The very long awaited and featured rain over water sequence is now complete in tutorial form! This tutorial is in 3 parts detailing the initial texture, creating the water, and creating the rain, all completely inside After Effects. This one has been a long time coming and i’ve had a lot of requests on how to do it so i hope this satisfies you guys. Any questions, you know where to ask them.


As mentioned in the tutorial, the hi-rez quicktime version of the effect can be found here right click, save as.

Hey guys, it’s been a little while, but with easter coming up i’ve got something to show you all i’ve been working on for some time. Presenting: The Online 3D Model Environment. Basically, as previously mentioned, it’s website embedded 3D world which will ultimately allow you to export your models from Max, Maya, Lightwave etc. to the website so friends and colleagues can check them out in full 3D online. You will need the latest version of Java installed to run it, which i suspect many of you will have since more and more software these days requires it (many have it installed without even knowing) but ultimately, the trick was to make non-standard openGL libraries available to those who don’t have it installed without requiring them to manually install them. Anyway, check it out, and let me know what you think.

Above is a little sneak-peak of something i’m working hard on, and rest assured it’s directly related to you guys and will essentially be a part of rhys-works.com, though with it’s own unique site. As for what it is exactly.. i can’t tell you that. Yet. A few hints maybe. I’m developing a fairly sizable Java program in openGL (real-time graphics rendering) that’ll allow you to embed your Maya and Max objects directly into a website in a fully 3D environment, so you can check yours and other people’s objects out online without worrying about screenshots from all sorts of different angles, that’s directly related to the new site.


For those of you interested it was designed in photoshop and is the first of this particular style i’ve attempted, as historically speaking i suck with photoshop, but no more hopefully. It’s been an interesting learning curve and i think i’m finally getting a proper handle on things.

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This cool effect in After Effects was made as part of an expressions mini-site i’m working on. You can come up with a tonne of different looking effects with this so have a play around and see what you can come up with. The tutorial itself is largely just an exercise in what you can do with stacking effects in AE, with a few extra tricks thrown in such as handling cameras and a tiny bit of expression work to make our life easier. Those of you who have watched previous expression tutorials will recognise the trend i’m going with in making a controller null object to handle all our composition variables.

As promised, the tutorial on creating a particle system purely with expressions in Adobe After Effects. AE offers a powerful scripting and expression language and in this tutorial we delve into some of the possibilties with expressions and expand upon the earlier Falling Drop tutorial by showing how you can replace plugin based particle systems with your own expression-based system.


Hey guys, i’ve been working on my modelling skills with Max just lately and decided to undertake a project to make the Firefly class ship from the popular show Firefly and film Serenity. Just a little point of interest, as i know so many of you like the series and i thought this was a pretty cool project to undertake as an re-introductory into the amazingly mindblowing world of 3D.

I’ve just finished an introduction to expressions tutorial where we create a type writer style effect in After Effects as a stepping stone into expressions, but also as a taster to the upcoming particle generator tutorial. Hopefully this will make some of the trickier aspects of expressions a little easier to understand for people unused to programming and be a good starter for future expression work.

Included in the tutorial:

• Pickwhip parenting
• Mathematical expressions
• The Math.round() method
• The time variable
• Expression controls


We all like to tinker around in 3D, so what about a rhys-works.com 3D tutorial in AE? I think it’s about time we played around in AE’s 3d space, there’s a lot of simple but stylish looks that can be pulled off, and of course it has many uses in creating realistic effects and composites.

As promised, the Falling Drops tutorial is complete.


You won’t need a particle generator for this one when I get out my expression-based particle system tutorial, coming soon. I mention this in the tutorial; basically i’ve got in the making a particle generator made of expressions rather than by a plug-in, that i’ll demonstrate this effect with. For the purposes of the length of this tutorial the expression-based particle generator will be released in another tutorial, for this one we’re using Particular. But fear not, this effect will be completely demonstrated without the need for said plug-in as soon as the expression tutorial is complete, so look out for that.


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