In this tutorial, Aharon Rabinowitz shows you how to create a awesome force field effect in Adobe After Effects – with no 3rd-party plug-ins. He’ll also cover some basic color correction techniques.
Warning: This tutorial is almost 40 minutes long. Go get some snack and hit the head before you sit down to this one. You may also want to tell your spouse your going out to buy groceries and then sneak back in through a window so you can have some quiet time. Hint: Use headphones & close the door.
Oh, and apologies in advance to Andrew Kramer and J. J. Abrams…
152 Responses
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Hay, Andrew OOOOOO, !????!!!!!?, Aharon Rabinowitz
YOU ARE GREAT ALSO
GREAT TUT. A.R.
Very cool tutorial Aharon….not Andrew…I love all your tuts, since the first ones in Creative Cow from these recent ones. Aharon, not Andrew…Rabinowitz, not Kramer…
Aharon,
Loved the tutorial. Brilliant concepts and execution. You always get me excited about the infinite creative potential of After Effect. You are the master!!!
The best tutorial I’ve ever seen. I could not wait for this.
You doing better and more interesting TUT. than Andrew Thanks a lot Aharon. I can not wait for the next 1
Wonderful! Thanks a lot Aharon! My first comment ever but I follow you from a long time!
Thanks again!
Ciao!
thank you ! great stuff and… ahn… mr. rabinowitz. (sorry you asked for it
). i like your tutorials and ive learned so mutch from you and all the other guys on creative cow. yes, there is a “but”,… but it would be nice if you could skip showing us where to find “copy, paste” or use the right mousbutton more often 
… you know what i mean 
someone who installed after effects and does not know the shortcuts for copy-paste …its one in a million 
(sorry, for my english)
1st of all i really thanks you aharon for your tut’s.
2nd guys you don’t need to mention Andrew here, on the other hand both are frineds and there is no need to do your BLAH BLAH stuff.
Just relax, learn and try to thank.
Sleem Out
Just so we’re clear, I was joking around. This isn’t a competition. I think Andrew Kramer’s stuff is top notch. Most of the time I see his stuff and wish I was half as creative as him. But I’m glad you enjoyed the tutorial.
Sleem – feel free to use the fast forward button for anything you don’t want to hear.
nice tuts A.R
very2 cool
Great tutorial, it’s very similar to a Halo-esque force field which is something I’ve really been looking forward to….
…now how about that shadows tut?
Great stuff
yeah… yeah… I know. Really been meaning to do that tutorial, but after seeing that halo video, i HAD to do this one.
Andrew JJ Rabinowitz, from all bets are copilot.
Awesome Tutorial!…very informative, and your jokes were funny..well most of them…LOL!!
You rock Andrew!
I agree with Peter. Skip Copy and Paste. We will strike
Or make a tutorial about shortcut and sey I will not explain this I cover that in my shortcut tutorial. Thank you once again
for jokes, my target audience is:
1. Males
2. Who are my age
3. Who are me
If anyone else laughs, it;s a bonus, but I just want to have fun while making them, and it’s hard to use a Slip ‘n Slide while recording, so making jokes is the next best thing.
thx a lot, it was very informative and u show us some nice tricks.
hahahah you are soo funny!
I follow you since creative cow to, and I learned AE thanks to your Tuts. So Thanks Aharon, you rock!
i don’t get the video player to work, so i can’t watch your tutorials… what can i do?
Hey, nice Andrew!
I am just joking
great tutorial, thanks Aharon
Hmmm. Try clearing out your cache and trying again. Or maybe upgrade your Flash Player plug-in.
great tut keep up the good work
WOW!!!! I’d say coolest tut yet! But I must say, I think you pretty much scared that guy who called you Andrew away. You just roasted him in front of all your fans! Poor guy….now hes gotta change his name and move to Mexico…..or just change his comment entry name.
