[Gareth Randall]

[Dave LaRonde] “Tell you what: do all your work at 1920×1080”

I *am* doing it all at 1080 ☺

So nesting and then rescaling comps is the only way to rescale motion paths? There’s no direct way of doing it, as in Motion?

[Gareth Randall]

Thanks for the tutorial link – Andrew Kramer is frighteningly clever…

[Gareth Randall]

Here’s the original mask path, created by Auto-Trace after scaling the original graphic down to 75%…

And here’s the motion path after it’s pasted into the Position parameter of the null – it’s back to the original 100% size of the graphic:

[Gareth Randall]

The mask is already the correct size when I copy it. The issue is when I paste it, the motion path it creates is at its original 100% size and I can’t find a way to get it back down to 75% to match the scaled graphic.

Obviously I could rescale the graphic in Photoshop before I import it into AE, but I was assuming that AE would have the flexibility to rescale motion paths. Is this another thing that, in fact, it can’t do?

[Gareth Randall]

Thanks for replying! Unfortunately this is just a speculative proof-of-concept piece, so there’s no money for buying plugins – although I can see how powerful that BAO Mask Brush is.

I’m genuinely surprised that AE doesn’t allow the use of custom brushes for strokes as standard. I may have to go back to Motion on my personal machine just so that I can get this done, and then if management like it, we can probably buy the plugin so we can get the proper animation done in AE on a company machine.

I did try an alternative method – using a particle generator to follow a null object moving along the mask shape path – but out of the three particle generators I have on this machine, only CC Particle World seems to allow custom particle shapes, and as soon as I pickwhip the position of the producer to the null object, all the particles disappear. The other generators work correctly when pickwhipped to the null, but they don’t allow custom particle shapes.

[Gareth Randall]

[Peter Silie] ” need a negative tracking. So if the plane goes 10 pixels to the right, the destination movie should be moved 10 pixels to the left. How could that be realized?”

Apply the match-move to the destination movie, then click on the Position parameter and add a Negate parameter behaviour. Make sure it’s above the match-move behaviour in the layers window.

[Gareth Randall]

Everybody’s different. My workflow works for me, and I’m happy with it. It only takes a few moments extra to get the project into Motion 5 from FCP7, which I’d hardly call an “exponential” increase.

And no, I don’t use publishing or rigging.

[Gareth Randall]

[Robin S. Kurz] “That’s pretty much as odd (and really rather counterproductive) as if you were using 4 with X.”

FCP7 does everything I want it do, and I also want to use the extra functionality of Motion 5. What’s remotely odd or counterproductive about that?

[Gareth Randall]

Thanks Charles – works like a charm! Certainly better than having to export every clip individually.

[Gareth Randall]

Rudolf, you might want to read this thread : Rotating licence plate

I wanted to create a new licence plate for a car to match one in the original footage. Simon Ubsdell suggested a great way of getting the perspective to match exactly, using a 3D camera and a grid.