Simple questions?

[Will Cavanagh]

Problems:
1. How do I make the ball get progressivly smaller as it heads for the back wall (12ft away)? I tried setting the scale smaller with the back wall keyframe but that made the ball smaller in the foreground as well.

You could try using 3d space for this. Set the 3d Switch for your ball layer on, and use the Position Z property to animate it forward and back. Using scale could also create an illusion of distance, but if you want to add more complicated animation later, it could be good to use AE’s 3d space for this.

2. I only need the motion blur at the time the ball begins to rocket off, not while it’s sitting there still for 3 seconds.

Unfortunately, you can only specify motion blur for the entire sequence on and off, and this is not keyframeable. If you are running into render time issues on more complex projects, you can break the layer (Cntrl+alt+D) and turn the motion blur switch off on the first half.

You could also accomplish this using scripts – email me if you want to know more about this.

3. I want the richocet bounces to be straight lines but AE seems to want to curve them at each angle, I tried hitting the shift button to keep straight lines but that just worked sraight up or down.

this is a question of spatial interpolation. try right-clicking on the keyframes you want to be angular, choosing “keyframe interpolation” and setting spatial interpolation to linear.

4. Is there any way to make adjustments to an object (Especially small objects) without those pesky wireframes covering your image? I cant see what my image is doing when the adjustment frame covers them.

I believe there is a way to do this, but I’m not in front of an AE system at the moment — try looking below the video (near the Disable Mask Overlay switch.)

Sorry if I appear to be a moron, just had this for a day and a half.
We’re all noobs at one time!

–Will

[Danny Winn]

Hmmm? The Linear switch DID do the job for my richochet effect and the footage split also worked for the motion blur problem but I still cant get the ball to gradually get smaller even with the 3d mode selected.

I also couldn’t get the ball to the back wall while the 3D tool was selected because it was making the ball to small to fast if that makes sense, so I tried messing with the scale level again with 3D selected but again it made the ball too small again.

I’ll bet there’s an easy way to simply tell the program to start at 100% and gradually go to 20% by the time you reach the next keyframe at the back wall.

I also couldn’t find the Disable mask option.

Thanks so much, any other suggestions would be welcomed.

[Steve Roberts]

To make the ball move to the back wall, hit the 3D switch for the ball and the wall, and make a new camera (always good practice). Move the wall back in the Z-direction, and you might have to scale it up to fill the frame. Then animate the ball’s position in Z-space so it moves toward the wall, and so on.

You hide masks by clicking the button to the left of the timecode at the bottom of the comp window, at least in CS4, anyway.

If you haven’t guessed, AE is a complicated program, not meant for quick dive-in work. 🙂 I recommend the AE Classroom in a Book for a new guy.

[Simon Twine]

CTRL-SHIFT-H is the shortcut i use to hide masks..

[Will Cavanagh]

I started writing this a long time ago and never submitted it… for what it’s worth, here it is.

Hmmm? The Linear switch DID do the job for my richochet effect and the footage split also worked for the motion blur problem but I still cant get the ball to gradually get smaller even with the 3d mode selected.

I also couldn’t get the ball to the back wall while the 3D tool was selected because it was making the ball to small to fast if that makes sense, so I tried messing with the scale level again with 3D selected but again it made the ball too small again.

I’m not sure I’m understanding this correctly…

do you have a ball layer — a picture of a ball, and a wall layer – a solid positioned in 3d space back from the ball?

If so, you can just keyframe the Z coordinate of the ball layer back in space until it is equal to the Z position coordinate of the wall layer. If you already have position keyframes on the ball, you can adjust those keyframes, or you could parent the layer to a 3d null and adjust the position of that null (or use expressions to separate the Z coordinate of the ball into a separate control.)

If it moves to fast when you use the 3d widget, hold down control and try again, or use the value slider of the property (for scale, select the layer and tap “s” on the keyboard to bring this up.)

I’ll bet there’s an easy way to simply tell the program to start at 100% and gradually go to 20% by the time you reach the next keyframe at the back wall.

This is the idea of keyframing — telling the program to scale values from a start value to an end value. Any property that can be keyframed in AE can be adjusted over time using this method, and that means almost any setting or property can be adjusted with keyframes. I recommend you read or watch tutorials on working with keyframes in AE if you don’t understand how to do this.

I also couldn’t find the Disable mask option.
This is a switch below the video playback in the Composition window. It looks like a dotted line polygon. I’m still not in front of my AE system, so I can’t get you a screenshot or tell you if it’s somewhere in the menus… Maybe someone else can help you out there. You can also hit Apple+Shift+H, but this won’t get you any closer to hiding wireframes.

If you’re new to AE, check out the Tutorials on this site, and pay a visit to VideoCopilot.net — Andrew Kramer has great tutorials — start at the beginning and work your way up!

–Will