[Filip Vandueren]

Hi there,

just edit the “Adobe After effects 6.5 Shortcuts” textfile in an texteditor:

it says this

“TimeStepBack” = “(Cmd+LeftArrow)(PageUP)”

[Filip Vandueren]

Also, you probab. know this but anyway:
you only hear sound when you’re ram-previewing.
Not when you hit the space-bar and do a “normal view”

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi A,

I can’t see the videos (the codec you used doesn’t exist on the mac I believe)

The main thing is getting the right camera-positions out of your 3D programme. Don’t know which app you used, but for some there are plugins to get the data out.
Then it’s just a question of placing the Text-layers in 3D space and they will whirl by in the correct perspective. (please read the manual for that stuff, questions like: “how to set the text layers in 3d space” are just too basic to be handled here.)

If you do decide to fake it, there’s an option in CC Sphere to render only the inside of the sphere, If you make it big enough (more than fullscreen) , that might do the trick, But the perspective will probab. give it away.

If you don’t find a plugin to extract your 3d camera, and if you didn’t use too many keyframes, perhaps you can copy the camera movement by hand ?

[Filip Vandueren]

There’s two types of interpolation: spatial (via what route does the animatio go from a to be) and in time (how does the speed of animation vary inbetween a and b).

You need the spatial interpolation be set to linear, or toggle the “Hold Keyframe” option on the first keyframe.

It’s all in the manual actually.

[Filip Vandueren]

What’s the resolution of your Earth-layer ?
And what’s the radius-setting of the CC Sphere ?

[Filip Vandueren]

If the shot is fixed (no camera movement) you can take a still frame into photoshop and isolate the foreground elements like some furniture your characters stands behind.

Use that on an extra layer on top of the footage and there’s no need to rotoscope that part. Maybe use some animating noise or the new Grain filters (if you can spare the time) so The foreground cut-out’s don’t look too clinical.

Then you only need to rotoscope the foreground stuff that changes dynamically like interaction with a character.

[Filip Vandueren]

The pain of it is

[Filip Vandueren]

if you rendered out with premulitplied alpha, you should add two more steps to that action:

a) Double-click on the layer in the layers palette to turn it into a floating layer.
b) Ctrl+click the Alpha channel in the channel palette. A selection should appear.
c) Apply this selection as a layer mask by clicking on the mask icon in the layers palette.

d) Layer -> Remove Layer Mask-> Apply
e) Layer -> Matting -> Remove Black Matte

f) Now add all the actions needed for aplying the style as written in my original reply.

If you don’t, you’ll have a black halo around your white letters where they’re anti-aliased.

[Filip Vandueren]

[collegekid05] “Stupid question, but how do you fly a solid over top of or behind text in AE and have that text’s color change based on the position of the solid (so if it’s black text, when a black solid motions in behind it, the text text turns white wherever the black solid layer is gliding through)? Is it a keying filter or something else? I figure it must be fairly simple; I just have never had the need to do anything like this before. “

Try this:

a white solid as big as your comp,
black text on top of that,
then use another white solid that you move around and give it the “difference”-transfer mode.

[Filip Vandueren]

If you want to preview the files on a computer, you can stretch them out to 1024*576, You can do this either in the ouput-settings of your render, or as I most often do, you can stretch the 720 version to 1024 wide in the quicktime-player. That way there’s no need to render twice.

But to deliver the final version for an editing program or duplication to digiBeta etc., always render out the ‘narrow’ 720×576 version.
It will be the 16/9 Television-screen that does the stretching.