How to make a Simple Spin Logo Animation Part 2

March 25, 2010

In part 2 of this tutorial, we take our 3D render into After Effects to composite and finish the scene. I show you how to use glow, curves, blurs, and levels to color correct the scene and add some shine. I also show you how to make a fun stripe animation using Precomps and a Track Matte.

Final Animation

Watch Part 1 of This Tutorial

39 Comments

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  1. Sharez Rafiq on March 25, 2010 said...

    just LOVED it. You are awesome Nick.

  2. Tim on March 25, 2010 said...

    I really appreciate the effort you made in the end section regarding making your OWN shit. I see so many reels that are just very slight rehashings of tutorials I’ve seen online–usually with much worse art direction.

    Having said that, I’d like to see more reel critiques. They were really helpful and just interesting to see what you’re thinking about different designs and animations.

  3. Jason Hadley on March 25, 2010 said...

    I agree with you, i hate seeing reels made up of tutorials. Every so often I go strolling on vimeo through the motion reel channel and it’s inevitable that I find a tutorial on someone’s reel. Thank you for addressing this!

  4. Bran on March 25, 2010 said...

    too close to mic :)

  5. thejoltjoker on March 25, 2010 said...

    i like your speech in the end :)
    i never actually follow the steps in tutorials, i just watch them to learn techniques. but i’ve seen a LOT of andrew kramer copies (my stuff probably looks a lot like his too though).

    i’ve just started watching your tutorials but i already love them ^^

  6. Achraf dahmani on March 25, 2010 said...

    hi gorilla u r now on my top 3 VFX websites i like you very much! oh im so happy i found you ur are so cool and what i like about this tutorial is you advises that you give’s us that you should not copie others projets cuz its not professional work we need to look up for some thing original but with the help of the tutorials (like yours) ;)
    thanks again for the tutorials and all what i want to say is keep up the good work and bring some more tutorials lol bey bey

  7. Jake on March 25, 2010 said...

    Agreed! Sites like this should really be used as workflow studies, not cheap content generation. In the end though, people who use tutorials in a reel are really only hurting themselves; motion graphics as an industry is well connected.

  8. Achraf dahmani on March 25, 2010 said...

    and nick for the font i found one realy similar to the one used on the video and i like to share with you , it’s a free one u can download it from here and btw it’s called “Twist”
    http://img.mywindowspc.com/wg/0906/fonts/twist.zip

    and here is a photo of it http://img.mywindowspc.com/wg/0906/fonts/twist.jpg

  9. Renzo on March 25, 2010 said...

    Hi Nick,
    Great tutorial! But..
    “The human genome project or some crap like that, you know what I mean.”.. Common dude!

    The wotate thing made me really laugh! Keep ‘em comming, I love your vids.

    Greets, renzo (nl)

  10. suraj es on March 25, 2010 said...

    hi. love your creations and the expressiveness..
    a small help here

    im trying to do an animation like this

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYcuV2mye54

    can you help me out with the ideas in cinema 4d!!

    Matt Frodsham

    this would be after effects I’d think. Just lots of clever precomping and a lot of keyframes with some shiny floor reflections (there’s tutorials about, maybe Kramer has one I think)

    suraj es

    yes..but see the rotating cube animation..how would you do that in ae?it has to be a 3d program.but i tried it in c4d by changing the axis and rotating the cube..but once the axis is shifted and keyframed..the second axis shift is altering my first key frame

    Rado

    hi,

    u could create a 3d cube with 6 layers in After Effects,parented to each other and than keyframe the cube per position

    maybe this will help u:

    http://greyscalegorilla.com/blog/2009/08/how-to-align-3d-layers-perfectly-in-after-effects/

    suraj es

    how is hat going to help me with that “flipping and moving forward” cube?!

    Rado

    “flipping and moving forward” are actually basic skills in after effects,maybe u should get familiar with it at first.

    hm,it should help u to create a nice cube,then parent the layers to each other from the top to the bottom and change your anchor point to this position where u want to rotate it. I checked it out and works fine.

