[David Bogie]

> to do text motion graphic for overlays as fast as physically possible<

If speed is your primary goal, plugins aren’t what you need. You need a proprietary system that works in realtime or a rendering codec that is hardware supported and that’s probably out of your budget.

You can work very quickly in Apple’s Motion and LiveType to do the cliché effects you are describing but, unless you are using FCP (and can use the project files instead of the movies), you must render out to the Animation codec, move the file to your editing or composting platform, and render your media again. After Effects and Premiere work the same way (actually much better than FCS2) and you can avoid rendering until the ourput stage.

> borders that go from static stills to lighted edges, flipping letters, that kind of thing. < > cool texty graphicy stuff you guys tend to use regularly (not to complex, think sega genesis 🙂 ) <

The selection of text effects presets in AE, Motion, and LT offer cool to cheesy, over the top silly and ultra sophisticated elegance. It’s easy to create your own and save as templates. You don’t need additional plugs to do text. But I’ve never used the Text Anarchy tools for more than a few minutes as a demo. I’d think TA is a more elegant solution than you are seeking.

Hope you get better advice.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Umm, which part, exactly? Lots of different applications and techniques.

i’d say they just got a really good designer who had a really good crew and threw money at them.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Sly Mensah] “i have never used after effects before and this is my first time. I want the didgit man to last more the 5 sec lets say 30 how do i go about doing that please some one help.
“

This would not be a beginner’s tutorial.

Use the online help system and the manual to learn how to make layers longer. You can make a comp longer by using command-k and changing its properties. You can make a layer longer by pulling out the handles if there is sufficient media. If there is no additional media you must create it by time remapping the clip to make it run slower or by replacing it with a longer clip of your choosing. You can option-drag onto a selected layer in your timeline to replace that layer with new media source and retain all of your animation parameters.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You’re probably trying too hard. All you’re ally doing is keying through the piece of paper on the top layer to the xray layer.I don’t see why anything needs to move although you can, once you’ve got your key tweaked, keyframe the xray to give it some motion (or use an expression to give it some inertia and momentum). This will add to the illusion.

Your rectangle is your matte, or key, into the layer beneath it. You haven’t said what the rectangle is but I’m assuming it’s not a keyable color like blue or green. In that case, you will be motion tracking a matte opening onto the paper as it moves around. Your matte will need to be hand drawn to leave his fingers in the shot and it will probaby change perspective as it moves around.

The underlying xray must be scaled and positioned to match the boy’s body. If he is moving, you will need to move the xray image and that can be motion tracked, too, to some identifiable and trackable feature that is not obscured by the paper or you will lose the tracking although there are ways to tell the tracker how to estimate off screen movements.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

One of us has misunderstood the OP:
> I need the ripples to emanate from lots of different points around the outside of the image and clash into each other. < Since Darby has answered, I'll assume the mistake was mine. My error lies in assuming the physical interactions between wavefronts were desired more than the interaction between the grayscales. For instance, if you have an alpha map on one of the layers, the other WWs will have grayscale interactivity but won't exactly be influenced by the main layer's alpha map. You'd have to apply the same alpha map to all WWs. I love it when the major wonks come by and fix our (my) misperceptions. bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I was particularly unimpressed by what I saw.
Focus control is simple in AE. the trick is making it look like it was a deliberate manipulation of the image using camera and lens controls by a skilled craftsman instead of a Photoshop hack. There are many filters that emulate lens artifacts and authentic tilt and shift changes. but using them requires solid training in how a view camera functions.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Any of the particle systems are capable of doing this with complete control. Learning how to use particle systems isn’t something that can be explained in these little posties, not by me, anyway. Give the forum a few more hours for the West Coast to wake up, someone will probably have very useful tutorial to send you to.

This could also be accomplished with a text animator that scales up a dot glyph. and you can use that precomp as the source for the emitter in a particle system.

So, the answer is yes, but it’s not a simple solution.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

You’ll need a more sophisticated physics simulation system. We explored standing wave sims a few days ago, scroll down a bit maybe.

Some 3d modeling apps will do interference patterns, or so I’ve been told. You can even pop open the Grapher in Apple’s OS10 and create animations of complex math functions that look like interference patterns.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Get the prezo and do cuts to the full screen slides. You can, if the job is important enough to you, replace the screen image with a properly distorted layer or, like we used to do in the olden days, we’d simply key or wipe in a full image like an over-the-shoulder graphic.
If you can’t get the prezo file, you can recreate most of the slides in Livetype, After Efefcts, Photoshop, or with basic text tools in FCP. A simple cost/benefit calculation should easily determine which method saves the project for your client.

bogeisan

[David Bogie]

Image stabilization in AE is about as good as you will find anywhere. Sorry if I have misunderstood your AE fluency but the manual has an excellent section on using the tool. It’s only confusing the first few times you try it and there are some great tutorials on image stabilization out there, easily googled.

You should be able to run an action in Photoshop to levelize your color and exposure values. I don’t know how to do that myself but I know several PS wonks who can program actions in their sleep.

bogiesan