COW Tutorials: After Effects Creating 3D Ribbon Text

[Thehardmenpath]

It’s not necessary to translate every expression for every project. If you are going to work with large imported project with expressions in other languages, open the “Languages” folder in the AE 7 directory and run it in the language you want.

[Steve Morris]

I am getting lost at this point: Quote below from tutorial in the “Setting the Stage” section

This will allow us to globally change the anchor point, scale and/or color of our text from the Controls null in the Guide_A comp.

Anchor Point: adjust the x and y values to center the anchor point on the first character.

Position: add the following expression:

comp(“Guide_A”).layer(“Txt_Guide”).position

I am not sure which comp he is in and which layer. There are several places where ther are anchor points. I can not change the coordinates of the anchor point which has the expression attached.

[Steve Morris]

I think I found it. It is the Anchor Point inside the Tranform twirl down. Is that right?

[D Langley]

Steven, sorry I diddn’t see your post until this morining. You are correct it is the Anchor Point settings under Transform on each text layer that you will be adjusting. The Anchor Point animator in the Characteristics animator group under Text is for playing with the text position relative to the motion path i.e. above or below. It is in there to provide another level of flexibility after the ribbon is completed.

Dave

[Julian Sixx]

Hi
great tutorial!!!
What makes the text diappear behind the video footage?
Does really only collapse transformations make it possible???

[Mrs Longstocking]

I know, for imported projects this is the way to do it. For Tutorials, I like to do them from scratch, I feel that teaches me more. And when I’m writing the code anyway (Syntax practice 🙂 I know copy and paste would be easier) it’s no extra work.
Thank you for the hint

[D Langley]

The text doesn’t disapear it actually wraps around it. Collapse transformations among other things allows the 3D attributes of a comp to be “available” to the comp it is nested in. Normally a nested comp would be a flat plane.

Dave

[John92592]

Dave,

Great tutorial.

One issue I’ve run in to: the text strings, when rendered are very pixelated – to the point that I can’t read the text. All render seetings are full, 100% etc.

Is there anything in the tutorial/scripting that would cause this?

thanks,

john

[John92592]

Belay last…my error.

[D Langley]

I too like to learn visually and I’m not a math or code wiz. I took one computer science course in college on writing Pascal; I don’t think they even teach that language anymore. As for math I took one level of calculus in college as well, and that was so long ago I’m surprised I can spell the word.

Expressions in this tutorial are not too involved. I think the hangup for most folks is trying to understanding a “foreign” language and its not easy.

In a sense however you have a built in video tutorial. You can always disable and enable an expression and see how it impacts the layer and even the comp. Much as you would turn on and off a layer’s visibility.

And when you get stuck there are great resources and individuals both here and elsewhere that are more than willing to lend a hand.