[Erik Waluska]

I assume you are on a PC so you can try to use system restore to reset the software configuration to a previous state when everything was running correctly.

To use system restore go to Start>Help and Support>Undo changes to your computer with System Restore. Then choose “Restore my computer to an earlier time”, click next and pick a date when you know things were still working OK. You can only select dates that are in bold type because those are the only ones that have a restore point set.

Have you installed any new software, plug-ins or fonts around the time that things started going haywire?

I had a problem recently with a bad font causing AE to do the disappearing act every time I tried to save the project. I had to remove the font and delete all of the project files that were created using that font and rebuild the project from zero to get rid of the issue.

If all else fails try to uninstall and reinstall the Adobe suite.

Hope that helps.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

This is from the very first page of the documentation that comes with Planespace:

“Activate the Assistants
The 3D Assistants are keyframing tools, not plugins. Therefore, you will find them listed in After Effectʼs ʻWindowʼ menu, not under the ʻEffectsʼ menu. The first time you use an Assistant, the tool may appear to be ʻgrayed outʼ, or not selectable in the Window menu. To activate the 3D Assistants, you will need to do these simple steps.
(1) Select the layers in your Timeline.
(2) Turn on the 3D switch for those layers.
(3) Go to your Window menu to select the 3D Assistant.”

Next time try reading the docs first.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

I had the same problem but I am running AE CS3 on an Intel Mac and I am using the levels effect in an adjustment layer at the top of my layers stack as a TV safe levels filter. Every time I tried to render I would get the error message described above.

I tried to add a Hue/Saturation and several other effects and changed the order of the effects, restarted After Effects and even cursed at the computer but nothing worked.

Then I twirled up the histogram for the Levels effect in the effect controls window so that the graph was not visible and also toggled the “Clip Output to Black” and “Clip Output to White” options from the default “Off for 32bpc Color” to “Off” and then back to “Off for 32bpc Color”.

I’m not sure which one of those things cleared up the bug but now it is rendering fine.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Pre-compose the layers. If the layer you want to apply the texture to has an alpha channel, set its mode to stencil alpha and put it above the texture layer.

[Erik Waluska]

I had to do something similar recently and didn’t have a hi-res earth map so I used Illustrator’s autotrace feature to create a vector version of the map. It won’t add detail where there is none but it will smooth out the detail that there is and make it look like you meant to do it that way. You can get some really great looks if you play around with the autotracing options. And it’s very easy to do, once you get the hang of it.

Once you have a vector map you can scale it to any size you want and it will stay crisp. Illustrator’s autotrace is the one way I’ve found that you actually can polish a turd. (To some extent, anyway)

If the vector map renders very slow in AE then convert it to a .psd or .jpg rasterized image at the resolution you need. That will take a big load off of AE and it should speed things up at render time.

Hope that helps.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Scott, What they are trying to tell you is that you have to turn the fields off on the .avi movie in your project window. So in the project window right-click on the movie, go to “Interpret Footage>Main” and in the “Fields and Pulldown” section set the “Separate Fields” option to “Off”. That should fix your problem.

A lot of interlaced video that looks great otherwise, looks like garbage in AE until you turn off the fields. The fact that the video in the preview window looks fine and the problem is only evident in the composition window in AE should be the first clue that you’re having field interpretation problems.

Hope that helps.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

That’s a great site! Thanks for the link.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

Great information. I will definitely try that out.
Thanks a lot!

-Erik W

[Erik Waluska]

I don’t know of a single shortcut to do that but you can use Ctl+/ to send the footage to the timeline and then Ctl+Alt+F to stretch the layer to fit the comp size.

-E

[Erik Waluska]

I was having the same problem as Dan. I couldn’t copy and paste a path from Photoshop no matter what I did. I ended up restarting the applications and then the path copied like it was supposed to. Must be a little bug in the apps or something.

-E