[Erik Waluska]

Hi Ryan,
The simple answer is that the Bubbles effect is neither vector nor 3D, it’s just raster-based (made of pixels generated by the effect) so the continuous rasterization button will not have any effect on the bubbles. Making the bubble layer 3D just makes a “postcard in space” out of the layer so that you can rotate it or move a camera around it but it’s still just a flat 2D plane. If you have a camera in the comp and click the CR switch for the bubbles layer it reverts to 2D, which is why the camera then has no effect.

To get the effect you are looking for use a 3D particle effect like Trapcode Particular or CC Particle World (included with AE). Particle World has a built in “bubble” particle as well, just select it from the “particle type” drop-down menu.

HTH

[Erik Waluska]

You have to have the precomp open in another timeline panel and just pickwhip fron one panel to the other.

[Erik Waluska]

Yeah, 4GB of RAM is your problem, not the laptop. My Mac Pro desktop at work is a few years old and only had 4GB of RAM when we first installed CS5 and it was horrible. Upgraded to 8GB and it works fine now.

[Erik Waluska]

I have a similar system and multi-processor rendering is faster if you have the settings correct.
Read the Adobe help. There is plenty of info about this subject.

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/543440

[Erik Waluska]

Unfortunately, it’s not possible to actually create a 3D path (except for motion paths like camera or light position), the path is restricted to the plane of the 2D layer it’s drawn on. The 3D stroke effect (a paid plug-in) can fake it but you don’t have precise control over the path. In the example you posted it looks like you could just make the layer that the stroke is drawn on a 3D layer and then just rotate it on the Y axis so the end points hit the targets. At least, that’s what I would do.

[Erik Waluska]

The effects in the menu are normally displayed according to the folder structure of the Plug-Ins folder in the AE program folder. Unless this has been changed I don’t know of any reason you’re effects menu structure would change. Maybe check to see if that has been altered.

[Erik Waluska]

Assuming you already know how to do the stroke effect, one way to get the camera to follow is to create a 3D null then copy paste the mask path from the stroke layer to the null’s position property. Then parent the camera to the null. This way the null will move the camera along the path and you can still control the camera’s position independently. You may also want to turn off auto-orientation for the camera.

[Erik Waluska]

You can use the “loopOut” expression to loop the animation. Just create a few keyframes, however many you like and then to loop it just copy/paste the first keyframe to the end so the animation will return to the starting point, creating a loop. Then apply this expression to the animated parameter:

loopOut(Type=”cycle”)

Save the animation as an animation preset or copy/paste to the other layers. To vary the animation for the different layers you can slide the layers forward/backwards in the timeline so they’re not all moving exactly the same. Also you can time reverse some of layers keyframes so the animation moves in the opposite direction. If you want to adjust the speed of the animation for individual layers just marquee select all of the keyframes, hold down Alt (option/mac) and click + drag the first or last keyframe to stretch or squeeze the animation. I would suggest making a few variations of the animation to mix it up too.

HTH

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Forgot to mention, you could also just convert all of the layers to a smart object and resize. That would retain the layers within the smart object so you can still edit them if needed.

[Erik Waluska]

Hi Joao,
It’s hard to say exactly what’s going on without seeing the layered file but my guess is that you either have some layer masks that are not locked to the layer itself (little chain link icon between the mask and the layer thumbnail) or you are using a layer style like stroke or something that is not scaling along with the layers (that’s normal behavior for layer styles), or maybe you have a clipping mask that isn’t scaling with the layer. The easiest thing you can do is to just flatten the image before you resize it. Your large layered image is the master so that’s the only one that needs to retain the layers, right? Just be sure to save with a different name before you flatten so you don’t lose the layers in your master file.