A selection of the best After Effects Tutorials , sorted and annotated according to their difficulty, duration, required software. AELifesaver also has to own videotutorials for any user level. Professional or novice, stop searching and find it!!.

Create a laser effect using Trapcode Form

Difficulty: Duration: 22 MinVersion: CS5Plugins: Yes

VinhSon Nguyen demonstrates how to make hyperactive laser beams (think Ghostbusters) using Trapcode Form.

Gnarly Numeric Logo Reveal

Difficulty: Duration: 25 MinVersion: CS3Plugins: Yes

Tibor Miklos from ae.tutsplus.com “Hello everyone! Today We’re gonna create a really nice number transition with Trapcode Form. This effects is quite cool because you can easily modify or change the characters to words, symbols, or shape layers..It’s up to you!”

Illuminate A Lovely Logo Light Reveal

Difficulty: Version: CS4Plugins: Yes

Tibor Miklos from ae.tutsplus.com “Hey guys! In this tutorial we’re gonna show you how you can create a cool logo or text reveal with Trapcode Particular. This effect has endless possibilities, so I hope you enjoy the enjoy!”

Environment Replacement in After Effects

Difficulty: Duration: 11 MinVersion: CS3Plugins: Yes

Harry from graymachine.com show us how replace the environment of a shot using a few plugins (the Foundry’s CameraTracker, a keyer and Trapcode Horizon) the result is that you can totally change the environment of a shot fast and efficiently.

Using Text as Particles

Difficulty: Duration: 25 MinVersion: CS3Plugins: No

Artbeats posted a video tutorial using text as particles in After Effects, Text Particles by Eran Stern. Eran uses the Text tool along with several text animators to create rings of particles a la CC Particle World, in a manner similar to the original opening of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Procedural Disintegration with After Effects

Difficulty: Duration: 70 MinVersion: CS4Plugins: Yes

Quba Michalski bring to us a fantastic method of grinding a 3D layer into particles using Trapcode Particular, “In this long-delayed tutorial I will show you an efficient method for disintegrating a 3D layer into particles. The method shown here has been optimized to produce maximum amount of particles at lowest computing cost.”

Make a spiral of particles with expressions

Difficulty: Duration: 17 MinVersion: CS3Plugins: Yes

John Stanowski show us how make a Christmas tree with particles moving in spiral, for do this we use expressions and some particular plugins inside After Effects.

Creating snow in After Effects

Rich Young has collected a lot of tutorial about create snow in After Effects. From his webpage we can read “Here’s a few tutorials for snow-related effects that can be used straight from the free projects or mimicked easily. It’s a bit late in the season to post these but I haven’t seen snow in years.”

Aligning Particular motion paths

Difficulty: Duration: 8 MinVersion: CS4Plugins: Yes

From aeportal.blogspot.com i found this great link, Red Giant posted QuickTip #25: Aligning Particular Motion Paths:Motion paths in Particular can be tricky. Harry Frank brings you this overview of how to set them up, and a foolproof way to align the spline in 3D space with a simple expression.

Expresions:
Particular Emitter Position XY:
pos = thisComp.layer(“Motion Path 1″).position.valueAtTime(0);[pos[0], pos[1]]
Particular Emitter Position Z:
thisComp.layer(“Motion Path 1″).position.valueAtTime(0)[2]

Writing text in After Effects with Particular

Difficulty: Duration: 6 MinVersion: CS3Plugins: Yes

Antwan from ae.tutsplus.com say: “In this tutorial I’ll explain the quickest technique for typing words with Particular. Its really handy and easy to setup and it will save you tons of time especially when you want to write a longer word or even a sentence.”