Ephraim Jones
Forum Replies Created
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Would it be possible to send you the project so you can decifer what I’m doing wrong? I’ve been stuck on this for a whole day now. I opened up the Total Training project that explains this and it works fine. But I just can’t seem to get it to work in my project. The project just has a blue solid layer with a circle mask shape. All I did was keyframe the solid position.
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I tried this but the handles still won’t appear. I deleted my preferences twice and even tried to reproduce the project in a brand new project in case the other file is corrupt. I still can’t get those handles to appear, and I do have the transform button on in the graph editor, the position property selected with edit Value selected and reference graph deselected. For some reason I was able to do this once with the file from the book but thereafter I haven’t succeded in getting the handles to appear.
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Thank you! I thought they were in the correct location, but they weren’t. They loaded up when I moved them.
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Also, Volume 2 has a whole chapter explaining alphas that will give you a more complete picture of how transparency works in AE, and the differences between luma mattes, alpha mattes, stencils, etc. Most of the tutorials you will find don’t cover the basics.
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Another way you can approach this is to use a null object instead of an adjustment layer, apply the transform effect to it and then parent it to just those layers you want to scale.
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Those topics are covered in great detail in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects Vol. 1 by Trish and Chris Meyer. All the lessons have aep files to work with, so you get hands on training. The book covers AE 6.5 but unless you are a beginner in AE 7 it will give you all the info you need. There are 3 volumes to this title and they are well worth the investment if you want to learn AE in a thorough way.
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You can reduce the resolution of footage without too much degradation but enlarging it will always result in noticible jaggedness on edges, and this is most evident with text. Scale down footage–OK, scale up–bad!!
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My post wasn’t intended to be mean, sorry if it sounded that way. Many users don’t take advantage of the help. If your text was created in AE it will automatically be antialiased, if it was created in Illustrator or Photoshop you have to turn on the continuous rasterization button for that layer. But this will only work before you render the files. Decide beforehand how large you need your text to be in your final comp and resize the composition to that size.
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Another really great resource for learning AE are Trish and Chriss Myers books. I particularly got a lot from AE in Production which is 12 tutorials that cover most of the basics and beyond for intermediate users. The three books fill in some of the holes that the TT videos don’t cover, and explain many topics in much more detail. I would heartily reccommend them after you complete the TT AE7 videos. Perhaps they will come out with a version 7 for the series soon.
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If you haven’t worked in AE 6.5 I would go for the version 7 TT videos. There are too many differences in the two interfaces for someone new to the program. I have both (just the standard 6.5 which is a good deal now, about $160 on eBay). TT AE 7 covers pretty much what the 6.5 videos cover but don’t have the great lessons explaining the plugins in detail, like the 6.5 videos. Many of the topics are actually demonstrated in version 5, 5.5 and 6–the information is still valid, but maybe confusing for beginners. After you go through the version 7 training and you get hooked on AE (inevitable!!) you may want to invest in the 6.5 training.
After viewing the 6.5 dvds a second time I think I have a pretty good understanding of a majority of the effects except Colorama. The lesson is 30 minutes long but I still don’t fully comprehend how to use it and I think it could be one of the most useful effects for my kind of work.