Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
-
I would think that capturing them on a white background would be best. Should preserve the look of the image while allowing you to composite effectively.
Darby Edelen
-
[Ken Wichael] ” In other words, I do get a composition of the previous project, just as if I had pre-composed it, but I would like to have the individual separate layers that were used in the original compostion.”
Aren’t they in the compositions that are imported with the project?
Darby Edelen
-
If you have After Effects CS6 then you should have Perspective > CC Environment, which does the same sort of AE camera aware spherical mapping as Trapcode Horizon (without the options for generating gradients directly in the effect).
Darby Edelen
-
[Ken Wichael] “I’ve tried importing one project into another but I only get the raw footage/solids with no timeline layers”
This sounds strange. When you import one after effects project into another after effects project you should get a folder with all of the elements in the original project, including compositions (which I assume is what you mean by timeline layers?). If you need something more than that please do clarify.
Darby Edelen
-
For layer emitters particular works by randomly sampling points within the layer boundaries of the emitter. It samples all points in the bounds regardless of the RGB or alpha values. There is no way around this. Usually this isn’t a problem because the properties (size, color, opacity) of the particles can be controlled by the layer.
What are you trying to do where this becomes an issue?
Darby Edelen
-
[Erick Wilczynski] “Sorry. Here is the expression X = effect(“Checkbox Control”)(“Checkbox”) if (X = = 0)0 else (effect(“Particular”)(“Particles/sec”))”
You have to separate the different operations with semi-colons like this:
X = effect("Checkbox Control")("Checkbox");
if (X == 0) 0;
else (effect("Particular")("Particles/sec"));
Also, I’m quite sure that you’ll need the == operator without any spaces in between the =’s. == (comparison) is a wholly different operator than = (assignment) and two =’s separated by a space may be seen as two assignment (=) operators instead of one comparison (==) operator.
-D
Darby Edelen
-
You didn’t include the expression you’re talking about in your post.
Darby Edelen
-
This is not unexpected behavior. Have you tried putting a solid color behind it? When it blends it shouldn’t be as gruesome 🙂
Darby Edelen
-
As far as books go, I highly recommend After Effects Visual Effects and Compositing Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen.
Tutorials are okay, but from what I’ve seen they tend to “inspire” a lot of regurgitated effects. As long as you can approach them with a desire to determine the reasons behind the choices, rather than just following along, they can be very useful as well.
As for getting an explanation of effects, I can’t think of a better place to go than the After Effects documentation:
https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/topics.html#dynamicpod_reference_11
Darby Edelen
-
The only way I can think of to preserve the effects from the adjustment layers while eliminating them from the composition would be to copy/paste the effects on each adjustment layer to all layers below them.
To get the same result you have to make sure that the effect ordering reflects the adjustment layer ordering. Start from the bottom of the stack and work your way up.
Copy all effects on the bottom most adjustment layer, select all layers below it and paste. Delete that adjustment layer. Copy all effects on the new bottom most adjustment layer, select all layers below it and paste, etc.
Come to think of it, this seems like something a script could do pretty well, not sure if that exists yet.
Your mileage may vary when blending modes get involved.
Darby Edelen