[Angie Taylor]

Hi Andy,

Glad you got what you wanted. BTW, I also have those “duh” moments every day! 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
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[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Yes, you are correct. You can do this using a simple expression. Open up the Position property of the Circle shape layer. Also open up the “Brush Position” property of the Write On effect. To link the Circle Shape layer to the Write on effect, Alt-click on the stopwatch for the Position property and then pick up the Expression pickwhip and drag it till it “connects” to the Brush Position property, then release. An expression will be written for you, then activate it by hitting the Enter key on the number pad (or by simply clicking elsewhere in the UI).

Now the circle position value will always follow the Write on line. To get the Write on effect to follow the circle, just use the same process but add the expression to the Write on Brush position and pickwhip to the Position property of the circle.

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
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[Angie Taylor]

When you make layers 3D they no longer refer to the stacking order in the Timeline for their distance from the viewer, this is determined by the Z position value. However, if you place a 2D layer between 3D layers this can “break” the 3D render order and can cause layers to “jump” in front of, or behind other layers, causing some confusion. Check your comp to make sure you have no 2D layers in between your 3D layers (including 2D adjustment layers).

If you still prefer to use Scale to fake a camera zoom, make sure to select the keyframes and then got to Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Exponential Scale. This will make it a more dynamic zoom-type effect. Without this the Scale animation will be linear and will therefore appear to either speed up or slow down over time.

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Barend’s technique is a good one to use however if you use the “Write On” effect instead of the Stroke effect you can link the Brush Position parameter to the Shape layer’s position parameter with an expression so that the end of the path always follows the shape layer. This way the two will always match, even if retimed.

You can also make sure that the arrowhead automatically orients to the path by selecting it and going to Layer > Transform > Auto Orient. And choose Orient along Path.

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Although you can use the Luma Matte technique a much easier way is simply to use the paint directly on the layer that you want to make transparent using the Alpha setting for your Brush tool in the Channel menu. To do this;

1. select the Brush tool.
2. Go into the Paint Panel and change the Channel menu to Alpha.
3. Double click the layer that you wish to make transparent to open it up in the Layer panel.
4. In the layer panel, paint with black to make areas transparent, paint with white to make areas opaque. If you paint with varying degrees of grey you’ll create varying degrees of semi-transparency.
5. Be aware that the paint will be applied from the frame you begin painting on but paintstrokes can be “stretched” to fill the full duration of the layer. Hit the P key twice in quick succession to open them up in the timeline where you can adjust their duration and other properties.

To answer your other question, you can save your own brush presets in the Brushes panel but you can’t create custom shaped brushes or natural media brushes like you can in Photoshop. but remember that you can open video files in Photoshop and use those brushes on them.

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

You can do this by building a custom shatter map and using the Shatter effect in AE. I have a free tutorial that covers this here; https://www.angietaylor.co.uk/digital-arts-online-tutorials/

Click on the Link to “Handling particles in After Effects” to learn more.

Hope this helps! 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

There are a couple of things you could try to avoid the problem of correspondence points not being accurate when copied and pasted. Instead of copying and pasting the effect, instead duplicate the layer containing the effect, then replace the source footage if necessary by selecting the layer in the Timeline, then alt-dragging the new footage onto the old.

You could also save the effect as an animation preset and then re-apply it to whichever layer you want to. I haven’t been able to test this to see if the same problem with correspondence points occurs (offline currently) but it’s worth a bash! 🙂

Hope this helps.

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Select all the layers in the Timeline. Hover over the end of one of them till you see the Trim tool. Click and drag the edge of the layer and all the others will follow.
Hope this helps 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Custom presets do not appear in Bridge with previews and cannot easily be applied in the same way that the default presets can. You can apply these custom presets by dragging them from the Effects and Presets panel, as long as they reside in the Presets Folder within the Application folder. If not you can also apply them by going to Effects > Apply Preset and then locating the file.

Hope this helps 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Hi there,

Select the layer that the Animation preset is applied to. With it selected, go to Animation > Reveal Animating Properties (or hit the U key). This will reveal the keyframes that control the animation. If there are only two keyframes, simply drag the second one where you want it to be, then to adjust the speed, double click the keyframe and type in your chosen value.

If you have more than two keyframes, select them all and then hold down the Alt key when you click and drag either the first or last keyframe in the group to retime the animation, keeping the relative timing intact.

Hope this helps! 🙂

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002