But really, AMAZING tutorial. Very involved but absolutely worth it. This effect would be even more dynamic if combined with 3D tracking. I’d love to see someone do a 360 around it. That would also require a 360 greenscreen and precisely places markers. But anyways…awesome, keep it up!
Oh and I’ll see you in NY! Can’t wait to see your presentation!
well… better for him to change his name then me…
Seriously – I WAS KIDDING AROUND (well, mostly). I appreciated that he or she even commented – but I thought I;d have some fun with it too.
Bad news about NY – I haven’t posted it yet, but I won’t be able to be there for AENY. I messed up with scheduling really badly… I;m actually really mad at myself for it. It will probably have to be next month. So sorry.
That’s funny. I never noticed people getting your name wrong before. : )
But lets face it, you guys are both awesome, so I wouldn’t worry about it too much.
I would have to agree with “Peter” on the fact that showing how to “copy/paste” can be a little on the annoying side. Because, like “Peter” said, everyone knows stuff like that.
Other than that, dude, keep up the good work.
I have been watching your tutorials for pretty much 1/7 of my life!
P.S. I think it is cool how you reply to peoples comments on the blog, because “Communicating” with the “Big Man” is pretty cool. : )
Aww that sucks. But hey, I can’t complain. The meeting is free and you already give us all this awesome stuff here. Besides it’s once a month-ish so no biggie. I can wait……….sort of.
Great tutorial. Really inspiring. When I saw you post the preview my jaw dropped. And now I think I need to go see the dentist. haha
Awesome!
Great tutorial. When I saw you post the preview my jaw dropped. And now I think I need to go see the dentist. haha
Sorry about the double post. I had troubles with my internet.
Great Tuts Mr. Aharon. Long but explained well tutorial. I like the way you do things around explaining every move you make. Even beginners can follow you. Looking forward for more great and amazing tutorial. Hey do you accept some “REQUEST TUTORIALS”?
This was great. Your tutorial style has changed up a bit (in a good way) since producing them on your own turf. More familiar. But they are still very informative as well as entertaining. And you “are” a dead ringer for Abrams. Hilarious!
Most people (my wife for instance – illustrator – does a lot of interfacing with print people) pronounce it “sigh – ann” – cyan
At the end of the tut you talked about comp and pre comp sizes and their relationship to camera moves and what not. That’s a real hole in my own education with AE. I’ve been searching the net from some clear concise – baby steps – on that concept – topic. You’ve already given me so much but on the selfish side if you could find time to share more of that kind of thing I for one would benefit and greatly appreciate it.
Thanks Aharon you are top notch. I’m moving to Atlanta at the end of the month so I won’t be making it to AENY meetings after May. But I’m considering starting an AE users group down there. Maybe you or Jim won’t mind if I contact you via email to get some advice and tips on how to do that. And, Maybe we can get you guys down there in the future as special guest stars.
Sorry for the blog post on the comments section : – )
Best wishes,
jim
thanks Aharon Rabinowitz
ilove you andrew kramer
iam goran in iraq kurdistan
you know i love your tutorial because you give my very technical tutorial and tips tha’t i didn’t find in any other website
thanks’ aharon rabinowitz
you are the best
OK – You’re right abut the cut paste thing. Let me think about that some more.
I love communicating with people here. If you send me an email, I’m less likely to respond, but only because I get about 200 E-mails a day – mostly work related – and emails tend to get buried. there are about 900 unread emails in my inbox (I read everything, but I mark anything I don’t have time to respond to as unread, in the hopes that I will someday get a chance to get back to that person). I always do my best to respond to you here, as the comments don’t get buried as much.
Andy, You should go twice a year. Which reminds me that Monday I need to make a call. I am way overdue…
Richard, I’m always listening. No promise on if it will get done, though. If I feel it has merit and I can do it well, I will certainly try.
Khaled, To me, the most important thing is that you walk away from one of my tutorials with information you can really use. So I’m glad it’s helping you in that way.
Sure Jim. You know how to reach me. Good luck.
