[David Bogie]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “brute-force character by character keyframing may be required.”

That’s how we did in the Olden Days. It’s not that difficult. You can paste the keyframes to all of the separate glyphs (as individual text layer or text effects) and tweak them individually or, easier, make a copy of the word layer for each individual character and mask off all the other letters from each. then you just adjust the timing.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

It can be faked, it’s most tedious in AE using the CC Sphere filter. But it will always look fake. The 3D perspective filters from Boris are the only ones I know of that provide a keyframable wrapping feature. It’s not immediately obvious how to make it work because you must impart some motion to the source layer and the sphere filter to make it look like the sphere is rolling up or unrolling the layer.

I have not owned a Boris product for many years. Their forum here on the cow might offer some advice on which package you might try.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Richie Tovell] “Hey, I’ve cracked it!!
When I render out as QT movie with the “animation” codec it works, the movies play perfectly in Resolume (The VJ app)and the alpha channels transfer over to the render just fine. Resolume has no problem with them.
“

I’m not familiar with the application nor your use of the term “render.” How does your VJ app process these files? And how many layers can you use at once?

Here’s the thing with Animation files, they’re huge. Not just big, freakin’ huge. And decompressing them to run through an app in real time requires tremendous power from CPU, GPU, and your drive access speeds. Not many RAIDs can play even two streams of Animation.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Over on adobe.com, the general advice is to check the online documentation carefully. it’s all explained in the manual. I haven’t watched your tutorial.

Lots of CS4 assistance on this link:

https://www.adobe.com/support/aftereffects/

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I do not know of any video codecs that support alpha that can play in real time without proprietary hardware support.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

s it always exactly 18 frames regardless of the length of the clip?
I do not see this, sorry. I exported a bunch of stuff to WMV yesterday, several different sizes and frame rates. All seem to be perfect. And I recently loaded up Leopard, lots of stuff died or changed or brok one my machine but not Flop.

You probably need to talk to Flip4Mac at telestream.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You’ll probably find the same answer everywhere you posted this question: RAM is RAM.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I disagree with the need to go to AE but that decision all depends on your need for realism and your competency with tool sets.

Your reference image shows only a slight bit of curvature, easily accomplished with basic distortion.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Displacing the air or adding to the distortion like a heat haze?
Displacement mapping only moves pixels around based on the luma value of a source layer.
I love what you’ve got now so, if you want suggestinos from the wonks, you’ll need to explain clearly what you want to improve in the scene and you might want to tell us why you think it needs improving.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Depends on your need for realism.
Create a comp that is about 1.5 times the size of your base media format. You will be nesting this comp into another standard sized comp.
Create a shape layer that’s a circle, fill it with white.
Scale it way down and position it someplace on the screen. Set keyframes for scale and position.
Move one second down the timeline.
Move the layer to the exact center.
Scale the layer to about 300%.
Now you finesse the temporal and spatial keyframe eases of the motion path and the temporal adjustments for the scale.
Bring this comp into another standar comp.
When the ball hits the end, use any of many techniques to add some jiggle. Use any of many techniques to either wipe in or explode a solid white layer so it covers the entire canvas.

bogiesan