Avidion Media is a new software company that is showing some real promise, despite limited offerings. As it stands now, they only offer Synchronize, (a plugin for Mac versions of AE that will map variations in audio files to any keyframeable feature), and Real 3D, which is reviewed here. Real 3D is the effects package that is going to put them on the map. For a new piece of software, it produces results that made me say “Whoa, cool!” numerous times. I’ve never seen a plugin quite like it; it’s almost like a combination of Trapcode’s 3D Stroke and AlphaPlugins’ LensProIII, in that it combines the best of both to produce a huge amount of interesting effect variations in a simple to understand interface.
In essence, Real 3D will turn any After Effects layer into various sorts of particles, and will then allow you to control those particles in a variety of ways. For example, you can take a photo and convert it to a bunch of spheres, and then have those spheres disassemble and warp and fly across the screen. Or you can convert a text layer to a grid and zoom through it like a DNA strand, or have copies of it rotate around itself. You can also convert a layer to horizontal or vertical lines, to points (like stars or flecks of dust), or you can map the layer onto a texture. All of this can be done within After Effect’s 3D space, so you can setup lights and a camera to add even more customized visual flare to your project. Very cool stuff!
Using text with the Points Object Type and different Duplicate parameters produces amazingly kinetic results.
Ease of Use
Installation was super easy. It automatically detected my plugin folder and installed quickly. Once I added it to a layer in After Effects, it asked me for my serial number. Out of everything in the program, this is the only complaint I had: there was no cursor in the serial number entry box! I kept clicking in there over and over, thinking my computer had frozen up, because I never saw a cursor. Then I started typing, and realized what had happened. Once I got past that and authorized the software, I dived right in and was very pleasantly surprised by what I found.
I’m big on trying to jump into a piece of software without using the manual. I like to just mess around with the parameters and see what happens. In other plugins, I often find that the parameters’ names are so confusing, or that there are so many of them, that I have no idea where to begin, which gets overwhelming. Another common problem that annoys me is when you change a parameter, and see no noticeable effect. Why is it there if it seemingly doesn’t do anything?
Luckily, Real 3D avoids both of these problems. It is very intuitive to use, and the parameters are all properly labeled and actually do what they say they’re going to do, usually with very dramatic results. The only thing I noticed about the parameters that was a little weird is that, in a lot of them, you really have to crank up the numbers to get the expected results. In most plugins by the time you get to 100 on a parameter, you’ve usually gone past what you wanted and your composition is a mess. Here you can get to 1000 on the parameters and still not hit chaotic levels. I’d probably scale down some of the parameters (particularly the x, y, z ones) by a factor of 10, just to conform to the familiarity of AE’s own built-in parameters.
