[Eric Patrick]

Palm, meet forehead. Thanks Dave. My bad.

[Eric Patrick]

As I mentioned, the technique of importing all the projects into one clean project is a non-starter for me in this case. The projects are so big that if I import more than about five, everything starts moving very very slowly and often crashes.

But to ask a follow up based on your comment about watch folders, can I have after effects use a watch folder for just one computer, open consecutive projects in that folder, render the queue (as a quicktime movie with audio, not an image sequence), then close and move to the next project? This is exactly what I would like to have AE do for me. Will it, and if so, how?

thanks in advance,

Eric

[Eric Patrick]

I was trying to be as brief and simple as possible in my question without loading it down with unnecessary details, but essentially… yes, I’m doing character animation. I suppose from lack of other responses that there indeed isn’t a way to paint on master footage until it becomes a layer within a comp. Thanks anyway.

[Eric Patrick]

Thanks for the responses, but apparently I wasn’t clear in my question. My after effects projects are very well organized in file structure. I have a master folder, and within that, have folders for background elements, footage/jpeg sequences (each sequence also in its own folder), projects, renders, etc. The problem I’m having is that I may import something from my background folder and after effects will after this dump me in my background folder every time I go to import. I may be continually importing from my footage folders dozens of times, but after effects will still keep dumping me in my background folder so that each time I import, I need to re-navigate back to the footage folder. Is there a way to “tell” after effects where you want it to put you in situations like this? If I’m going to be spending all day importing from various footage folders, I would love to be able to tell after effects to start me in my master footage folder rather than just putting me in some random place (like my background folder) so that I have to navigate back to the footage folder every single time.

[Eric Patrick]

It’s an animation that I’ve created with pixelated characters. There’s something that one character is holding that I want to paint on frame-by-frame. The problem is, I don’t want to do this to one instance of the footage, then have to replace all other instances of the footage with this painted layer while maintaining their properties.

I know that you can replace a layer from something in the project window while retaining attributes, so I suppose I could precomp the footage, paint, then replace all instances with the precomp individually, but it just doesn’t seem like a very elegant solution. I was hoping there was some easier way to just paint the footage and have it translate to other instances without having to manually track down and replace each one.

[Eric Patrick]

Perfect! Thanks!

[Eric Patrick]

Sorry… no… I’m on CS3, no mocha, and somewhat complex backgrounds (bookcases and such). Do you think mocha would be a good way to do this? I’ve never worked with it.