[David Bogie]

Curious why you’re not talking to the developer of the tool.
I know of only a few men and women around here who have ever worked on any kind of inverse kinematic projects and even fewer who have discussed it here even thought there are supposed to be improved IK functions in CS4. Those folks tend to hang out on character animation forums.

I hope you figure it out but I’m suggestion you should be checking on those sites.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Patrice Freymond] “(take into account that I am still using Motion 3 and its limitations/bugs when it comes to text)
“

Weird as it seems, Boris appears to have lost the ability to do field rendering in FCP7/FCS3.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Look on google and here on the cow for REFLECTION tutorials. It’s not difficult but AE is not realworld 3D app and reflections require a certain amount of stylization. In a nutshell, you clone your layer, flip it, apply a fade out mask to it, apply a compound blur to it, and play with transparency and blend modes till you get what you think works. You guy is walking in a diagonal line, that can make things harder but not impossible which is why you must accept a level of stylization.

There is a direct, two-step process in Apple’s Motion for convincingly real refelctions.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Nice work. We rarely see the results of our assistance and suggestions.
Your client should be delighted and you should feel great about sending them your invoice.

Looking for constructive suggestions?

I’d have put a bit more wind into the sails on a couple of the shots. When your talent puffs you might have moved the background in response. It would not have been realistic. Technically, the closeup at 0:24 should have been against an enlarged and slightly out of focus background to simulate the zoom and reduced depth of field.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Progressive or interlaced?
Pop open the manual for Cinema Tools and go exploring while you’re waiting for the more experienced wonks to offer better suggestions.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Boris text tools offer a back plane.
You can create text in Shatter that has a back plane.
You can precompose a text masked layer as a 3d comp and place a cloned layer one pixel below the main layer and change the matte to white.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Probably all you needed to do was eliminate and then reinstall Qmaster.
I do not know why.
It seems to be a weird issue.
I do not want to get into a shouting match with anyone around here, least of all better qualified experts like Jerry, but I do not subscribe to nor do I even support at all the idea that significant FCP upgrades and system upgrades require or even necessarily benefit from an erase and rebuild, what I call the “scorcehd earth approach to upgrading.”

I have been running my suite of a dozen or more Macs for many years (two run FCS3, the others are CS5) and have only ever once performed a total rebuild on one machine due to a drive failure. I think it is a waste of time and effort with questionable benefits resulting from the investment of time and effort. But it seems to be prescribed as a cure for everything.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

There’s nothing random in AE, not even random generators, they all have seeds so they can be repeated.

If we knew how many images you needed and how you were getting your images into AE we might be able to offer more direct suggestions. Last time I had to do something similar I had ten objects on the screen fed by ten folders of photographs, sequentially numbered, brought in as image sequences and timeremapped to play at different speeds. Looked darned random.

There are expressions that can select layers form a precomp based on a wiggle or random expression.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

RED scares the bejeebers out of me, I am fortunate that I will never need to know anything else than how to look up an experienced RED shooter.

Please come back and tell us how you solved yor issie and good luck.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Hit youtube and search for “kinetic typography” and you will find hundreds of sample clips. They’re not difficult to deconstruct but the best are amalgams of material from several applications.
Making this stuff happen is not difficult. DESIGNING it is the tough, creative challenge. After that it’s keyframes and patience.

I must say, though, kinetic type is over, passé, ever so yesterday. Putting it on the air identifies you as a curmudgeon, the same kind of guy who uses two spaces after a period. The challenge these days is to use type in new ways, even in a stylized retro fashion.

wish you good luck, Szusko.

bogiesan