, and why you are going to want to either upgrade, or get this pack to add to your collection.

INSTALLATION

Installation of BCC6 is straight-forward, and you will be up and running in about five minutes. Boris offers a free fourteen day trial of BCC6 which is excellent. All you need is a free account over at www.borisfx.com .

Support for After Effects 7 and above!

 

BCC6 is available to install for After Effects 7, CS3 and CS4, as well as Custom Universal. Also, you might wonder why the install process takes so long, and why so many things are installed. That's because, as I always rave about, one of the many great features of Boris plug-ins is that there are tons of presets for you to work with.

You can never (and I mean ever) have too many presets!

 

WHAT YOU GET & HOW THEY WORK

When a new version of a plug-in pack comes out, the first thing that everyone always does is, of course, check to see what's new. Needless to say that my jaw dropped when I saw what Boris had done. For After Effects users there has always been one major problem, in my opinion, when it comes to effects, and that is the lack of true 3D support from within the After Effects interface. Yes, there have been plug-ins to break the barrier, sort of, and until now, the best way to get 3D is to use a plug-in's third party application from within After Effects to do it. That is, until now! Four of the thirteen new effects in BCC 6 revolve around 3D.

The four superstars of an already stellar line-up!

 

Let's take a look at what all of the new effects have to offer.

EXTRUDED TEXT & TYPE-ON TEXT

These two plug-ins go hand-in-hand, but serve very specific purposes. They are both not only very simple to use, but they are lightning quick to preview and render, and the look awesome (isn't that the most important??). Let's take a look at Extruded Text first. Apply a solid to your composition, then navigate to EFFECTS>BCC6 3D OBJECTS, and once either of them is applied, (I have applied the BCC Extruded Spline effect) you will be greeted by this screen.

Users of other Boris products, as well as FCP editors will recognize this window.

Final Cut Pro editors will be very familiar with this screen, as we have access to it from with our Boris Title 3D effect. This window is where you input and prep your font for the actual plug-in. Once you have your font the way you like it, simply click O.K., and you will now see it in true 3D.

You wouldn't believe how fast this rendered!

Now, if this was all the plug-in did, it would be nice, but now you can manipulate the 3D look of your font in almost every possible way you could imagine. Stick with one of the presets, or create your own. You can manipulate everything from the extrusion style to the materials (you can even quickly and easily add materials from your AE comps) to the transformation of not only your text as a whole, but also the tracking, leading and rotation of the individual letters as well. These two plug-ins also have a built in camera and lighting system that you can use to quickly change your shot's layout, OR, you can use the After Effects built in lights and cameras to really add that extra bit of control that animators and compositors crave. But wait, there's more! Users familiar with Boris Blue know and love the Deformers. Well, Boris has given us this awesome tool inside these plug-ins as well. Now you can add deformation to your 3D elements including Bend-Taper-Twist, Shatter, Ripple, Curl and Pulse.

The decision as to whether you use Extruded Text (ET) or Type-On Text (TOT) will depend on whether or not you want your text animating into or out of your shots. If you want to have a cool "type-on" effect (or even type-off for that matter), choose TOT, where you will have access to many (but not all) of the same parameters that you have in ET including the ability to use the AE Camera and lights. What this effect does give you that ET does not are a whole lot of animation presets for having your text fly in and out. Nice!

The Type-On Text presets!

 

EXTRUDED SPLINE

EXTRUDED SPLINE (ES) is exactly the same as ET except for one major difference. We are now able to take a spline (mask) that you create in After Effects or one that you have imported from Illustrator, and extrude it just as you would text with the ET plug-in. Inside this plug-in you have access to all the same parameters that you do in ET, including the deformers! I did a Plug-In Spotlight of this plug-in that you can check out by clicking here! The only downside to this plug-in is that you can only extrude one spline at a time, meaning you can't take a group of splines that make up a logo and extrude them at the same time from within the plug-in window. You are limited to one at a time!

Choose, but choose wisely!

LAYER DEFORMER

Why should ET, TOT and ES have all the fun with deformers? Now you can take any layer in your After Effects composition, and use it as a flat element, or apply it to a plane, sphere, cylinder, page curl or cube, and then curl, shatter, bend, pulse or ripple it however you want. I love the fact that Boris has taken the best "extra" parameter from the three previous effects, and gave it to us to have fun with, with any other element of our project.

One other thing that I want to mention is that all four of these plug-ins are OpenGL hardware-accelerated. What does that mean? Fast previews, and fast renders. I was blown away at how quickly these plug-ins took to preview. Let me say that these four effects are pushing After Effects in a direction that only a very few have gone before, and it looks like Boris is planning on leading the way when it comes to 3D from within After Effects.

CARTOON LOOK

For me, cartoon looks are kind of hit and miss. They're always a good idea in theory, but they never really pan out that well, and most plug-in packages seem to have one that is thrown in to, in my opinion, add another effect to sell the package. That's not the case here. The new Cartoon Look (CL) not only looks great, but Boris has added some interesting features inside the presets. CL has some "animated" presets that take your footage from "normal" to cartoon or vice-versa. When I took a look at this effect, I discovered another new feature of BCC6, and is that some of the presets included with BCC6 are animated, and you can choose whether to leave the preset for the current effect the way it is, or have the plug-in alter it to the length of your clip.

Very handy for presets that animate!

This plug-in is another example of a good, simple easy to use plug-in that doesn't bog the user down with too many options most of which we never use. Take a look at a cartoon look I created in about ten seconds.

