[Doyle Lewis]

Hey Caroline,

Sorry for the delay. Moral of the story is don’t write expressions that you can’t test haha. I jumped on my desktop this weekend and it was pretty quick but found the problems I had. Like i said it was mostly syntax issues lol.

here is the correct expression tested and working:


seedRandom(index, true);
V=random(0, 4.9);

R=Math.floor(V);

if (R == 1) { "G"
} else if (R == 2) { "C"
} else if (R == 3) { "T"
} else { "A"
}


Doyle Lewis,
Location Assistant
ABC Studios

[Doyle Lewis]

If I understand your question, you want a text layer to choose a DNA letter (i.e. G,C,T, and A.) and that is it? OK if so, then no prob,

So for your text layer that you want to have randomly choose a letter just add this script into the source text field.


seedRandom(Index, true); //I used the seed random so that your random letter wouldn't change at every frame. I used index as the seed so that layers that start on the same frame don't have the same value
V=random(0, 4.9); //chooses a random number with decimals between 0 and 4.9. If you just did 4 then with rounding 4 would almost never be chosen because it would have to pick exactly 4

R=Math.floor(V); //Rounds it down to a whole number

if (R = 1) { "G"
} else if (R = 2) { "C"
} else if (R = 3) { "T"
} else { "A"
} //This just assigns a letter value to each number output we created


Now as we know DNA only connects certain letter to other letters so If you wanted to have a Text layer that chose the correct match to the random Letter chosen then place a text layer directly under (very important!!!) the one you want it to pair with and put this expression in the source text field.


P=thisComp.layer(Index-1).text.sourceText; //Checks the source text of the layer directly above it

if (P = "C") { "G"
} else if (P = "G") { "C"
} else if (P = "A") { "T"
} else { "A"
} //whatever letter is chosen on the layer above this sets the value to its partner letter


As a note, I did this on a chromebook without any access to AE so was not able to test this. The expressions are fairly simple so I just pounded it out. I am sure however that I have some syntax errors somewhere and it may not work straight off, but if there are let me know and I will help find the mistakes if need be.

Doyle Lewis,
Location Assistant
ABC Studios

[Doyle Lewis]

Thank you Brian! Now that I have stepped away from it for a bit I realize that I probably couldn’t do a poly selection because the head was still a sculpt object and I never baked out my final mesh. As for the roots that worked great! thanks!

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

Well it is probably due to the bending of spacetime at the seams of the Tardis due to its extra relative mass as compared to the spacetime stationary mass of the earth when observed by a geostationary third person.

Or it looks like your Tardis model has overlapping polygons at the flickering points… one or the other… or neither.

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

I think you would want to use x-particles for that. You could have objects or timings where the particles fall from their spawn geometry and hit the ground then after a moment become attracted to the base geometry again and rebuild. There are lots of clever particle rigs you can build with x-particles. and they can render really high particle amounts

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorial/the_portal/

At about 36:20 Kramer uses a rough 3D model (really rough basic model) of the actress to give him a depth pass that he could then apply to the footage

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

In this overview of the font, (Attached at the link below) it specifies that it could make some applications run slowly. what I would do is install veneer back on and do all your text work in Photoshop at your video resolution and then export it out as a PNG to then work with in After Effects. once it is down to a manageable size and set to a fixed alpha for the distress then I think Ae will no problem working with it.

From what it looks like this font is very hi-res so probably not vector. It also has a large number of custom features added into it, like multiple grunge type alpha channels, several anti-aliasing options and so forth, so that is a lot of stuff for a font. So I say flatten it down with its alpha and then bring it in.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/yellow-design/veneer/

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

without seeing your footage and assuming that you didn’t roto your screen in mocha, just tracked it, (Because if you did already roto it then Dave is right, just use that roto.) then I suggest sandwiching it between duplicates of your keyed screens that way fully opaque object in the foreground will block out any of your semi transparent reflections and your semi transparent reflections still show up over what you have on the screen.

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

Lots and Lots of a Semi-simple expression. Say you have the number two lined up where you want it in the 100’s place then you simply add this expression to the layers opacity:

L=thisComp.layer("Adjustment Layer 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");// A control slider on a adjustment layer that animates at the speed you want it to count

P=1000;// 1 place heigher than the one you want the number to show up on, it is 1000 because we want to control the hundreds place

R=Math.floor(L/P);

C=((L/P)-R)*10;

if(2<=C && C<3){// it is set between 2 and 3 because it is the number 2 we want to control
T=100;
}else{
T=0;
}
T

Then on your control slider whenever it is between 200 and 300 regardless of how many thousands of millions there as well, that 2 will show up in the hundreds place.
So for example if we wanted to control the three in the thousands place it would look like:

L=thisComp.layer("Adjustment Layer 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider");// A control slider on a adjustment layer that animates at the speed you want it to count

P=10000;// 1 place heigher than the one you want the number to show up on, it is 10000 because we want to control the thousands place

R=Math.floor(L/P);

C=((L/P)-R)*10;

if(3<=C && C<4){// it is set between 3 and 4 because it is the number 3 we want to control
T=100;
}else{
T=0;
}
T

So that three will show up whether the value is 3,123 or 23,586 or even 10,293,843, well maybe not 10,293,843 because sliders don’t go quite that high, but you get the point.

Hope that helps

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com

[Doyle Lewis]

According to Kush’s guage (a formula for calculating adequate bit-rates,) Frame height x frame width x frame rate x motion scale variable(1,2, or 4) x Kush’s constant variable(0.07). You get the number of bits per second required for a constant bit rate. For variable you take 3/4 of that number. That being said your target bitrate should be around 10.89Mbps. If you would like a better explanation for that number look at the link below.

https://www.paromitapoddar.com/VideoCompression/kush.html

Now you said you tried around that bitrate and it didn’t fix the problem. the fact that you said that the file had this problem before sending it to vimeo means that it is not vimeo’s display/compression settings. Now when I looked at the video I did see a couple small artifacts in the color especially in the papyrus colors, but I did not see which choppiness you were referring to exactly. Was it the aliasing you were referring to? because there is quite a bit of that, but that is naturally going to happen on a h.264 compression of such tight small lines.

Doyle Lewis, Assistant Videographer

thinkck.com