Heavy Metal 2 – Giant Mecha 5.1 Surround Sound After Effects Template

5.1 Surround Sound After Effects Template

I’ve been wearing surround sound headphones for awhile now. I mean, the sound is fantastic, the movies sound incredible but haven’t done anything with them work-wise really. I kinda felt they were being wasted on films and gaming so I decided to come up with a 5.1 Surround Sound After Effects template. Now, I know, it may seem like overkill, after all most of my AE templates are short. but as an artist I am always trying to push the envelope and exploring new grounds, so the natural thing is obviously try to bring a more cinematic experience to my work. With people using more and more 5.1 and 7.1 sound technology, this was a logical step in the evolution of Nevermore Graphics.

Hit the break, to read more and watch the template in action!

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After Effects Template: The Conspiracy Theorist – Infographic/Intro

The Conspiracy Theorist: Conspiracy Cork Board After Effects Template

So… since last time’s conspiracy-themed After Effects template, I realized how much of its potential was wasted on a campy intro. Sure, it looks cool and all, but if you want something serious-er, it doesn’t quite work. So I decided to make a “serious” version, inspired by those those opening sequences at the beginning of conspiracy-themed films and tv series like the X-Files, Phenomenon: The Lost Archives, Fringe and others. It wasn’t just the fact that I love conspiracies and paranormal stuff, it was the fact that I really liked how that 3D effect could be accomplished inside After Effects without any 3rd party plugins and it’d still look good. So I devised a plan to create the entire template INSIDE AE. At first I wasn’t even sure it’d even work. Heck, I wasn’t even sure if it was possible to make it work AND be editable, so this was a “background process” in my head for days until I finally cracked it; From the right angle and the right speed, this thing could totally work! I’ve been using this technique for every single template I’ve done so far, although not for anything like this, but still, could it work?
So basically what I’m rambling about is the thumbtacks. Clearly it’s the most obvious protruding object in this picture. If the thumbtacks don’t work, the whole After Effects template falls apart. So I made a few tests and it worked. This was the green light. The thumbtacks were the linchpin around which everything else was revolving around, so naturally, when THAT worked, everything else fell into place.

After over 70 AE templates done, this one is, judging by the entire length and complexity of the composition, one of the most compact I’ve ever done. With only 40Mb of asset files and no third-party plugins needed.

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After Effects Templates: Mystery Files, Abduction, I see you and More!

After Effects Templates: Mystery Files, Abduction, I see you and More!

So it’s been awhile! What have I been up to, you might ask? Well… You might say it’s a Mystery! See what I did there? Get it? ‘Cause it’s the name of the After Effects template? Nothing? Ok… (._.)’

So anyway, I’ve been working on a series of really cool AE templates that, like Voltron, they all assemble together to form this one even bigger and more awesome template called “Mystery Files”. And what it is, is this 50’s/60’s style Sci-Fi kind of TV show intro that not only is mostly accomplished inside After Effects but it’s also modular! Meaning that you can move around the individual parts of this After Effects template and re-arrange them to create your own combination. And like I said, all of the elements inside this template are either rendered INSIDE After Effects or pre-rendered, which means that you don’t need any third party plugins to render this project! And yes, even though the file-size was a huge limiter for what we could get away with in this template in terms of editability, the parts that you can’t edit right away in this After Effects template are available with their own individual control panels in other templates. This is due to the fact that I couldn’t get away with cramming all of it into a single template because the combined file-size would’ve exceeded the maximum allowed in the template sites.

Hit the break and watch this and a few other NEW templates in action!

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After Effects Template: Procedural Shattered Glass Template

After Effects Template: Procedural Shattered Glass template

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Don’t we have enough crappy procedural shattered glass templates? Like… After Effects Does this automatically, right?!”
Well, yes. But look again. Notice anything strange? Yup. Exactly. This is not your typical Shatter Plugin template. In fact, I want you to pay attention to the borders of those glass shards. As you can see, they are molded to the shattered glass texture. In other words, there’s a custom-made shatter map. Meaning that someone (Namely your’s truly) sat there for hours making the shatter map by hand. So what is the whole point of this? Well, for starters, flexibility. What this means to you as the user of this After Effects template, is that you have 100% control over how that glass breaks. Maybe not in the immediate control panel, as this template was designed for that that specific logo stinger. But if you are savvy enough with After Effects you can turn this shattered glass template into basically ANYTHING involving breaking glass, since this is a 3D effect.

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After Effects 360 Template: Biohazard 360 – Loopable, Dynamic 360 footage

This is the second After Effects 360 Template I release and taking a few well-learned lessons from the last one, I decided to arm this one with as many customizing options as humanly possible, so it’s not just a simple tech corridor but basically, this is EVERY tech corridor. Early on during development of this AE template, I noticed that not everyone would want a Biohazard/Zombie infection-themed project, so I thought about releasing one after that and make it about some oil refinery, or perhaps a nuclear plant and it quickly became apparent that it would be easier to simply add the option to pick the setting and change the wall graphics. It wasn’t that hard for me to add, so I did. And speaking of which, this After Effects 360 template offers a quite a wide range of options to explore, in fact I think this is the most extensive Control Panel I’ve implemented to date. From the color of the general atmosphere and lights, to the color of the items inside the scene and wall graphics, this AE template is versatile and highly customizable.

Now, understandably, editing this project might be a little bit harder than any othe past ones, but I made a tutorial JUST for this project.

Hit the jump to watch it in action

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360 After Effects Template: Fire & Brimstone

360 After Effects Template: Fire & Brimstone

We start the year with a bang! And what a bang, people! What a bang! This is a fully loopable 360 After Effects template. Did I mention it is also fully editable and doesn’t require ANY plugins? I am not kidding! You can fully edit the 3D objects in the 360 panorama without the need for ANY external plugin at all! Not gonna lie, it took me awhile to crack this sucker, but when I did, a world of possibilities opened to me.
All is achieved through the clever use of After Effects native plugins, particularly distortion ones and, if you are not using any 3D plugins, you can do so from the same comp.

Now, understandably editing this 360 After Effects template is not as simple as previous ones, mostly due to the fact that, you guessed it, you have three hundred and sixty degrees of freedom here, rather than the traditional templates you are accustomed to. Lucky for you, I included a very thorough render and several helper objects such as nulls and z-depth pass, which you can use to occlude things. What’s more, your 360 After Effects template is separated in layers, which you can turn on and off or colorize so the degrees of freedom this template offers you are far greater than you think.

Now, let’s briefly talk about music. This AE template also includes loopable audio and music tracks, which means that you can extend it indefinitely without a noticeable cut.

Hit the break to watch the video in action.

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