[David Bogie]

[Birger Platteeuw] “its a thin black jagged line. an alpha problem … tried the swf with black background and white, premultiplying does not work either
“

I can’t tell what you know or how well you do this stuff so I assume you set the viewer background but did not create colored layer that served as the background of the Flash comp when you rendered.

A black line suggests the background of the comp was black and you should have been working in a transparent setting. See the AE and Flash help systems for some pointers. It’s complicated but it’s not difficult to tweak these settings.

Importing Flash SWF files into After Effects
Flash has a unique set of vector art tools that make it useful for a variety of drawing not possible in After Effects or Adobe® Illustrator®. You can import SWF files into After Effects to composite them with other video or render them as video with additional creative effects. When After Effects imports a SWF file, its internal keyframes are preserved so that you can continue to use them for timing other effects.

The Continuously Rasterized SWF Import feature in After Effects allows you to bring SWF file content into After Effects as flattened art, with support for alpha channels. Because the rasterization is continuous, vector art in the SWF file that is scaled scales smoothly in After Effects. This import method allows you to use the root layer or object of your SWF files as a smoothly rendered element in After Effects, allowing the best capabilities of each tool to work together.

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Look for wmv files that may be attached to your last opened project.
You may need to update Flip4Mac or kill it till you figure this out.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

With what color are the jagged edges ringed? White, black?
Or are they just jagged?
If they’re just jagged, you’re looking at the individual pixels so I infer brought little movies in and scaled them up to fit your sequence.
Who made the swf for you? Flash animators are clueless about video.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Nice work, boys.
Martin, thanks for closing the thread with a successful story, hardly anyone ever does that around here.
Roland, thanks for pointing us all toward Particle Playground, perhaps the most misunderstood system in After Effects.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

I thought the OP wanted to be able to adjust the individual grid items independently of the source layer. It is my understanding that Particle Playground sees a Layer Map but only sees one layer at a time. The OP seems to want to be able to apply filters to each grid item. Maybe I misunderstood. Happens often enough.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Antialiasing is a function of the rendering engine. I know of no way to turn it off but you can use a more restrictive codec or you can use a grid-style or mosaic filter that has adjustable thresholds. That is, you can have a grid element that is either on or off but it can’t be gray.

In After Effects, I’d probably use Ball Action. See the AE tutorials for the Jumbotron effect for some guidance there. Might give you an idea of how you can do this in Motion.

Hope you get better advice.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Using an expression is always the more elegant solution but distribute and align are my go-to functions for multiple layers. If I wasn’t interested in the fundamental scaling calculations, I’d just create a huge comp, reduce them all to 50%, distribute and align, and then nest the giant comp back into a proper working size comp.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Sheesh, Kevin, that was cool. Where do you find this stuff? (You don’t read the manual, do you?)

I knew I could create more viewers but they were always changing. Solved.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

The old Turbulent Displacement is very cool but it’s just a Fractal Noise-style generator that feeds a displacement function. Youc an do the same with Fractal Noise and, erm, Displacement Map. But you can also use the Fractal Noise to feed Compound Blur.

TubDisplace requires additional blurring to turn it into convincing or stylized smoke.
Vector Blur is interesting but it helps if you have an interesting source image. Try adding CC Force Motion Blur, too.

Knowing how to use the CC Time Blend FX is also key to using this ancient method.

You coudl also use any of the particle systems to create some smokey simulation that is moving in the direction you think you want your letters to go and then us that as the grayscale source for your displacement fucntions.

I don’s think Dean Velez still has his wonderful freebies available but he did incredible fire and smoke effects using even simpler techniques.

https://motiongraphicslab.com/

https://leaders.creativecow.net/leaders/velez_dean/

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”

[David Bogie]

Scripts! Run for you life!
Kevin’s suggestions are always more elegant than anything I can come up with but I was going to merely suggest you mask off the light with a gobo, an intervening and perhaps moving element that blocks light but does not cast a shadow.

bogiesan

This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”