[Brendon Murphy]

If they are not separate layers, you can use a track matte like this:

-Add a new solid above your dots layer

-Add a fractal noise effect, followed by a mosaic effect.

-crank up the contrast on your fractal noise so that you see mostly black and white boxes, no grey.

-change the mosaic block size so the size and position of the blocks line up better with your blocks.

-set your dot layer’s track matte to “luma matte”

-animate the fractal noise brightness from -1500 to 1500 over several seconds (or whatever values are needed to go from fully black to fully white)

[Brendon Murphy]

If the dots are all separate layers, you can keyframe the opacities to fade them in. Then select your layers and run this script to give them a random offset so they fade in at different times:

app.beginUndoGroup(“Random Shift”);

var activeComp = app.project.activeItem;

var activeLayers = activeComp.selectedLayers;

if (activeLayers.length<1){

alert(“Please select some layers to sequence.”);

}else{

var myPrompt = prompt(“Enter amount of randomness (1-10 recommended).”,””);

for (var i = 0; i < activeLayers.length; i++) {

var randomValue = Math.round(Math.random()*myPrompt)*activeComp.frameDuration;

activeLayers[i].startTime = activeComp.time + randomValue;

};

}

app.endUndoGroup();

[Brendon Murphy]

Without seeing the shot, I’ll just guess that you need to freeze frame the hand and track it back into the shot with x and y position data only (to match the camera movement). Paint out or cover up the original hand. Roto the shoulder/head so they overlap the hand/arm properly. Re-grain the hand so it doesn’t look like a still.

Another option is to do the same steps, but stabilize the hand in mocha instead of using a freeze frame. However, this could look a bit funny if there’s much movement on the hand.

I’ll point out that with shots like this, it’s generally ok if the hand has a little bit of natural movement – you just use something like mocha to do a planar track and then parent your screen graphics.

[Brendon Murphy]

Well, should’ve worked on it for another two minutes. Turns out there was a duplicate copy of my external scripts in the ScriptUI Panels folder. My UI was calling upon those, instead of the versions I had intended.

[Brendon Murphy]

Also, depending on your version of AE, you can likely create 3D text more easily than this, without plugins. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR4GHA5_J5Q

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[Brendon Murphy]

I get what you’re doing with the multiple layers, but don’t quite understand what role the null and camera are playing. Why is the camera rotating?

From your description, it sounds like you would want a null object in the center of each letter. Parent all layers for the letter to it’s respective null. Then animate the Y rotation of each null.

I’ll add that the position expression on each one of your letter duplicates should be based on the position of the front one. Like this:

masterPos = thisComp.layer(“first letter”).transform.position;

masterIndex = thisComp.layer(“first letter”).index;

spacer = index-masterIndex;

[masterPos[0],masterPos[1],masterPos[2]+spacer];

This assumes your duplicate is below your first version of the letter. Then you can simply duplicate it a bunch of times, then parent them all to a letter null for the rotation animation.

[Brendon Murphy]

Another common practice is to organize the editable items as precomps. Keep those precomps in the root project window with names like “Edit Text 1”, “Edit Text 2”. Hide all other project assets in a folder. Name the folder “[do not edit]”

[Brendon Murphy]

You could, of course, apply the effect directly to all desired layers. Then parent all of those effects to one on a “control layer” at the top of the comp so that you can make tweaks without needing to adjust each layer individually. The control layer can even be a null object, or solid with zero opacity, so it doesn’t mess anything up.

[Brendon Murphy]

If you’re wanting each color control to change based on the slider, the expression on each color control should be like this:

slider = Math.round(effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”));

colorValue1 = [1,1,0,1];//put your desired color values here

colorValue2 = [1,0,0,1];//put your desired color values here

if(slider==1){colorValue1};

if(slider==2){colorValue2};

And so on. I’d also put stipulations for if the slider is less than 1 or greater than your highest assigned value so there are no errors.

[Brendon Murphy]

Actually, you can have the first few letters pull the others if you use a position animator as the driver instead of “First Margin. Animate the range selector on that one from say 50 to 0.