need advice on best way to approach project

[Tyler Paul]

Ya, I always use seperate comps for each element. It keeps things organized. Also, instead of moving the camera I’d instead parent each element to a null object.

Place your elements where you’d like them in the first shot.
Parent it to a null object to be used a control layer.
Animate the null so it leaves the shot however you’d like
Position your next elements for the second shot
Parent them to the null and animate them off
etc

This allows you to get pretty complex animations with very little effort

[Stephman74]

Not used nulls before so are you saying that I would create each animation in its own comp then parent this to the null and animate the null into shot. Then apply this to each comp and so on.

cheers
steph

[Mike Wheeler]

Are there any tutorials for this type of effect/compostion?

That particular clip is pretty long, I can’t imagine the best way to go about making that! Did they make the entire design in photoshop and then cut it up and fit it together in diff comps onto one big stage?

[Tyler Paul]

Ooops, sorry it took so long to reply to this. I’ll explain the best I can without pictures. This is not following there actual video. I’m making this up as I go.

Here’s what we’ll make.
The first three words appearing, rotate and slide back as the following two words are rotated and slide into position. You’ll follow an animated bar as the text slides off screen. The final three words appear just above the bar.

COMP #1 (720X480)= First three words appearing
COMP #2 (1440X480)= The following two words and animated bar that moves to the right
COMP #3 (720X480)= Last three words

create your control null.

Lay down COMP #1 with the first three words appearing with the script. Parent it to the null.

now you can animate the null with a 90 degree turn and push it back into Z space about a 200 hundred pixels. COMP #1 will then rotate and slide backwards with the null.

now place COMP #2 where you would like it to end up in regards to the new position of COMP #1. Parent it to the null.

(if you scrub backwards, you will see COMP #1 rotate back to it’s original position as COMP #2 moves behind the camara…. in theory)

COMP #2 has the animated bar that moves right. So animate the null (with the null, all elements will move) to follow that bar until all the words move off the left side of the screen leaving only the bar in the shot.

Place COMP #3 where you would like it in regards to the animated bar. Parent it to the null.

Do you get how it works?