[Erik Waluska]

I tried to recreate your problem in CS6 but didn’t see any movement of the layer, mask or anchor point when toggling motion blur.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

I’m not sure exactly why the mask kills the shadow, maybe someone else can answer that, but I can tell you that turning off the continuous rasterization switch OR masking the text inside of the pre-comp works.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

I would guess that your comp is set to full resolution but only 50% magnification. The view size and resolution should be the same for best results.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

I would suggest precomping the image sequence and putting that into another comp and time remap it to stretch it out.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

You’re welcome. I use that sort of setup all the time, it’s great for templates and so forth that have bunches of layers and parameters that you want to access easily.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

John’s talking about using a text animator, not separating the text into individual characters. Check out my project file. If you select the layers and hit UU it will reveal all of the modified properties so you can see how I did it.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

Check this project file out. I used an animated stroke like John suggested but only as a track matte for the original text layer so you can use any font.

6604_textsurfacing.aep.zip

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

The fastest easiest way I can think of would be this:
– Create a null layer and name it “CONTROLS” or whatever makes sense to you.
– Add an expression slider control to the null layer and rename it “diameter” or something like that.
– In the timeline, twirl open the CONTROLS layer to expose the diameter effects slider control and then do the same to expose one of the paint stroke layers diameter parameter.
– Alt/Option + click on the paint stroke diameter’s stopwatch to add an expression and then drag the pickwhip to the CONTROLS layer’s slider parameter and then hit Enter.

The paint stroke diameter should now be linked to the diameter slider on the CONTROLS layer with an expression like this:

thisComp.layer(“CONTROLS”).effect(“diameter”)(“Slider”)

If you right-click on the diameter property on the paint stroke layer and go to “copy expression only”, you can then paste the expression on to all of the other paint strokes so they’re all linked to the CONTROLS layer. You do have to have the brush stroke’s selected when you paste or it will just add a new stroke, which is not what you want. You need to select “Brush 1”, “Brush 2”, etc. or select the diameter property directly and then paste. The quickest way to expose them is to select all of the stroke layers and hit UU to expose all modified properties and then you can Ctrl/Cmd or Shift + click all of the Brushes to select them and then Ctrl/Cmd + V to paste the expression.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

I’m not totally sure I understand but would linking the size parameter of all of the paint strokes to an expression slider control on a control layer work? That would give you one control for all the strokes that you could animate.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia

[Erik Waluska]

Zaxwerks Serpentine and 3D Warps plug-ins would probably work for this as well and they’re about half the price.

I have a free after effects filmstrip template on my site that would probably be useful as well.

Erik Waluska
EAWmedia