Erik Waluska
Forum Replies Created
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Just assemble everything into one composition and then nest that composition into another one, which will be your main comp. From there you can duplicate the nested comp and trim it to your heart’s content. Honestly though, After Effects is not meant for editing, it’s meant for compositing. It would be much faster and easier to cut the final piece in and editing app if you have one. That way you won’t have to render every time you make a change. But first you’ll have to render out the composition from AE as a movie and then import that into your editing app. You didn’t mention what format you are using (SD, HD or otherwise) but most video files will be very large. That’s to be expected.
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When you use Auto-trace it does not apply the masks to the original image, it creates a new solid, which you can make the color of the dots. Since they are all the same solid color you only need the one solid layer with all of the masks. You can turn off the original image layer or delete it altogether.
This way you only have two layers: the black solid auto-traced layer with the masks, and the white solid background layer. Very simple, very easy on your processor and it should render very fast.
Does that make more sense?
Trust me, it will work, just try it.
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Hi Troy, You could probably do it all on one layer with minimal processor power. Since the artwork is very simple and high-contrast I would use the Auto-trace feature (Layer > Auto-trace) to automatically mask all of those tiny bubbles for you. be sure you have your AE preferences for masks set to cycle the colors to make it easier to manage them. You’ll have to play with the Auto-trace settings a little but as long as your artwork has enough resolution you should get very good results. You should end up with a solid with masks for each of the bubbles. Set the color of the solid to black and add a white solid layer for the background underneath.
To animate, select the bubbles layer and hit “MM” to reveal all of the masks. Select the first mask and then hit Ctrl + A (Cmd + A for mac) to select all masks and set a keyframe for mask path and then move all of those keyframes down in the timeline a few frames and set another keyframe as the starting point.
Now you can just go through and double-click each mask and slide it out of frame as desired. Once your done you just need to stagger the animations. Andrew Kramer has a nice technique for doing that in this tutorial:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_ball_dispersion/He also has a script to convert masks to layers if you decide to go that route, which is in the project file for this tutorial:
https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/fracture_design/Good luck!
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First, check that the “Use high-quality video setting when available” option is checked in Quicktime preferences. For some reason it is unchecked by default.
If that doesn’t help post more info about the files. Most importantly, where are they coming from? What app are you exporting these files from? Are the files being created on the same computer that you are experiencing the problem with AE import? How do the videos look when you open them in Quicktime player?
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AE would probably be easiest. Just duplicate the image layer and on the duplicated top layer draw a mask around the part you want to glow. In this case, since the “observation deck” is much brighter than the black sign background you don’t have to be very precise with the mask, just draw a loose mask around the text but be more precise where it intersects the other red sign text. Then apply the glow effect and play with the settings until you get what you want. Use the Glow Threshold setting to exclude the darker parts of the image from the glow.
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Check out the light saber tutorials at videocopilot. You may be able to modify that effect to get just a subtle glow/shimmer effect.
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Could you post some images of your scene and timeline?
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“Can you map a 2d object (the arrow) flat onto a curve and animate it in a third dimension from one location to another? “
Not exactly, because you can’t bend a layer along a curve like you’re wanting to do in AE. Zaxworks makes a plug in for AE that does exactly that but it’s a few bucks:
https://www.zaxwerks.com/3dserpentine/index.shtml-E
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I’m not 100% sure but I believe you can only use custom edges with vector art extrusions or text created within Invigorator. But if you need a cube with custom edges then just extrude a vector square. Same thing with a sphere from a vector circle, etc.
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Glad to hear it worked out. Thanks for letting me know.
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