trouble with precomps

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi,

You can use the Composition>Insert Composition command to do that.

I hope that helps.

Peter.

[James Corsolini]

Peter,
I tried that. First off, I’m not sure how to save a composition. I can save a project. And when I do Composition>Insert Composition, I find the 2 sec project I saved and it inserts it into my longer project and stretches it out to the length of my longer project – ruining the timing of the animation, and providing me no way to use this as a looping precomp.
I know I must not be understanding something. Is there a tutorial that would help explain this?

[Peter Mcauley]

Hi James,

Here’s the workflow:

To save a project / composition:

• generate the project that you want to save
• select file>save project as
• provide a destination and a name
• click the save button

To insert a project / composition into another project / composition:

• start by creating or opening a project to which you want to add another composition
• go to the keyframe palette window
• enable the “keep keyframe time” option to preserve the original time of the composition
• disable the “keep keyframe time” option to stretch the inserted comp length to match the current comp
• select composition>insert composition
• select the comp that you wish to insert and click the open button

I hope this helps.

Peter.

[James Corsolini]

Peter,
that helps a lot! Now, once I’ve inserted this 2s animation of butterfly flapping wings, into my longer animation. How do I get it to “loop” for the duration of the longer composition?

[Peter Mcauley]

You can place the inserted composition tracks into a container, then copy and paste the container and shift the pasted versions in time along the timeline.

Or you could render out a movie file of the comp that you want to loop and then import this as a media item into the timeline. You can then click on the “face” sub-track of the imported movie and set the clip to loop by clicking on the “Loop Movie” checkbox in the control panel.

Cheers,

Peter.

[James Corsolini]

Peter,
Thanks for you reply. I have inserted the comp (inside a container) into the longer project. It looks like each iteration of the wing animation will have to be on its own track. Can’t just put them on the same track back-to-back right? That could mean there would be LOTS of tracks with a longer project.
As far as rendering it out, then I loose the 3D aspect of it right? I need to fly it around and have it turn, etc.
-james

[Steve Pankow]

Turning on Loop should make the shorter clip match the duration of your comp. You could then just send an end keyframe wherever you want it to end.

[James Corsolini]

Steve,
Thanks for your reply. I don’t see a way to “turn on loop”. There is a filter call BCC Looper, not sure how that functions. AvidFX help is vague when it comes to explaining stuff. I thought I knew this program pretty well, but I feel pretty dumb right now.
I brought my laptop home and am using standalone mode.
Frustrating!

[Steve Pankow]

Look at your .mov track in your comp. Twirl down to the Face track. Your Control Window menu should be showing a tab called Movie Media. On this tab is the Loop area, with a checkbox for Loop Movie and a dropdown for how you want your movie to loop.

[James Corsolini]

I do see the loop option like you say if I render the animation and then bring it in. The problem with that is that it is then no longer in the 3D world. I wanted to turn this and have 3D control of it while it flew.
I have settled for rendering a movie and then looping and flying it that way. I will assume then, that Boris just cannot do this.
Thanks for your responses and help, I have learned a lot with this!
-james