“I love communicating with people here. If you send me an email, I’m less likely to respond, but only because I get about 200 E-mails a day”
That’s cool, you actually replied to about three of my emails in the past. : ) If you click on the link on my name here (my vimeo), and look at a couple of the videos there, you will probably vaguely remember me. : )
I do remember you. i think I said something like “great work you sick, sick bastard… My finger hurts. ” If I didn’t, I meant to. Nice stuff. But really, my finger hurts just watching it… Very well composited. Plus your face there was priceless.
Aharon Rabinowitz do you have DVD new Toturial ?
thanks somuch
Hi Goran – nope. for now – I’m just giving stuff away for free.
Hey great tutorial as always.
I love your Tutorials so much … you show me technics that would my project Great instead of good
MFG Warti
ok thanks Aharon Rabinowitz
Hi Aharon,
Your tutorials look great but for some reason I can not
watch them.
The page loads, but the player and video does not.
I have tried a few things but to no avail.
Instead of trying to work it out, could I please ask you to
just place a download link for your video tutorials next to
where you place your download links for the Project Files.
That way people who have problems could just direct
download the tutorial and watch it on their computer.
Regards
Martin Hancock.
Hi Martin – Try a different browser or updating your flash player. That should solve the problem,
pretty powerful tutoriral!
amazing I enjoyed it really.
It seems that you have done lot of mathematics to figureout the right input values. well I am very poor in matematics actually I hated when I was kid. but it seems nessesary. its better to know a little bit of matematics to achieve the look you expected than messing around with value to get the right look and wasting a lot of time.
anyway thanks for the tutorial.
you really inspired me to do something new.
Awesome Awesome Tutorial Sir Aharon Rabinowitz
Thanks Andrew! I love these kind’ve tutorials.
Very very very funny Aharon
I love your jokes since CreativeCow but I must admit…..It’s getting better.
Thanks for the tutorial !
Just wanted you to know how great your stuff is and how I really appreciate all the time you take to help out the community! It’s people like you, Andrew, Eran, Maltaannon and so many others that make it a great community. So, thank you. I can honestly say I learned EVERYTHING from you guys. I was just a web dude before I stumbled upon your sites. It made me want to learn the program. Great job!
Like everyone else I truly enjoy your tutorials for a very long time now along with Andrew Kramer’s and Aaron Stern. I’m sure you’ve been asked before, but what kind of machine spec wise do you use? I always imagine you guys rocking a quad core beast, SLI/CROSSFIRE RIG, TONS of ram , HDD, etc. It always seem that you guys can scrub through your comps so quick and I’m like having to put scrub through with quarter resolution just to get things done in time, lol. Anyway, thanks for the great tut!
My Main PC is a quad core Xeon with 8GB of RAM (although I’m on 32-bit, so I don’t really get that much ram out of it) I eventually p;an to go 64-bit on windows, but not all of the software I use is 64-bit yet. My primary Mac is 8-core, 16GB RAM. Pretty powerful machine. But by no means does it rip through AE at top speed.
When you see those videos of a RAM preview, I cut out the time spent queuing up the RAM preview. No one wants to watch that.
WOW!
you were very entertaining! Thank you for the CC tips and the cool techniques, I learned so much in this tutorial – can´t believe it´s free!
Great Tutorial and Aharon
Hey Good job JJ.. im a big fan of star trek.
Himalarious intro…you should really do a weekly show like those guys on Layers andrew…errr.aharon. You know it would really help if you guys didn’t start your names with A. Great stuff, love the fact you use built in fx and no 3rd party plugs. keep up the good work, btw love the site design, haven’t been here in awhile, really nice.
Wonderful Tutorial Mate,
Very nice outcome as well.
I guess we’re looking at 20 pages script at least! WOW.
oh BTW – I get people calling me by your name. I always found it funny
Eran – A little more than that actually, but pretty close. As far as our names go… yeah – I hear that too. Maybe we should just go by our last names.
