[Darby Edelen]

I’d recommend using a layer mask so that it’s non-destructive. Create your selection from the white of the image using any method you like (wand selection, color range selection, personally I prefer to use the image as an alpha channel).

Then create a new layer and opt-click/alt-click (mac/pc) the Add Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layer panel. This will hide the current selection on the new layer.

Fill that new layer with black. Make sure that you select the layer itself and not the layer mask for that step.

Another nice thing about this method is that there’s no chance for white spill at the edges of the resulting transparency.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Jason Hearne] “I replaced my original Expression with the one you supplied and now the slider does nothing.”

Make sure you didn’t change the name or location of the slider (the layer it is applied to). Also that expression will only have a noticeable effect when the slider values are animated between 1970 and 2020.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Since the years are linear and sequential, just like a Slider, you should be able to do the actual animation from the Slider by adapting the range 1970-2020 (the years) to the range 701-0 (corresponding frames) using a linear() function. This way the animator would simply make the keyframe value of the slider the year they want shown at that point in the timeline.

Applied to Time Remap:

s = thisComp.layer("Timeline Controls").effect("Timeline Mover Frames 1-702")("Slider");
f = Math.floor(linear(s, 1970, 2020, 701, 0));
framesToTime(f);


You may need to apply an offset to the frame values to make this accurate depending on how the timing in your timeline pre-comp/pre-render works. Either that or adjust the range of the frames (it might be 700, 0 instead of 701, 0 for example).

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Chris Wright] ” AE has kronos built in, renamed as timewarp.”

My understanding is that Timewarp is a much older engine than the current version of Kronos.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

You can do it with progressive footage. The resulting quality will depend largely on what method you use to change the frame rate. Re:Vision FX’s Twixtor as well as The Foundry’s Kronos are both top notch retiming plug-ins.

If you don’t have access to those then you’re stuck with frame blending or Timewarp.

I’ll also mention that retiming techniques that use pixel motion vectors to generate frames can be either amazing or horrible depending on the amount and type of motion. For a 29.97 to 23.976 conversion I’d recommend comparing the results of a simple Frame Mix frame blending, or even no frame blending (every 5th frame is dropped… I often prefer this personally but your client may demand otherwise), to the more advanced pixel motion vector techniques (Timewarp, Twixtor & Kronos).

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

The only possible problems that come to my mind would be either HyperNURBs Weighting gone awry or that some of your vertices are not connected. I have a suspicion it may be the latter based on the funky Phong shading around the problematic vertices even pre-smoothing.

Easy way to check for the first if you’ve applied any HyperNURBs weighting is to select the tag on the object.

Easiest way to fix the latter would be to:

1) Select the object and run Functions > Optimize with the last check box selected and a Tolerance of 0. This will weld any vertices that occupy the same space together.

2) Put a Connect object in the hierarchy as a child of the HyperNURBs and a parent of your model. Make sure that Weld is enabled on the Connect object and set your Tolerance low (0 should work).

When you use Extrude NURBs (as well as many of the primitives) the individual faces are not connected to one another, the vertices along the edges just occupy the same space.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

The effector is a plain effector with a falloff the size of one of the cloned cubes. It’s moving through the array of cubes causing them to change color and move up 1 meter on the y-axis. After that a delay effector is applied.

I’m not sure how to add an additional falloff to the effector, and even if I could I don’t think it would work as desired (like the delay effector). The falloff would have to be somehow aligned with the direction of travel of the effector, and then whenever it made a turn it would cause all kinds of wonkiness.

If you have something specific in mind that I’m overlooking please let me know!

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

There is no way to render at 60% through the Render Settings. In addition rendering at “Half” via render settings can cause some sampling errors. Generally I recommend rendering for final delivery at Full resolution.

Since your deadline is tight I can understand the desire to take shortcuts so here are my suggestions:

-Don’t use Lens Blur. If you have $200 to spare you can buy Frischluft Lenscare, it produces better results faster and supports multiprocessing and 32bpc. If you don’t have money to burn and you’re really willing to cut corners, see if you can get away with Compound Blur.

-If your composition is not using 3D cameras or lighting you can pre-compose it by dropping it on the comp icon in the project panel, then go to the composition settings of your new master composition and set the resolution to 3840×1284. Collapse Transformations on your original composition (now the pre-comp layer in your new higher resolution comp) and hit cmd-opt-f to scale it up to the size of the new composition. Render this composition at Half resolution through render settings.

The collapse tranformations step will preserve quality through this process, but won’t work if you’re using cameras or lights in your composition. In that case you could try getting away with the same trick but without collapsing transformations, but I can promise you it ain’t going to look pretty.

In the future I would definitely recommend working at a resolution no higher than the highest you are expected to deliver. Large compositions and large layers easily bring AE to a crawl (especially in CS4 which is not 64-bit).

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

[Jonathan Dean] “That’s great. Thanks a lot. What does this new expression do differently? Apologies for how basic that must’ve been.”

An alternative would’ve been to create another keyframe on the time remap property at the point where you want it to start looping, then change your expression to:

loopOut(“cycle”, 1);

This would loop between the final keyframe and the final-1 keyframe (previous keyframe).

Dan’s solution is easier to implement but I think it’s valuable to know what the difference is so you can apply them in other situations. Remember, any animated property can be loopOut()ed, not just time remap! 🙂

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Try parenting a Null to the map layer, then use this expression on the Point and Text layer positions properties:

l = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”);
l.toComp(l.anchorPoint);

This assumes that the Null is titled “Null 1.” You can move the Null around relative to the map if need be. Also adjust the anchor points of the Point and Text layers to make sure they’re positioned as you want over the Null location.

Darby Edelen