[Colin Braley]

I have two more ideas for you. With the plug in moved, press the Caps Lock key. Then open up AE and resave the porject with new name. Since you pressed Caps lock, after effects will not render anything and maybe the project will work. Try opening this resaved version of the project.
If that fails you, try creating a new project, and importing the old, non-working project into this new project.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

You cant use Photoshop brushes in AE. After Effects does have a built in non-destructive paint system, however.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Try this:
With After Effects closed, go to your plug-ins folder. I don’t know where this is on a mac, but on Windows it is something like:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 7.0\Support Files\Plug-ins
Then, find the plug in “OpenGL3D.AEX” and move it out of the plug ins folder, but don’t delete it. On Windows this plug in is in the:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects 7.0\Support Files\Plug-ins\Standard\Format folder, I don’t know where it would be on a mac.
Then restart AE and see if it works.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Search the archives and do an “Advanced Search” for something like “Clock expression.” This one has been asked a few times.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I was in your same boat last year Mike…I’de definitely reccommend getting an internship while you are still in high school so you can really see if motion graphics/vfx is really what you want to do. Also, you might want to eventually decide to focus on wither motion graphics OR visual effects, because while both fields might use some of the same tools, they are vastly different fields. If you want any more advice about the full-sail/college thing, let me know.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I’m sorry, but I really can’t follow the descroption you gave above. If you wan’t, feel free to post your .aep file and I’ll take a look at it.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Add the “Render>Fill” effects to the clothes layer, and then add a “Color Control” to a null in a comp. (They don’t have to be in the same comp) Add this expression to the “Color” property of the “Fill” effect.

comp(“Name_of_Comp_with_Null”).layer(“Name_of_Null_with_Color Control”).effect(“Color Control”)(“Color”)

Just replace Name_of_Comp_with_Null and Name_of_Null_with_Color Control and you should be set.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

What do you mean by “ready for use at one or two clicks?” I don’t see why you don’t just store them as an animation preset. I have a bunch of expression based animation presets sorted out in a few folders, which is placed in my default AE animation presets folder so I can view them all in the effects and presets palette.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

I have had expressions mysteriously turn off before…I recently did a project in the AE CS3 beta where I had about 1600 images arranged in a grid and each layer was using the new sampleImage() function to sample the alpha value of a logo so that some layers appeared like a mosaic of images in the shape of a logo. After about 1000 duplicates, some new duplicates would have its opacity expression turned off, and I would get no error message. To workaroud this I selected all my layers, right clicked, and went to reveal expression errors” and then turned back on all the disabled expressions, and everyhting worked fine.
~Colin

[Colin Braley]

Sorry about that, it will give you an error if the camera is at the same position as a layer…try this revised version:


//begin expression
maxDisplacement = 500;
maxDistance = 700;
//--
cameraPos = thisComp.activeCamera.position;
thisPos = position;
vec = cameraPos - thisPos;
distance = length( vec );
dispAmt = ease(distance , 0 , maxDistance, maxDisplacement , 0);
normalizedVec = normalize( [vec[0] , vec[1]] );
try{
position - (normalizedVec * dispAmt)
}catch(e){
position
}
//end expression


~Colin