Hi Aharon,
Well I fixed my problem with viewing your video tutorials.
The Fix was called: Upgrade to IE8
Regards
Martin Hancock.
great tuto of 38minuts thanks i have made a lot of video effects but in 2003 look at this
search for DJREX in youtube ! (^_^)
Hi Aharon,
WOW, Great Tutorial ever, How did come up with these amazing tips ha ?
Now , Now How could we put some more realism to the whole scene like Light Reflection on the floor and the Actor and make the BG react by the force field ?
Can I save the completed Force field as Library to use it again without re creating it from scratch.
Thanks The Most Great Aharon,
Hay Aharon thanks for the tuts all of them and keep the jokes coming your great for even doing this.
Tiffer… from Scotland
Hey andrew I love all youre tutorials and i am allways going to youre site video copilot!!! Ok sorry about that i was just kinda jokeing, Love the tutorial
Great tutorial, really good concepts! Thanks!
Aharon, i mean basically, if I were to describe you in a sentence or two, ya it would definitely be something like “Aharon is the man.” I guess that is just they one sentence, but hey, I said “One OR two”. Regardless- it still stands as truth.
Thanks,
Hi Aharon, you also making nice tutorials, recently I also found you
thx… all kinds of tutorials are appreciated
Fryguy… well… maybe a little bit.
Seriously, I’m glad this stuff is helping you. Otherwise there’d be no point in doing it. Thanks for watching!
awesome tut! useful stuff here thanks:D
excelentr tutorial, muchas gracias Aaron por compartir tus conocimientos con la raza…gracias a ti he aprendido mucho de AE eres un chingon.
Viva Mexico Cabrones
PS Andrew es un pendejo
Funny stuff Andrew, er, Aharon.
Really cool, and entertaining.
Hey Aharon this really is one of the coolest tutorials you have done so far, I sure hope they keep getting cooler and that you keep making them, I have learned a lot from you in the years tah you have made tutorials, thanks for sharing your knowledge Andr…Aharon, Aharon.
Hey! Thanks Mr. Aharon for the reply. I’m very glad you respond to my comment. Whether you’ll grant my favor or not, it’ll be okay for me. Well anyway, here’s my LITTLE request..
(excited!) maybe you watched the movie Bedtime Stories? I really love and very amaze in their intro. It’s like a book that’s being open then pictures pop-up, kinda like that.(can’t really explain it sorry) For me it’s a very beautiful FX and really starving for a tutorial on it. Can’t find any in the web and my request in some Tutorial Site didn’t get any respond. So, hoping you’ll grant my wish Mr. Aharon, but if it’s not, well then it’s okay. I’m sure next tutorial will also be great..
Thanks in advance and God Bless..
Thanks Andrew Rabinowitz ! A great tutorial with some really useful tips, I will steal all of your idea’s.
It’s only steeling if I wasn’t giving it away. But if you do “steel” it and make something cool, please let me know!
very nice tutorial. I play halo 3 and edit videos so this effect really looks quite amazing.
Thanks andrew!
Aharon……. vous êtes un seigneur, un grand
Mazal tov on the new tutorial, the new site design, the new job and the new baby (not all in that order).
You’ll proaably be seeing a variation of this in one of my web video series soon. -R
Relik – you put it up (and let me know about it), and I’ll blog it for you.
I saw a short film a while ago-http://devoidofyesterday.com/#video-and at the end the young boy unleashes his anger (which looks exactly like this tut you did) and I have tried to do this effect for a while now with no success. This tutorial which you did, it is one of those things that you can only hope for and sit and wait. This is truly one of those “GREAT” tuts that we luckily can get our hands on and for free none the less. Just wanted to say thank you Aharon.
Great job Aharon, thank you!
Cracking Tut Aharon!! Full of nice tricks, parts of Ae I’ve never ventured down before and a really neat and nicely polished finish!!
