[Graham Macfarlane]

Have you tried the standard echo effect?

It should give you a good result with an echo time of around 0.3 seconds and 10 or more echos. Setting it to minimum mode will stop the image getting overblown, but you will lose highlights. Maximum mode keeps the highlights but you lose the darks.
Therefore, you could duplicate you footage layer, and have one layer with minimum mode echo and the other with Maximum mode echo. The top layer can be set to overlay mode to combine the two layers together, then you just need to apply some colour correction as the whole image may become a little over saturated and darker.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Glad you got to the solution!

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

In the render settings you can set a final render to full, half, third, quarter or custom, just like the setting at the bottom of the main comp window for the RAM/disk caching. I take it they both match?

Don’t forget that even if AE is rendering from RAM/disk cache, it won’t render at real-time playback speed. This is because it has to compress the data into a video stream or compress the image files and store them too. Depending on the destination location, drive speed and compression choice, you could experience slowdowns of perhaps the order of a second or two per frame for HD.

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Jim,

When you initially did your RAM cache, did you have AE set to show full resolution?

Graham Macfarlane – 3D visualisation and VFX
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

http://www.elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Glad it helps!

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

Elyarch.com – London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Ryan,

Create the Slider on your text layer.

Expand the “Source text” parameter of the text layer than Alt click the stop watch to enable the script field.

Add this code and you’re ready to go:

S = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
if (S>50) "A" else "B"

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
Elyarch Ltd – London UK

3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi Yoshiko,

Whilst not a perfect solution, you should be able to use the pan behind tool to help with this.

If the precomp is fully extended to its limits in the timeline (you will see the little black triangles in the top corners of the layer) the pan behind tool won’t do anything.

Therefore, first, you need to trim the in or out point to where you need the layer to start or finish playing (short cut: Alt+[ Alt+] )
Then use the pan behind tool to drag the layer to match that trimmed in or out.
Finally fix the trim on the other end of the footage as needed.

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
Elyarch Ltd – London UK

3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

[Graham Macfarlane]

If the smudge is transparent enough and fairly even (e.g non streaky), you should be able to draw a simple feathered mask around it on an adjustment layer, with the pen tool.

Then you can apply some colour correction effects to the adjustment layer to counter the smudge.

Edit: You might also want to apply a subtle sharpening effect to the adjustment layer too, if the smudge is noticeably blurring the image.

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
Elyarch Ltd – London UK

3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

[Graham Macfarlane]

Hi James,

First finalise your comp with all your layers set up and the camera depth of field and motion the way you want.
To get one layer with no depth of field (let’s call it the sharp layer):

* Duplicate your camera two times
* Precomp one camera with all layers in front of the sharp layer (call it preompFG).
* Precomp the second camera with all the layers behind the sharp layer. (call it precompBG).
* The remaining camera goes with the sharp layer, and has it’s depth of field switched off
* Then just arrange the layers:

preompFG
Camera (no depth of field)
sharp layer
precompBG

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
Elyarch Ltd – London UK

3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha

[Graham Macfarlane]

I’m more of a desktop person when it comes to computer upgrades.
Laptops are trickier to upgrade (Dell are likely even worse, if their desktops are anything to go by!)
I would suggest upgrading as a last resort once you’ve eliminated other possible problems as described in my previous post.

Graham Macfarlane – CGI specialist
Elyarch Ltd – London UK

3D Studio Max | Vray | Pflow | PhoenixFD | After effects | Mocha