I’m a big fan of Red Giant Software. Between Magic Bullet Looks and Trapcode Suite from Peder Norby, odds are you’ve worked with something from Red Giant if you work in After Effects. 

Have you heard of Red Giant People though?

RGP is the company’s community site, mostly known for paid presets like Harry Frank’s Video Rock or the various Magic Bullet Looks presets from popular peeps like Stu Machwitz or Eric Escobar.  If you need to mimic something like the processing styles from Greyscale Gorilla’s popular Shake It Shake It iPhone app, you can get it at RGP for $99 and a quick download.

What’s cooler than cool about RGP though can be found if you search through the free AE project files and presets they have.  Take a look at my favorites on the site; normally the opportunity to break into someone else’s files, grab every layer and hit a quick double-tap of the U key only comes when you work at a studio.

At RGP it’s encouraged, and a ton of it is free. It’s a ridiculously crazy learning opportunity that few people seem to know about.  And as a bit of payback for all of the learning I’ve stolen from generous Red Giant Peeps, I loaded up some presets myself. Download ‘em and have a go with them – I’ve got a few more in the queue, and I’m considering posting a breakdown on how they were built.  If you’re interested, let me know.

• TP Torch Fire:

  a rough draft at a stylized and quick-to-render fire particle generator



• TP Startup:

a preset full of features I wished Particular supported natively