[Dan Fredley]

You need to be careful to click straight without dragging. If you accidentally create a “round point”, you can stop and option/alt+click to change it to a “straight point” , then continue masking as normal.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Here are a couple of things to try:

1) Open Quicktime preferences and make sure “Enable Final Cut Studio color compatibility” is checked
2) Only judge color while playing in Final Cut Pro — sometimes the still frame is not how FCP is actually interpreting it
3) Make sure all color interpretation is set to None–turn off Color management in project settings. Do not linearize, etc. The default keeps everything at the embedded color profile–should be the same when you render it out.
4) 32-bit should be fine.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Here are a couple of suggestions:

1) H.264 is a complex compression–it’s better to transcode to another format using AE or MPEG Streamclip–Animation (Lossless) is a good start or an image sequence using the TIFF format.
2) If OpenGL is activated try turning it off–Adaptive Resolution might be good.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

You’ll want to use DigiEffects FreeForm for that.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

I think you want ImportOptions.

Here’s an example:
https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=936

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

You can store basic expressions in layer names and use eval() in the actual layer. For example name a layer with this:

x=Math.PI; y=2; z=thisLayer.width

Then create a text layer and put this as the expression in the “source text”:


myLayer = thisComp.layer("x=Math.PI; y=2; z=thisLayer.width");
eval(myLayer.name);
x*y+z


Unfortunately, I don’t think it goes beyond numbers and simple expressions. You can only use “thisLayer” as well–no referencing other layers. Plus layer names don’t update as well as you’d like when you change the expression.

Another option is to use scripts:
Zorro the Layer Tagger combined with Expression Toolbox from aescripts.com

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Actually you could script that if you wanted to:

Loop through the layers/groups/properties:

Set one of these values as x:

1 = Butt
2 = Round (in your case)
3 = Projecting

lineCap.setValue(2);

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

If you find yourself writing a lot of if/else statements, try out the switch function in a javascript manual. It’s a personal preference, but I think it’s cleaner.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Unfortunately, there are many shape properties that are not accessible through scripting. Please request this from Adobe:

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?name=wishform

You can also change one, then select the word “Line Cap” and “copy.” Then you can use the search function to look for all strokes in the composition select all the ones you want to change and hit “paste.” Probably a little faster than changing each one individually.

Dan Fredley

[Dan Fredley]

Don’t know if it’s too late, but here’s a script that separates out characters, words, lines, etc.

https://aescripts.com/decomposetext/

Dan Fredley