[David Bogie]

It’s Greg’s product. Of course he recognizes the watermark.
Nice to have company reps on the scene, Greg, and thanks for watching out for weird references to your stuff. I’d have never guessed.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

the problem with questions like this is the “look” you’re seeking. We have no idea what that means.
A simple time-reverse Shatter precomp will do what you want. So might Card Dance. But you have experience with Trapcode I do not share so I cannot help you with that plugin.

You can’t get enough individual stars to form glyphs so you’ve got to add a transition to text someplace in the timeline.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Stack Jones] “i’m NOT spending any money on plugins. don’t have the bucks to spend.”

You realize how bizarre, one might even say “lame,” that statement is, right? If you are paying yourself $100/hour, you will spend about fifty times what a suitable plugin might cost.

I’d suggest you look for “Electronic Makeup Artist” by Patrick Sheffield, might be exactly what you need. Might not.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Ryan Moyer] “I’m going to look around for a demo for that zaxwerks invigorator 3D plugin to see if it’s worth the 400 bucks. I’ve heard some tutorials complaining that the 3D text created in plug-ins loses some stuff as well, but I’ll check it out.
“

You’ve spent more than $400 and certainly received much than that amount in free advice from experts, and the end result was totally predictable.

There is a reason you don’t see tons of superb extrusion animation using Shatter as the front end. It does not work that way.

However, what you’ve learned so far will serve you very well as your project advances. You now know how to apply textures to all the surfaces and how to render pieces as well as the entire frame and how to apply custom Shatter maps. If you can learn how to use grayscales as the drivers for the rest of the controls in Shatter (or Card Dance) you can achieve grand things.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Peter Wiggins] “”Well, I couldn’t hold the secret of who’s going to be playing at the COW’s Year 10 party at NAB.” “

This presumes much.
1. Who is bothering to go to NAB?
2. Who can afford to be bothered to go to NAB?
3. Who will be bothering to go to the Cow party?

answers:
1. Not me.
2. Not me.
3. See above.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Using Shatter to produce 3D text is a hack; it’s a fun hack but it’s still a hack.

if you need extruded text and control over it, you want Zax Invigorator, i think. Never used it myself.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Peter Wiggins] “I’ll let Ron spill the beans…
“

So there’s no real secret and the secret really isn’t out.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

[Cory Lewis] “What are the best settings to use for a fast conversion for these files? “

Good grief. Try not to take this personally:
The best way to get WMVs into Final Cut Pro is to shoot Quicktime. Since you can’t do that, force the upstream source of these clips to convert them at his/her end to conventional DV-based AVI.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

Animating anything is a significant challenge when you’re new. Learning how to animate objects by masking or position changes just takes practice, lots of time, a ton of failures, and some inspiration.

Open up Motion, start looking at the tutorials, dive in, try not to get too frustrated. It’s hard.

bogiesan

[David Bogie]

I had their cassette tape.
A classic example of a musical idea with absolutely no staying power.

bogiesan