[Dave Johnson]

Good to know … thanks much for the valuable insight, as always.

[Dave Johnson]

Thank you, Mark … that’s good to hear since I’m always hesitant to go on with my opinions beyond directly answering the question.

One other thought you may find helpful … this subject is one reason I’ve always made a practice of keeping several copies/versions of my preference files, opening them with a text editor and transferring over the things I know are transferable. I work on both Mac and Win machines daily, but find that much easier to do on Win machines.

By the way, the other reason I do that is, having come from the ever-mobile freelance world, I needed a way to work with AE, PS, etc. the ways I’m most efficient regardless of whose machine I’m working on. If you do choose to mess with the prefs in any way, be careful … doing it wrong is a sure-fire way to screw things up, although you can always delete prefs and start over from defaults, but I find getting back from that a time-consuming last resort too.

[Dave Johnson]

Todd,
Could you explain why you recommend that approach? I’m curious since my default approach is to do things without filters when possible.

[Dave Johnson]

I don’t know of a specific tutorial, but have done similar effects many times … it’s been a while so I can’t list play-by-play details or effect settings, but perhaps it’ll be enough to say that doing it in AE requires a particle system (I prefer Trapcode Particular, but think I’ve done it with Particle World too) and, depending on the particle system used, some type of lighting effect is either required or helpful to make the effect really sparkle (pun intended) … almost any Glint or Glare type lighting effect will do, but all I can think of off-hand are third-party plugins so that might not be much help since you may not have any.

[Dave Johnson]

If someone asked the easiest way to make AE go berserk, I’d probably say replace the prefs with the prefs from a different version.

With that said, this question touches on a real issue so I’ll ramble on a bit in hopes that Todd K. or one of the other Adobe AE gurus will see it and get a great idea that’ll solve a recurring problem that many AE users dread, but don’t bother talking about …

Along with the fact that some features I rely on were dropped from CS4, the main reason I’m skipping CS4 entirely and waiting for CS5 is inability to spend many hours getting highly customized setups on 4 machines from one version to the next … not to mention the additional hours for re-installing a ton of third-party plugins and their corresponding presets, etc., then having to do all the same things with Photoshop, Illustrator, etc.

I know Adobe can’t do anything about third-party plugins, but an “import preferences and presets from previous version” option that takes all the preferences, workspaces, presets, etc. that are compatible with the new version and leave alone things that don’t directly correlate would be soooooo appreciated. Although it sounds fairly simple to me since I’m not a software programmer, I do realize that it may be a programming nightmare.

Every pro I know absolutely dreads changing software versions for these reasons, but it was much more tolerable back in the day when it was only necessary every couple/few years … now it seems every few months so it has become a real issue.

[Dave Johnson]

Depending on various things such as your preferences settings (still image import length) and composition settings, it is possible to import a PSD as a comp, put that comp inside of another and not be able to extend its length because the comp that was created when the PSD was imported is shorter than the length you want its layer to be in the comp you put it into … sorry it sounds confusing when trying to explain without without being able to show what’s wrong, but it’s really a very simple thing with a simple fix … increase the length of the comp that was created automatically when the PSD was imported … and check your preferences to avoid the same issue in the future.

I hope this helps.

[Dave Johnson]

This thread may be helpful and has a link to an example:
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/964775

I would add to the things mentioned there that Bezier Warp, Displacement Map and Turbulent Displace are very useful native AE plugins when trying to pull off this effect.

Here is another example using the BCC plugin mentioned below:
https://reels.creativecow.net/film/paper-floating

As you can see, the Boris Continuum Complete page turn allows a separate layer or solid color for the backside image, but it’s completely understandable that third-party plugins aren’t an option.

A far more time consuming way to get the same effect is to duplicate the layer with the page turn, replace the duplicate’s media with a blank file with the same exact dimensions, offset the two slightly in 3D space and use motion blur on both to hide imperfections.

[Dave Johnson]

You didn’t really give enough info about the setup of your project or the kind of change you need to make so I’m not sure I understand your question, but I’ll mention a couple things that should help …

If you’ve saved all your lower thirds as individual AE project files, you can import them all into one master AE project.

If a number of your lower thirds are the same elements and animations only with different names, you can make changes to the solid and check the box that says “affect all layers that use this solid”, rather than copying and pasting the solid into each one. However, that won’t work if the change to the solid is an effect or animation applied to it. In that case, you’d need to make the change in one of the comps and copy it into the others.

I think you will have learned this from what you’re facing now, but I’d suggest always building your AE projects in ways that will make any type of changes as quick and easy as possible.

[Dave Johnson]

The easiest way is probably to precompose the layer … then you can move it wherever you want and add additional effects or motion to it in the main comp without anything in the precomp changing.

[Dave Johnson]

I think I understand now … I think you’re saying you have adjustment layers at the bottom layer position of each precomp and want them to affect the layers below the precomps once nested into the main comp … if so, sorry, but that’s not how adjustment layers work. You will need to put adjustment layers in the main comp to have them affect the layers below them.

In other words, adjustment layers have to be in the same comp or precomp of the layers you want them to affect and they have to be above the layers you want them to affect.

If you want them to only affect certain areas of the total screen, make the adjustment layers the size, shape and location you want affected (via size of the layer, masking, etc.).