[Darby Edelen]

You might try using a smooth() expression on the position of the layer driving particular or on the emitter position itself.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

You can refer to a layer in a different composition like this:

comp("OtherCompName").layer("LayerInOtherComp")

This returns a layer object that can be used in the usual manner:

l = comp("MainComp").layer("Camera");
l.toWorld([0,0,0]);


Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Stabilization applies a transform to the image, so you need to apply the inverse transform to remove it.

Warp Stabilizer was enhanced (I think in CC?) to become Warp Stabilizer VFX (Oooo!) and can be reversed with a second application of the effect. Under the Advanced twirl down you should find an “Objective” property that can be “Reversible Stabilization” or “Reverse Stabilization” among other options. You’d do your paint work in between these two instances of the effect.

Alternatively if you used the classic tracker/stabilize method the position transform gets applied to the anchor point property. You can apply the same transform to the position property to negate that.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

If you’re actually doing a crowd and you don’t want people to start leaning over or doing somersaults then I’d recommend using this technique:

https://motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-orient-y-only.html

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Here are a couple of useful links:

https://help.revisionfx.com/search/?p=64

https://www.revisionfx.com/products/twixtor/

I find that adding motion blur can help to hide artifacts in optical flow adjusted footage (Timewarp has an option to add motion blur). Of course the reality is that motion blur should be less present in high frame rate footage but who’s really paying attention? 😉

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

It’s really difficult to tell what’s going on in the provided mp4. At first glance it looks like everything is stopping. Are you using any time based effects or time remapping?

Are you rendering to an mp4 directly from AE? Try rendering to another format if so. I like image sequences.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

This is frustrating as I’m sure we could arrive at a mutually agreed conclusion in a matter of minutes if we were talking face to face in front of AE.

[Andrew Somers] “But I don’t seem to be getting the point across to you, as you are bringing up separate (and not directly related) issues.”

This is an interesting observation. If your perceived issue is transparency then I don’t see how the alpha blending operation could be separate from the discussion. Any transparent image is always being blended. It may be blended with the default checkerboard pattern or another default colored background, but the blend and the transparency are inextricably linked and I would argue that they cannot be considered separately. They’re two sides of the same coin.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

Also try purging your disk cache and memory.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

It sounds like you’ve set just a few position keyframes. You should check in one of the orthogonal views (Top, probably) to see what your motion path looks like. You can use the pen tool (Shortcut is ‘G’) to modify the motion path in the same way that you’d modify a mask: pulling out bezier handles or adding new vertices/keyframes. You’ll want your motion path to more closely resemble a circle rather than a line.

Alternatively, if you want a perfect orbit the most straightforward method would be to parent your camera to a 3D null layer at the center of the orbit and animate the rotation of the null.

Darby Edelen

[Darby Edelen]

I’m not clear on why you consider caps lock required when there’ve been at least three alternatives suggested.

I personally dock my render queue in the same area as the comp viewer, but I can see the benefit to using ` to maximize any other panel to hide the comp viewer. The ` key has the benefit of allowing you to show the comp viewer again during the render if you like.

Darby Edelen