[Michael Duff]

I’d suggest importing the Illustrator file into AE…. either as a composition with each movement on a different layer…. or save each movement as a seperate file. Then animate it in AE….

Maybe check out this tutorial:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/bird_flock1/index.html

[Michael Duff]

If it is a photoshop layer that is text you can usually go “Composition -> Make editable text” and AE will convert it to a text layer.

As for exporting – make sure you use the render queue (Not File->export)

In the render settings make sure you have everything set to best quality and full resolution. If it’s all graphics then I’d turn field render off.

Then in outout module choose quicktime movie, then under format option choose animation if you can afford the disk space. If you need a smaller file you might try photoJPEG at 100%. We have blackmagic output cards so we use the Blackmagic 10bit codec. If you are unsure about which codec to use maybe do another search of the COW archives for “AE to finalcut” or something like that.

Good luck

[Michael Duff]

hi there – I haven’t seen or used any of these templates… but here are my suggestions –

If it is a text layer and you just can get the curser to select to correct layer in the composition window…. double click on the text layer in the timline and this will select all the text.

Maybe it is a solid with the basic text effect applied? If so, click on the layer, hit “e”, then go “edit text”

…… of course you could also check that the layer is not locked, or precomped….

hope this might have helped

[Michael Duff]

check out motionscript.com – it is a fabulous site for learning about AE and expressions…..

[Michael Duff]

mmmm…. i can’t wait to get my MBP ….. shouldn’t be too long now ….

[Michael Duff]

if it’s not realistic enough for you have you considered using real footage of smoke? You could purchase stock footage or shoot some smoke against a black background and then use a transfer mode to composite it.

will render faster too….

just a thought…..

[Michael Duff]

yes you could use a track matte….. or luma matte…. and then attach this layer to the tracking points……. do a bit of a search and hit the help files…. if you’re still stuck let us know and we’ll explain the process in more detail.

Good Luck

[Michael Duff]

well it will definetely run….but as far as I know it will not run natively. i.e. it will be emulated and results are pretty average. One would hope that there would be a free upgrade for buyers that have already have ae7.0 but we will have to wait and see.
Check https://www.adobe.com/products/pdfs/intelmacsupport.pdf

also do a search of the archives for macbook and you will find a number of posts addressing this issue…. running bootcamp and XP could be a better solution……

[Michael Duff]

hi
We also use 10bit decklink cards and often come across banding on our broadcast monitors. It is quite normal that you don’t see banding on your computer monitor. If you do a search through the COW archives for banding you will find a number of ways to reduce it.
We normally find that doing a slight colour balance will reduce banding as certain colours tend to show banding more… like blue…..
also add a little bit of noise over the banding
feathered masks also seem to cause more banding, so try using a luma matte instead

hope this heaps you out

[Michael Duff]

trashed the preferences file and it’s all good now