[Filip Vandueren]

For starters, isolate the elements you want to move from the gangsters.

I would do it in Photoshop, not in AE. Just start with the lasso or path tool and get both of the smokeplumes on their own layer.
Then erase the smoke from your gangster-leyr.

Apply some distort-filters to the smoke, something like turbulent displace should do the trick.

Also, if you drew this yourself. why not draw a version of the smoke that goes perfectly up and that can be seamlessly tiled vertically.
You can then apply an offset filter before your distortion, making a nice upward motion for the smoke.

[Filip Vandueren]

I like the text-presets:

Animate In / Typewriter,
Animate In / Fade Up characters

and even better:

Multi-line / Word processor

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi Caleb,

you don’t need a mocap studio, there is a (2d) motion-tracker built in to the pro-version of after effects.
Jeff’s suggestions was just an analogy, so if you can have white markers on the talent, it will be easier to track.

Motion capture is most often used for mapping limb-motion on the skeleton of a 3d virtual character.
Not what you need I think.

[Filip Vandueren]

You can reference them no problem, it gives a syntax like this:

comp("Comp 2").layer("Null 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider")

the parameter you want for text is called “Source Text” or “text.sourceText” in Javascript

Twirl open the Text layer, then Text and it’s the first param you see right befor path options.

[Filip Vandueren]

You can reference them no problem, it gives a syntax like this:

comp("Comp 2").layer("Null 1").effect("Slider Control")("Slider")

the parameter you want for text is called “Source Text” or “text.sourceText” in Javascript

Twirl open the Text layer, then Text and it’s the first param you see right befor path options.

[Filip Vandueren]

I think motion tracking could be a solution, but you’re best off doing a test first to see if the attach-points are going to be clear enough.

For instance if you have a long shot with 5 dancers and you want a light exactly on their right hands: I think that won’t be possible without a lot of keyframing and tweaking the trackpoint frame by frame.

[Filip Vandueren]

You can always assign an expression to an expression-controller like a slider on a null,
then other expression reference that slider, and they will get the calulated value.
There is no way to set the value of the slider from outside of that slider’s expression, so you can have the expression for opacity store a value in a slider.
So you have to think the other way around, and do all calculations in the sliders’ expression.

As per the text-expressions, you can assign an expression to the source-text value of a text-layer, if the outcome of that expression is a number or more importantly a string, it will be displayed.
You can do this for an invisible text-layer and have another layer reference that value. Also, you can store different texts in different keyframes and then retrieve the values of those keys.

What exactly do you want to achieve, because this is just theoretical and very general, there may be other ways around your problem.

[Filip Vandueren]

You can always assign an expression to an expression-controller like a slider on a null,
then other expression reference that slider, and they will get the calulated value.
There is no way to set the value of the slider from outside of that slider’s expression, so you can have the expression for opacity store a value in a slider.
So you have to think the other way around, and do all calculations in the sliders’ expression.

As per the text-expressions, you can assign an expression to the source-text value of a text-layer, if the outcome of that expression is a number or more importantly a string, it will be displayed.
You can do this for an invisible text-layer and have another layer reference that value. Also, you can store different texts in different keyframes and then retrieve the values of those keys.

What exactly do you want to achieve, because this is just theoretical and very general, there may be other ways around your problem.

[Filip Vandueren]

Hi there,

I can’t reproduce the problem ?
What version of AI, what version of AE

Can you post a screenshot.

[Filip Vandueren]

In a 6.5 on Mac os X:

(macControl+PadClear) or (Cmd+Option+PadSlash)

do a text-search for “PurgeAll” in the txt file “Adobe After Effects 6.5 Shortcuts”, it’s in the preferences folder