  11. Klas on March 26, 2010 said...

    You are the man Nick! I always pick up some new cool technique or idea when I watch your tutorials. Super!
    The words at the end are so true….I know I have been copying looks and techniques, but it is a great way to learn. And all the things I have learned has given me the tools to do exactly what you said…to do my own thang :)

    So once again, thanks for all the help you provide!!

  12. Roderick on March 26, 2010 said...

    Sweet like warm apple pie :) .
    BTW i was at an Adobe conference yesterday because of CS5 and there was a guy from Maxxon. So I asked him the question why you have to put the text into a Null. Well, no surprise, he didn’t exactly know but his thought was that the text used from the mograph has some in-depth layers. The fracture object doesn’t know which one to take. So when you “group” the text into a Null the fracture DOES know what to do. Don’t know if this makes any sense…but that’s what he told me.

  13. CsmCastellar on March 26, 2010 said...

    Hello Gorilla!! for when the tutorial of pblurb! KORB Style! Thanks ..

  14. Ramzes on March 26, 2010 said...

    Nick, thank you so much for your tutorials, you are great teacher!I’ve learned a lot from you:) thanks man

  15. Achraf dahmani on March 26, 2010 said...

    now i want to shre the best motion effects i ever seen in my whole life
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Xa4bHcJu8
    comment

    Borislava

    dont understand what’s so clever about this piece. its cute. nothing more. saw alot of comments and was published alot the last week. kinda bored me.

    Matt Frodsham

    This reminds me of a nightmare I had when I was a kid. No joke. Only the teddy’s were giant toy lions. Great haha

    Achraf dahmani

    hh lol i hope u pass it

    Achraf dahmani

    nick can you please give us an idea how this was made i mean the car think.
    thanks very much

  16. suraj es on March 26, 2010 said...
  17. MarcyVF on March 27, 2010 said...

    Yeah nice speech at the end lol. Amen to that!

    Thanks for tha tut.

  18. Gon on March 27, 2010 said...

    Its true what you say in the last part, people usually and always follow tutorials with fear and never experiment. I always try to think out the box, i feel thats what crativity is all about.

  19. Borislava on March 27, 2010 said...

    nick this is for you and everyone.
    CS5 coolest new element preview:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NH0aEp1oDOI&feature=player_embedded

  20. Vladimir on March 27, 2010 said...

    Hi, Nick…
    I followed your tutorial and find very handy to use cs_easyCAM2…But it will be very cool to use CS like setup for multiple targets…does it exist similar plugin? (I tried to play with cs_moCam, but it wasn’t successful)…Thank you for tutorial

  21. Andre Friedman on March 27, 2010 said...

    Hey,Nick.I am monitoring smth like 10-15 compositing sites on a daily basis,watching tuts from motionworks,red giant,maltaanon,videocopilot you name it and I have to say,that your creativity surprises me more and more from one tutorial to another.Keep on doing that,dude.You’re really skilled compositor.You know,what you do and you do it right.Good for you,man!What’s the deal with the keyboard behind you?Do you play piano or just cubase looping :) ?

    The Gorilla

    Thanks, Andre! That means a lot! As for the keyboard, I try to play as much as i can. I took lessons when I was younger. Music is my first passion.

  22. Ramzes on March 27, 2010 said...

    Nick, can you tell us, what kind of sound effect we can use with this animation?))

    The Gorilla

    You can use anything that makes you happy. Experiment and upload what you come up with. I would love to hear it.

  23. Magic on March 28, 2010 said...

    hey hey, where are all the vimeo links?;)
    On previous tuts after a day they would start to fill this space.
    Allthough I totaly agree that a demo reel made up of followed tutorials issen’t much of a showcase for what one can do creatively, it merely show one can follow tutorials. And for a profesional motion designer that might not be what one wants.

    But for an amateur like me these tutorials are like following classes, I realy like learning new stuff, and I would like to show my teacher what I made afterwards.

