Tao Maelstrom and Plastic Vortex

I recently posted some Tao vortex videos on my Instagram (trapcode_lab) and got many questions on how it was made. 

Here's a quick explanation of setting it up:

To make the Plastic Vortex, the Material color was changed to Orange. IBL was setup with the "Dark Industrual" environment (very high Diffuse, like 1000 to get some diffuse from it). Here is the final video:

And here is the AE project file for it: Tao_Plastic_Vortex_CC12.aep

To make the "Tao Maelstrom" effect the Fractal settings were changed to use the positive side (positive Amplitude) of the MultiSmoothRidge fractal. Also the different Fractal>Individual Freq were changed. And a texture was used to create the lines on the surface. Here is the final video:

Here is the AE project file: Tao_Maelstrom_CC12.aep

Depth of Field was added using AE's built-in Camera Lens Blur effect. A quick blur map was created using a shape layer with a Fill Gradient. Note that Lens Blur has a "Blur Focal Distance" that selects where in the gradient the focus is.

TAO Soap Bubble Tutorial

Tutorial on creating a 6-second seamless looping soap-bubble-like noise sphere

Final Movie Result:

Tutorial:

Download AE project file that contains the soap fresnel texture: TAO_SoapBubble_CS6.aep

Mir Thing Tutorial

Check out the new tutorial!

Explains the technique used to create stuff like this: