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Motion Blur and Layer Styles
I’m trying to figure out the best way to apply layer styles without messing with the way AE renders motion blur.
In the first image, you can see how awful AE handles motion blue when a layer style like Stroke is applied.
This can be avoided by precomposing the layer before doing your motion work, but this is a cumbersome workaround being that it forces you to jump in and out of various comps to make adjustments.
Is there a better way to do this?
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3 Replies
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Layer styles are applied last in Ae’s render order (after masks, effects, and transformations, when native motion blur is rendered), so you won’t get the result you’re looking for from a layer style without precomping.
If you can’t use the native text stroke, you could avoid precomping by rolling your own Stroke effect, because effects are rendered before transforms. Stack up these built-in effects:
- Minimax (to expand the layer’s boundaries, set to ‘Maximum’ and ‘Alpha and Color’)
- Fill (to fill in the entire text area, set the color you want the stroke to be)
- CC Composite (set to ‘In front,’ to comp the original layer source back on top of the expanded and filled text)
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Thanks, Walter. I guess precomps is still the easiest way to do this even though it’s an inefficient work flow.
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You can roll this into to effects preset, or copy and paste it. It takes a moment to set up the first time, but I think it’ll be much faster to maintain than bouncing around among precomps…
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