    So here is my version :)
    I already had done some AE after the first part and although I tried part 2 on the same rendering, I decided leave it as ait was before.

    http://www.vimeo.com/10431920

  24. nikita on March 28, 2010 said...

    hey nick,
    I love your tuts and the way you explain things and get through problems! I did he spin tutorial and I’m wondering how I can use this techique to “morph” from one word to another… is it possible? thx a lot for all the stuff you post

    Matt Frodsham

    have a search for pBlurp. It’s like an automatic TP thing (literally 1 node – I know nothing about TP and got it working when I was first learning c4d) You drop 2 shapes in and they cut up and morph into one another

  25. Jasper on March 29, 2010 said...

    Thanks! I used part of the tutorial for this clip:

    http://vimeo.com/10501794

  26. Santi on March 29, 2010 said...

    Awesome tutorial, thanks Nick!!!

  27. Mario Moreno on March 30, 2010 said...

    great tutorial, this is my own version http://vimeo.com/10558386

    Thnaks Nick

    James

    I really like how your outlines are still there and only the slabs move. Cool trick!

  28. James on March 30, 2010 said...

    Here’s my attempt. I took it a little further for fun.
    http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=10566681

  29. Vishal Jain on March 30, 2010 said...

    Hey Nick,

    Thanks for all the tutorials you’ve done.
    Please take a look at this http://www.motionserved.com/Gallery/Discovery-Rebrand/448640Can you do a tutorial to do this or point me to a place where I can learn to do something similar?
    Thanks :)

    Mario Moreno

    Hey Vishal de link doesnt work…

    and James thanks for the comment, your version its great too!

    Vishal Jain

    Don’t know why. But look up Discovery Rebrand. It’s there

    Vishal Jain

  30. joe on April 1, 2010 said...

    “let’s rock this mother fu–uhh puppy here”

  31. ScottCorey on April 2, 2010 said...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRkhglLReLw

    C4d r10, so I don’t have dynamics and the cool stuff.
    First try, still learning, I think it could still use some work.

  32. vd on April 2, 2010 said...

    hey Nick! thanks a lot for ur amazing tut.

    my result:
    http://vimeo.com/10629145

    i couldn’t add music :( is anyone help me?

  33. Janchukinjsh on April 2, 2010 said...
  34. kamal on April 3, 2010 said...

    hi nick.. this is my first comment on watching the first tutorials of yours… I’ve a problem man.. when i render the simple spin logo animation it takes a lot of time.So when I decide to render the not rendered part for the next day. It gives me other results..Its totally different from the rendered Images of the previous day…can you help me with this.
    I’ve Maxon C4D 10.5

  35. Rich Emery on April 22, 2010 said...

    Here is my version of your tutorial
    and I can believe how long it took to render 4 seconds on my MBP but it was fun

    http://vimeo.com/11139866

  36. lizardwizard on July 1, 2010 said...

    hey gorrila wasup??
    first of all i gotta say im kinda new in the 3d buisness and you are such a big help man really i learned alot!
    i have a question bout the spin tut, do you think its normal that the final render in c4d took me 5:38 hours?? anti aliasing was best 2X2…
    im using a dell studio 1555 win7 64 bit
    lots of ddr a radeon HD 4570 graphic card…
    any thoughts bout that?
    your tuts rock man keep it up.

    The Gorilla

    That seems awfuly long to me. There must be something else on. Maybe Ambient Occlusion?

  37. K on August 6, 2010 said...

    Thanks for a great tutorial!
    http://vimeo.com/13908228

  38. mungkey on August 12, 2010 said...

    Thanks nick. love the tutorials and I learn a lot. I’m beginning to love this c4d & ae thing, thanks to you.

  39. PEacedog on August 15, 2010 said...

    NIck,

    Loved the tut! Tried to do a little something different with it, like you suggested in the reels video. Won’t be including this on any reels though! Great way to animate text!

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