-
Time saving ideas – complex animation
Hey AE/CC community! I’m looking for some tips to speed up my workflow…
I am in the early stages of planning another After Effects (CS6) made video that involves recognizing over 200 employees for their dedicated years of service (in around 5 minutes!). The trick is giving each individual 2-3 seconds-ish each of screen time to be able to see their photo and read their name. And even throw in a Y-axis spin, or dissolve, or transition-in of some awesome sort.
Last time I did this with great success. However this time I am looking to make my workflow more efficient. Last time I used videocopilot’s sure target to animate my camera over my mostly static 3D scene of headshots with the corresponding names animating in as the camera approaches. The main challenges were a juggling act between adjusting camera moves/speeds, individually timing the animations to correspond with when the camera comes close, and then doing it all over again and again everytime the camera moves or layout of my scene changed, due to timing issues, client edits, etc, etc. I’m a pretty good student of Andrew Kramer, and I’m looking for more ideas along the lines of pre-comping and parenting and scripts that save time, and reduce keyframing.
I guess the easier way to do it would be to keep it 2D… but I prefer the awesomeness of 3D suretarget-style comps where the camera flies about the scene to eventually reveal the bigger picture at the end.
I wish I could share my previously completed video, but its unfortunately confidential.
Any suggestions for tutorials, scripts, plugins, tricks, and examples will be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Derek
-
2 Replies
-
I did something like this for our company but it was just 2D. One thing that saved a ton of time was using the compsfromspreadsheet script to automatically create the comps for each employee by replacing the photo and text. The only caveat is that you can’t have any typos or it will fail.
-
I didn’t know about this script, at first glance, it looks very useful! Re-typing all the data entry is definitely a time killer, and something I avoided till necessary last time.
Thanks for this tip, I will definitely look into it. Any more tips from any one is also appreciated!
Derek
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up