Nice tut Andrew. For some reason your not as funny as you used to be. Thanks anyway though
Well, if you’re looking for GOOD jokes, try http://www.comedycentral.com/
First of all, that was an AWESOME tutorial !!!!!!!!!!
Second ,your audience is not only males…
Third, we are always starving for your tuts……
Thank you Aharon
Hi Aharon,
First of all, thank you for the awesome tutorial.
Is there a tutorial how you seperate the character in a video and the background scenery?
I think you are talking about Rotoscoping. If so, check out Pete O’connell’s Creative Cow Master Series Training DVD on the subject: http://store.creativecow.net/p/74/advanced_rotoscoping_techniques_for_adobe_after_effects – It’s great!
hey aharon very cool tutorials got here,try to make all of them like this one u know…movie style. u rocks.
thanks from israel.
Aharon, great tut. I’ve just found your website here and will be back for every new tutorial. I much prefer them to the podcasts via the Cow.
hello nice tutorial Aharon !
I can’t do this because i dont have the Polygon thing is this something to download ?
Hokkinho – Shape Layers are available in After Effects CS3 and CS4 only.
You could always just create the hexagons with a solid and masks.
man u rock rly loving this effect ,nice way ot teaching ,and kinda funny which helps alot xD,thanks for this man ^^ ,just question ,what was the product u said that helps instead of doing the color correction (curves,etc) ?
Hemagoku – the product was Magic Bullet Looks which you can find at http://www.redgiantsoftware.com/ – it was created by Stu Maschwitz, One of the the visual FX supervisors for Sin City.
thanks i ll check it ^^ ,and just 1 more question ,is there a way to make preview load while i am doing something else ? cuz at the moment i click away the preview stops ,and i can’t wait like 10min to load few seconds xD
hemagoku – to Ram preview while you work, you need GridIron Software’s Nucleo Pro 2. http://www.gridironsoftware.com/
thanks man i ll check that one 2 ^^ ,and its rly nice to see u r pretty active ,and caring for comments ^^ ,thanks again ^^
super cool tutorial.
I found another force field tutorial online, but yours is far superior. You really know your stuff, and waste no time. Thanks, and great job!
Just today, I was watching the Halo 3 Trailer, and noticed the force field.
I had watched your tutorial a few weeks ago, and I immediately remembered it
rly nice Tutorial, Andr… erm … Aharon, i mean
some greetings from germany
I didn’t have time to read all the comments…so if anyone already asked this please forgive me. Could you use a ripple effect for displacement for when something large hits your force field so that it caves a bit, but not buckles? It could reverberate around the sphere maybe? You know, shake not stirred.
Hey Aharon
First. Great tutorial man… it really helped me. But I just wondered about you didn’t put more effort in the energy ball hitting the shield. I mean. What is the meaning of creating a shield, and not knowing how to make something hit it?
Thank you so much for this one, I have learned so much from you Aharon. Easy to follow along with, adding some pauses along the way, cause I am slower than you are.
great work man
keep on doing and plzzz share with us so tht we could learn.
thanks alot
keep rolling…..
Very very Thanks Best of best tutorial!
고맙습니다>ㅅ</
Awesome tutorial Aharon!
Have been following your videos since your days at Creative Cow and this is probably the best combination of effects I have seen in your tutorials so far. Also had a great pace to it.
Keep up the good work!
Hey Aharon Rabinowitz.. I’m Very sorry to call like Andrew. You know I’m BIG FAN of ANDREW KRAMER Since when He started his Tutorials. When I posting reply on this site I thought it’s a Andrew site by mistake (of course at that moment I’m watching his One of the best Tutorial..)… any way you are same as like him…
I’m Very sorry soooooooooooooooooorry!!!!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws75hvAb3uI
here is my try. Thanks a lot!
Good tutorial Mr. Aharon! and never give up in the crazy guys comments. Thanks!
Awesome tutorial And…. LOL Just kidding =P And it is one of the coolest tutorials so kudos Aharon =D (See i got it)
Hey…um…your name is PHIL, right?
