[Bill Collins]

Wow, now that’s above and beyond. Thanks man, great lesson!

[Bill Collins]

I should say right now – I’m using CS6, perhaps that is affecting things. I assumed this basic of an operation wouldn’t change much going to CC, but I can’t be sure.

So my initial error was that my main comp was inadvertently using a Custom Camera instead of Main Camera, making my sub-comp of the text animation not show up. Fixed that, my bad!

However, the blend mode still seems to be ignored. I have Continuously Rasterize OFF.

Assuming this solution does ultimately work, would it mean I would not be able to utilize the camera easily? Essentially, I’d be stuck with a 2D layer on top.

Perhaps what it all comes down to is that what I want to do simply doesn’t work well with AE’s ray-tracing mode.

I very much appreciate the advice, by the way.

[Bill Collins]

Clever solution, but it doesn’t seem to work in this case because this is a ray-traced comp. I’m using ray tracing so that I can use extrusion for text and other shapes. I could be missing something, but I’ve tried several different variations, nothing works.

[Bill Collins]

Fair enough, my description could have been clearer. How about I just show?

Here’s what I don’t want:

Here’s what I do want:

Obviously, I can pull this off by cheating (in this case just fading out a black solid) for each character, or some other barely-clever solution. But I’d rather find the elegant (and probably obvious to many of you) solution.

I dislike how the first example, made with a simple animation, makes the words render like increasingly opaque glass until it hits 100% opacity. In the second, it’s like a solid object materializing before your eyes.

I hope this clears up my intentions.

[Bill Collins]

Is that something people do pretty consistently? It sorta reminds me of how Avids can (or could) shoot something directly to Sorenson Squeeze, but in practice it generally didn’t work right, and using QT Reference files was the way to go.

[Bill Collins]

I’m giving this a bump, just in case. Seriously, any suggestion would be truly appreciated. The only software I’ve found in extensive searches online seems to be either from 1994 or designed for someone’s home DVD collection.