need quick help with process

[David Bogie]

without watching over your shoulder, I’d say if you had used Card Dance or Card Wipe you wouldn’t have much of a problem.
You can still do that, just precompose your 256 layers and apply Card to the precomp. Easy to move any of the sources around in the precomp.

> I need to move 10 layers at a time down 1 frame in the comp. < Don't know what that means, sorry. Down positionally or down temporally? bogiesan

[Jason Brown]

I needed to move them Temporaly…I already did that…just selected them and used the keyboard shortcut alt+pgDn it moves them one frame @ a time…it worked.

The bigger issue is this:

I’m trying to have several hexagons and rotate them 180 degrees. I want the backs of them to be white and I’ll use this as a matte transition precomped as black/white.

I did this with one simple hexagon…set the anchor point to +.0001 – rotated it…duplicated it…set the anchor point of the duplicated one to -.0001 (changed color to white).

This worked beautifully with one hexagon. For some reason, when I put all of them together and flip them…they change (cut) to white before the keyframed rotation even starts…I’m a bit confused as to why this is happening.

Here’s a screenshot to give you an idea of what I’m trying to do.

https://www.jbtwist.com/CC/hexagon.jpg

I’ve never used card dance or wipe…I played with them for about 1 hour, and I couldn’t get them to do what I wanted…

-Jason

[Jason Brown]

OK…thanks for your help Dave.

The problem is that I have about 265 (enough to fill a 720p full frame). They are all placed equidistant from each other and if I tried to replicate that with precomps, it would take a ton of time and be hard to get exactly right.

Is that what you are telling me? Take one precomp with one hexagon…rotating and duplicate that in a main comp?

Just making sure.

-Jason

[Eddie Yepez]

Hi, I think you can use a font with the shape of the hexagon and use the powerfull tools AE have for animating text. I try it and looks pretty good. There is a font with the shape you need at here:

https://www.dafont.com/fnt-basicshapes1.font

Letter (h)

Hope it helps

Cheers from Ecuador!
Eddie

PD: Please excuse my english

[Jason Brown]

Dave…you are a genius!

Thanks man…this accomplishes the issue I was having…I use replace all the time…I didn’t think about replacing a layer with a composition…I normally don’t do that, only replace footage with footage and comps with comps…just not part of my normal workflow.

Now…should I use the existing rotation of the layer…or rotate inside the precomp to change the color?

-Jason

I love this forum, you guys are so great and helpful…

[Eddie Yepez]

Thanks Dave, yours was helpfull too.

Eddie

[Jason Brown]

Hey Dave…the process is simpler, but it’s still not working. If I collapse transformations, it cuts to white, then flips…if I leave transformations off…it flips, but never changes color…it’s strange.

I’m going to try Eddie’s suggestion of the font…

I’ll let you know what I find.

-jason

[Jason Brown]

I’m trying to have them flip…Y rotation flips from center, but Z and X flip anchored at the bottom of the text object…I need that center to be in the middle of the hexagon.

Anchor point doesn’t seem to change that. They always rotate locked to the bottom of the text box. Is there a way to change this when you enable per character 3D?

-Jason

[Jason Brown]

I got it done…placeholder images…but the effect is done.

One strange thing, the space between the hexagon’s changes just before the rotation keyframes starts. (background is alpha seeing through to black color. Check out this animation if you step through it, you can see it…it’s not an issue of compression, it happens in my comp window.

https://www.jbtwist.com/CC/preview.mp4

-Jason

[Eddie Yepez]

Hi Jason, you could use a second animator and add the anchor point property, that way is easier to find the middle point. I upload a little test, it aint that great but I hope it helps; here’s the link:

https://www.mediafire.com/?nfgfwmy1mgw

Cheers,
Eddie