Amazing tutorial, not just in the “nuts and bolts” aspect but in the way it helps define a way of THINKING your way through an effect (and in using After Effects in general. I have a project going right now that parts of this will help me out A LOT!
Again Aharon, many thanks and keep up the good work!
Thanks Bucky. I’m so glad you GET it! It’s not about the final effect, it’s about learning the process that brings you to the end result so that you can use the techniques in your own work. I doubt many people will need to create this exact effect, but they will be able to use the techniques from the tutorial to create other effects that use the same principles. At least, that’s my goal.
Hey! Nice tutorial! I’m new to this, and have been struggling to create a force field for a school project. I managed to get a bad looking one together, and this tutorial finished it for me!
Anyways, I’m extremely new to After Effects, and I was wondering, how would I make the shield effect come up for all sides of the bottom to top. (Like the Atlantis shield if you watch Stargate Atlantis) I’d be forever grateful if you answered.
it’s amazing!!!
i prefer you than andrew kramer!!!ehehe, every videoreel is full of videocopilote tutorials!! i love yours!
and i’m a girl!!!not only males use AE!!eheh
noone after effects course it’s useful like yours tutorials!!
really good work…thanks!!!
Well the tutorial is awsome !!! But … could you just put the actual effect on the website as an .aep file
Many Thanks
ur the man, andrew is to mainstream, i dont liek him and hes jokes…
I can’t watch this tutorial… is the link broken or is it just me?
(I’m in China)
Devin – it works fine for me. It plays at vimeo.com. Can you play any other videos from Vimeo?
For all those commenting maliciously: you can’t even do quarter of what Aharon does- yours is to come over and steal ideas and then leave negative comment(s) behind– If u know so much, then stay away and never look back.
If you’ve got Andrew and Aharon is that not a PLUS for us all. Why make it a competition btw them.
And for Aharon: Pls, always try and edit ur tuts short.
Thanks Aharon , kinda complex tutorial but its worth it to get this awesome effects .
Cheers mate
I agree with everyone here that this tut is awesome! I tried to design a poster for my mini project with these effects on a logo but it turned out all wrong. Haha. I think I used the wrong subject matter. Finally, I decided to use the professional services of an online logo design site instead (http://www.logodesignplanet.com) and got the design I wanted at an affordable price and fast too, within 24 hours. I did provide this link for reference and inspiration to my designer as I wanted the color/look of your design. Thanks for posting this, by the way!
Very nice Andrew
just kidding
By the way, you could parent the rotations and the radius of the sphere to an expression slider controller so that you can easily rotate the whole thing
i am sorry but i need to know how i can Extract a person from any video Correctly and more than one way can you help me
hi is there any way ai can get the tutorial sent to me on DVD, or is there any way i can purchase them
The Downloads seem to be corrupt…
Also, my shield looks ‘hexigonal’, not a sphere like yours does. There are outlines of the hexagons all over the shield and I can’t figure where I went wrong.
excellent! the techniques are just plain awesome, was going try it, i d’led the project and get this error ! C:\Users\internet\Downloads\Force_Field_Example_Project(2).zip: CRC failed in 00074_003_72.mov. The file is corrupt
will try it anyway without actor
keep up the fantastic work,
pat
thx for tut… I also enjoyed the the others!
u seem to explain well and thats a huge help
Picture?
where do you see the tutorial?.
cannot open the video because It says that the file is corrupted, but I love you
hou thes after efect cs3 or 4 or 5 pliss ho is it
Way over my head but the way you set it up is very instructive — the first ten minutes got me through another AE project and I learned a lot. Also, I will definitely need a force field (around a submarine) somewhere down the line so this is great! Thank you so much, Andrew Devis. —- Sorry, ’bout that. Keep up the great work, Aharon.
Aharon, Thanks a ton for the tutorial….helped a lot!
Looking forward to more superb tutorials from you
anyway to get this file updated? the project file download is corrupt.
Continuing the Discussion