[Filip Vandueren]

The problem is that if your ‘locomotive’ stops; all the layers would come crashing into it. 🙁

The easiest solution that springs to mind would be to precompose all your layers using the ‘follow the leader expression’, do the motion of the loco in constant speed, that way all the wagons will keep the right distance from each other.
Then use time-remapping on the pre-comp for slowing down, reversing, stopping etc.

But perhaps there’s still a more logical approach that would let you just animate the loco-layer.

[Filip Vandueren]

Perhaps the depth cue plug-in could aid in finding a workaround for true 3d compositing of particles and ‘objects’ built out of several layers.
But I don’t own it:

check it out @
https://www.buena.com/depthcue.shtml

costs 169$

[Filip Vandueren]

Just a link away from the Adobe story:

https://www.rulesforuse.org/pub/index.php

The Counterfeit Detection Act of 1992, Public Law 102-550, in Section 411 of Title 31 of the Code of Federal Regulations, permits color illustrations of U.S. currency, provided that:
…

it goes on to talk about reproduction-size for printed work.
No word on the TV screen, but it’s clear from the legal context that you’re safe:

No-one is going to mistake a miniDV tape containing footage of a 100 dollar bill for an actual 100 dollar bill 😉

[Filip Vandueren]

I’ve only dabbled with invig, but:

– how to fake reflections of your surrounding comp in a shiny object.
– dropping shadows on other layers ?

[Filip Vandueren]

It would appear, No.

particles can only be obscured by 1 flat 3D layer, flat being the reason why the precomp doesn’t work.
Also,that layer’s alpha is discarded, only it’s bounding box is used.

I suppose it would be easiest to try and composite the particles using 2D means: just put the particles behind the box. And use a second copy of the particles on top of the boxes., possibly with different “far vanish” settings.

[Filip Vandueren]

It’s out,

there’s just no Bundle deal for the mac, because Audition, Premiere, EncoreDVD are PC only

[Filip Vandueren]

BTW,

this seems like good candidate for trying out a difference matte approach.

At the least it will give you a good starting point matte you can refine with rotoscoping.

And, depending on the footage (specifically, the staircase is brighter than you) try just layering the two and give the top one the “darken” layer mode.

(I’m assuming the shots are locked off)

[Filip Vandueren]

You can get halfway there with the card-wipe or card-dance filters and some clever shading, but it won’t have that subtle “waving in a breeze” look.

[Filip Vandueren]

BTW: the function “consolidate footage” weeds out all duplicates of imported footage, without reducing the project in any other way.

[Filip Vandueren]

Here’s the hack:

find a Hex editor that can find and replace strings in any file.
Check out the hex-value of your current value first and do a global replace for it in a copy of your file.

The Fill parameter will be preceded by “(ADBE-Fill-0002 … Color … then the Hex value of your color)”
So you might include that in your search-query