Not only simple to setup and get great results, but it previews and renders lightning fast!

CHARCOAL SKETCH, PENCIL SKETCH & WATER COLOR

I have to say that I am always partial to effects like these, as they are great plug-ins to use to create slo-mo time lapses with. All three are very easy to use, quick to preview and render, and produce great looking end results. Take a look.

Water Color

 

Pencil Sketch

 

Charcoal Sketch

For me, the stand out of the three is definitely Water Color. I really like the overly saturated, and "smudgy" edges that the effect applies to the footage.

SMOOTH TONE

Did you ever think we would get to the point where footage is too clear? Well, it's true. I always joke with my wife that the one group of people out there who will hate high definition is make-up artists. Now with HD (and better compression technology), we can see every pimple, crease and imperfection on people's skin. That's where Smooth Tone comes into help. Do you have an HD shot where you can see problems with the make-up job that was done on your talent. No problem. Simply apply Smooth Tone, and it will take the edge off the shot, without blurring it. It also works great for shots that have a lot of noise in them. Take a look at what I mean.

Rollover image to see Smooth Tone in action!

DV FIXER & PIXEL FIXER

These two plug-ins focus on a very common problem that editors can run into. First, DV FIXER takes care of the "jaggies" inherent to DV footage. What the plug-in basically does it looks at your DV footage, analyzes it for sharp edges that occur "normally" when shooting DV, then takes those pixels and smoothes them out while maintaining all the other pixels in your frame.

PIXEL FIXER, on the other hand, takes care of the one thing that will drive an editor insane, and that is a dead pixel in your image. This plug-in will actually handle up to ten dead pixels, just in case your camera was really messed up. This used to be a tedious process of cloning pixels to cover over the problem. Now, the process is automated for you.

LIGHTNING

Lightning, another OpenGL hardware-accelerated effect, is much like Cartoon Look. Easy to apply, quick to preview and render, and the effect parameters are easy to navigate through. One thing that I really like about this effect is that it really is designed to be a lightning effect (a fork(s) of lightning coming down from the sky), and not a "surge of electricity moving from one point to another" effect (which you can do as well if you want to). Take a look at how realistic this effect looks with very (very) little work.

One of the best Lightning effects you will find

TILE MOSAIC

The last effect of the thirteen new effects is OpenGL hardware-accelerated as well, and let me just say that most people might quickly overlook this effect as they think that they don't need a mosaic effect, but the great thing about Tile Mosaic (besides the easy controls, fast preview and renders and a whole bunch of presets), is that you can get looks that you might not think of, like a needlepoint effect, for example.

Tile Mosaic disguised as needlepoint!

In the end, these thirteen new effects compliment an already stellar line up of previous effects such as UpRez, Pan & Zoom, Damaged TV and Color Choker (to name a few) that were added in BCC5, and Motion Key, Optical Stabilizer and Corner Pin Tracker (to name a few) that were added in BCC4. Boris has also added a few more enhancements to BCC6 including the ability to scroll through presets in the effects window, save and load motion tracking data, as well as either OpenGL or multiprocessor support for all plug-ins which mean faster preview and render times. As for the effects, in all, you are looking at just under two hundred that are now included in version 6 of BCC.

VALUE FOR YOUR DOLLAR

With competitors really dropping their prices on plug-ins, most people might dismiss BCC6 because of the $995 price, and yes, I will agree, that I do find that price a little high, but let me let you in on a little secret. There's a way better deal. What if I told you that you could get Boris RED, Boris Blue, Boris BCC AE, Boris FEC AE, Boris FEC AVX, Boris Title Toolkit for Windows, or Boris RED, Boris BCC FxPlug, Boris BCC AE, Boris FEC FxPlug, Boris FEC AE, Boris FEC AVX, Boris Title Toolkit and Media 100 Suite for Mac for the absolutely crazy price of $1995 US. That's right, all that software for that ridiculously low price. The new 3D effects that have been added to BCC6 make this package worth the cost of the upgrade (or full version), but to get the entire Boris lineup for your platform of choice for $1995 US is probably the best deal you will come across.

PROS

- 3D plug-ins are awesome!
- Deformer as it's own effect is a very, very welcome addition
- Tons of presets
- Effects preview and render quickly
- Beginners will be able to get in and create great looking effects quickly and easily
- Definately worth $995 for the 3D alone, and $1995 is a steal!

CONS

- People might be scared away by the price
- Extruded Spline only let's you work with one mask/spline at a time.(hey, I can dream, can't I)

Purchase Recommendation: The first "MUST HAVE" of 2009

Looking ahead, I can see BCC6 being on people's "Top 10 of 2009" list, as Boris has taken the one problem with After Effects (not "real 3D"), and has given us real 3D text with complete camera and lighting support, and has taken something that works exceptionally well in Boris Blue, Deformers, and added those as well. These, combined with all of the other great effects in the package, make it something that shouldn't be overlooked. For more information about BCC6, you can check it out at www.borisfx.com . I did this review using the newest version of Adobe's After Effects, CS4, and you can get more information on it at www.adobe.com. To save yourself $50 on the price of BCC6 for Adobe After Effects, you can pick it up from Toolfarm by clicking here! To save yourself $100 on the price of the Boris Box Set for Windows, you can pick it up from Toolfarm by clicking here! And, To save yourself $100 on the price of the Boris Box Set for Mac, you can pick it up from Toolfarm by clicking here!