[Erik Waluska]

That kinda sounds like an image cache thing if it’s only happening for a few frames here and there.
The first thing I do when I start getting glitchy things happening is go to Edit>Purge all. That fixes a lot of problems. If that doesn’t do it then quit and restart AE.
If it’s still not working then go to the place in the timeline where you are having problems and see if there is something going on in that spot like is that the point where a layer begins or are there keyframes on some layer in that spot?
As Dave mentioned, if you have ANY 2D layers mixed in with 3D layers it can screw things up because 2D layers break the 3D render stack. By that I mean that 3D layers that are separated by a 2D layer are no longer in the same 3D space. It doesn’t matter if the 2D layers are just a wave map or if their visibility is turned on or off. They will still break the 3D render stack. So if you have ANY layers that are not 3D they need to be either above or below all of the 3D layers in the timeline and not mixed in with them.

[Erik Waluska]

Carl, Dave might be a little cranky today but if you browse this forum you’ll see his posts all over the place so he obviously gives a lot of his time and experience to helping other people with AE. I think what he meant to say was that if you can find the answer to something quickly and easily on your own then maybe you could try to do that first before posting it on the forum.

To answer your question, motion blur only needs to be turned on in the comp and the layer where the motion is happening and it will normally carry through to your main comp without having to also enable the motion blur switch on the pre-comp layer inside of the main comp.

Turning the motion blur on for the pre-comp itself is only necessary if you are animating the pre-comp layer inside of your main comp and you want it to have motion blur as well.

HTH

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Sometimes the QT Animation renders on my Mac at work come out darker than the original. Checking on the “Match Legacy After Effects Quicktime Gamma Adjustments” option in the Project Settings fixes this problem.

I know that is the opposite of the problem you are having but it’s worth a shot to see if it works.

-E

Adobe CS3
Mac OS X 10.4.11
Quicktime Pro 7.6.4

[Erik Waluska]

The Meyers have a free PDF tutorial on this subject on the Artbeats site.

https://www.artbeats.com/written_tutorials?page=5

[Erik Waluska]

Geez, there were no responses when I started typing. I guess I’m too slow. Sorry for repeating what everyone else just said.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

That technique has been around for a while now so there are probably quite a few tuts out there that you could find if you poked around a bit.

Basically, you just separate the elements into layers by rotoscoping or masking in Photoshop and then set up a 3D comp in AE with all of the layers staggered in Z space. Then you can either animate the position of the layers or animate a camera. Depending on the move you want to do you may also have to fill in the holes on some layers with the clone stamp tool.

This Adobe help topic covers working with layered PSD files in AE:
https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7f53a.html

-E

[Erik Waluska]

I don’t know what to tell you. I tried it using the name Shot_vfx_001 and it worked fine. The only thing I can think of is that there might be some erroneous info lingering in your cache somewhere making AE think those comps already exist.

Try Edit>Purge All and also “Clean Database & Cache” in Preferences>Memory & Cache. Then restart AE and see if it fixes it.

What version of AE are you running?

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Try starting a new project and see if you still have the problem. If the new project does not have the problem then there must be something in the original project that is causing the issue. Maybe comps in a folder you missed or something.

I have done this many times and even double-checked that it works like I described above before posting so I’m pretty sure there’s something going on with your original project that you may be missing.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

I assume you mean that you are dragging footage in the project window to the “Create a new Composition” icon at the bottom of the window. When you do this AE will assign the new comp the same name as the footage. It will only increment the comp names as you described if a comp with the original footage name already exists in your project.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Check out this After Effects basic training from Video Copilot…

https://www.videocopilot.net/basic/