Another great new streamlined ability is that After Effects can now generate a file type called “.XFL,” which Flash can import directly. This allows you to export the timeline you create in After Effects directly into Flash, minimizing the amount of animation you have to do in Flash. (Much like the new FCP XML importer in Premiere Pro, this setup behaves very similarly to Automatic Duck.)
Just like in Photoshop CS4 Extended, the integration of 3D has become more realized in After Effects CS4. The 3D cameras in After Effects can now be mapped directly to your different mouse buttons, so you can rotate around in 3D space much easier. (Just like most designated 3D programs.) Additionally, you can import 3D files of all types (as opposed to just the Vanishing Point Exchange format from CS3) from Photoshop CS4 Extended, with all of the 3D data intact. This can be an even simpler way to combine 3D environments with greenscreen footage in After Effects.
One completely new feature that’s been added to After Effects is the “Cartoon” plugin, which is designed to create more believable pseudo-animated work. (The ultimate example of this sort of work would be in Richard Linklater’s film A Scanner Darkly, where footage from a DVX100 was filmed and then rotoscoped after the fact by animators with digital pens and inks to create a very trippy, animated style.) While the power of this plugin is more pronounced than most cartoon plugins that I’ve seen from third-market creators like Boris and NewBlueFX, it’s still a little quirky and certainly isn’t perfect for all projects. However, it is a nice feature that can give you a pretty stylized look, especially if you’re doing shorter pieces, like short subject films or television commercials. (Obviously, we’ve all seen the Merrill Lynch commercials with this sort of animation.)
The XFL export tool in After Effects allows you to create a special timeline that Flash can import directly, and gives you control over exporting assets so they don't have to be recompressed in Flash.
Finally, another new addition that’s been added to After Effects is a free version of the $300 Imagineer Mocha-AE planar tracking program. (You may recall that we reviewed the standalone version of Mocha-AE a few months back.) The addition of Mocha-AE is a nice freebie for filmmakers, although the program is a little hit-or-miss (as you can tell from my review).
Photoshop CS4 Extended
All told, Photoshop probably got the most polishing in this release, as all of the things that were introduced in CS3 Extended, like video and 3D, were polished and corrected. For example, in CS3 Extended, you could paint on textures, which were then laid on 3D models through a complex series of steps. Now, you can paint directly on the textures on the object in 3D space. Additionally, you can drop logos and illustrations directly onto the surface of 3D objects, which can be a great way to add decals to cars and the like. Once you like your 3D model, you can now export it out as an .OBJ or the industry standard COLLADA format, an ability that CS3 did not have. Additionally, you can animate the model as video inside of Photoshop CS4 and export it out as a Quicktime without having to go into After Effects! (Obviously, greater power is available in AE for rendering, but it’s really impressive that you can do so much inside of Photoshop!)
Content Aware Scaling allows you to stretch and pull images, while keeping certain elements in perspective, like the surfers in this picture.
In the last release, you could stack images together and Photoshop could remove or augment certain elements. (The notable example of this involved a video stream from the Golden Gate bridge where Photoshop CS3 combined a stack of still captures and removed all “non-omnipresent” objects. With essentially one set of commands, all the cars and people on the bridge vanished.) Well, in CS4, they’ve refined that ability to even deal with elements that are out of focus. Most of us use our high resolution cameras for a variety of purposes and we tend to utilize the burst feature to hopefully get one picture that’s not blurred by our own shakiness. However, sometimes, you’ll get 10 pictures that all have at least one element blurred or out of focus. Well, you can now import that stack in Photoshop and Photoshop will find all the common parts and combine them into a single picture that is in focus and bright enough to easily see. (See Below)
Another impressive feature in Photoshop CS4 is the ability to take a stack of pictures, like this photo of books, and have it look for all parts that are in focus and clear. Once it has this information, it can combine them to make one crystal-clear image.
