Ben Rollason
2
AE Expressions Coins
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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Thanks for the tip Jeremy. I can’t seem to get the plain effector to work with the particle emitter though. Maybe it’s trying to effect the emitter rather than the particles. I tried cloning the particle emitter with a mograph cloner and so on to get it into the mograph world, but no joy.
Maybe baking the particles? I haven’t worked much with particles in Cinema, so I’m clutching at straws.
I’m using the standard particle generator, by the way, not TP.
-Ben.
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On the position attribute of null A:
L = thisComp.layer("Null B"); LP = L.toWorld(L.anchorPoint); [LP[0], LP[1], value[2]];-Ben.
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I generally find it’s best to feel your way with time-remapping footage.
The graph isn’t as useful as say with position or scale, because you need to multiply the speed of the time remap by the speed of the movement inherent in the clip.
Steve’s right…. experimentation!
-Ben.
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What you’re describing… spatial intervention so to speak sounds unnecessarily complicated.
Time remapping is what you want. I would guess you can make a very convincing robot effect with a bit of time remapping.
-Ben.
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Hi Todd,
If you’ve in any way cracked automatic rotoscoping, then major respect!
Glad to see a subtract and divide blending mode in there finally too.
It seems though that all the changes are firmly in the direction of compositing. The obvious change that’s missing in this respect though is a node-based interface. Are there plans to make the timeline metaphor compatible with a node based one in the future? Only then can AE really compete with the dedicated compositing apps – the Nukes and Fusions of this world.
Alarm bells are ringing about 64 bit plug-ins only though. Does that mean I’m going to have to upgrade all of my plug-ins? That’s potentially going to make this an expensive upgrade.
Thanks for the link.
-Ben.
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Hi Roland,
Actually, I’ve been thinking of recording a tutorial about the many different tricks you can do with the channel menu. Drop me a line and let me know how I go about submitting a tut to the Cow. 🙂
-Ben.
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You can do an unmult in After Effects too without the need for plugins.
Precompose your lens flare layer.
Apply a Channel -> Set Matte effect to the layer with the precomposed lens flare as its source
Settings:
Take Matte From Layer: this layer itself
Use For Matte: Luminance.
(sets the alpha to luminance)Apply a Channel -> Channel Combiner effect.
Settings:
From: Straight to Premultiply
Invert: checked.
(predivides by the matte set above)Voila! Now the Lens Flare looks the same as it ever did, but it has a transparency based on its luminance and no nasty black double premult fringes.
Then you can use Channel -> Alpha Levels to muck about with the alpha gamma if you like. The layer can then be rendered with an alpha and used with any blending mode your heart desires!
The Channel menu is the best menu in After Effects: 🙂
-Ben.
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It would be a job for a script if anything, not an expression, but I don’t know of one.
Can you not just avoid putting 2D layers in between 3D layers. This breaks the 3D space at that point. For the AE 3D space to work, all the 3D layers need to be directly on top of one another in the layer stack.
-Ben.
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This can also happen if you have a particular precomp used in several different compositions with different time offsets. After Effects can’t synchronise the precomp with all instances of itself. Even if you have the precomp used at different levels of a nested stack, the problem can occur.
Do you find this always happens, even with precomps that are definitely only used in one place?
-Ben.
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myNumber = 23.3453255243697978; round(myNumber, 2); function round(aNum, dP) { return(Math.round(aNum*Math.pow(10, dP))/Math.pow(10, dP)); }you can also use myNumber.toFixed(2) but After Effects doesn’t always recognise numbers as numbers, in which case this will throw an error. This version will also pad the decimal places with zeros, which the above function won’t.
-Ben.