[Graham Macfarlane]

Have you tried animating the emitter particles per second either manually or via the wiggle expression?

Note; The wiggle expression alone would not easily give you the effect seen in the image. You would need to add some conditionals to the expression to cut off values above or below certain thresholds to get a more on or off look instead of soft disruptions to the glow lines.

Let me know if you need more info on the conditionals.

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

I assume you are importing from premiere into AE using the dynamic link?
If so I would suggest trying to effect your twixtor manipulation within Premiere Pro instead of AE.
Otherwise I would simply render out the footage from premiere and load into AE for processing the standard way.

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

To create a proper 3D tearing effect you would need to go down the route of soft body dynamics in a serious 3D application however there should be a way of cheating it in AE.
I have done this very effect many years ago before 3D existed in AE and back then I simply filmed real ripped paper against black and composited it into my work.

If not using a 3D app or filming real paper tears you might want to have a look at all the distortion effects that AE has to offer and design your tearing effect within Photoshop with reference photography to build up a PSD file full of layers containing torn edges that can be manipulated and distorted in AE to create the animated tear you desire!
I’m not sure how Illustrator’s bevelling or extruding can create 3D-ness in AE which compares to the shatter effect however it might be possible to use shatter with some carefully made shatter maps and the right motion for the bits which fly off to achieve some sort of ripped hole appearing in a layer.
To flex or bend the layer like paper would if being punched through might be achievable with Invigorator or freeform (which comes with AE CS5. see: https://digieffects.com/product/freeform_ae)

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

This video shows a very easy way to map a portrait photo on a 3D head compared to how you would normally do it in other 3D software.

My personal preference might be to do all this in 3D studio Max and Photoshop with a little projection mapping mixed in the workflow to speed things up but that is only because I’m familiar with these programs. If your not, I would think that FaceShop is the best method for you as it outputs to OBJ format which AE should be able to read.
If it doesn’t, you would have to take the OBJ file through another 3D app first such as DAZ (basic version is free I believe) or any other 3D app you like!
(After effects should accept most 3DS, OBJ and collada files if they are created correctly.)

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Does the PSD contain any live photoshop 3D elements?

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

If I understand your question correctly I think you would need to find a plugin made for the game you are recording from, which generates this fps readout on the HUD whilst your recording app records.

https://www.gamefront.com might be a good place to start searching if they have your game.

Alternatively there might be an app written for your particular graphics card which can access the same data from the GPU.

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

I have had this problem in AE CS5 all the time.
I managed to dig online a while ago and found that it is a known bug.

One possible solution that has been suggested is to copy and paste the text into AE’s “search help” text box (top right) and then copy it from their into your project. I tried this and it didn’t work for me but I would be curious to know if it works for anyone else.

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Just to be clear, the layer which becomes less saturated, darker and blurred when you switch it to be a 3D layer has a PSD file as it’s direct source rather than precomp (with PSD inside) right?

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

I would start by looking at the advanced lightning effect in AE and see if the text can be suggested via a number of these effects used together.
Alternatively you could try the photoshop lightning trick (B/W Gradient with turbulent noise layer above set to difference mode plus brightness/contrast settings to tighten the lightning effect. This would be quite tricky to get right though and to be honest I doubt it would achieve a better result than the AE lightning effect.

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK

[Graham Macfarlane]

Have you recently changed or updated any codecs on your system. Perhaps you could check for possible codec conflicts in the Win7 action center (flag icon – taskbar on the right normally)

If I ever get strange codec behaviour I found it was quicker (at least back in the XP days) to uninstall and reinstall a single codec pack rather than to find and fix codec / registry screw ups.

If you are not using a codec pack I would recommend the latest version K-lite!

Graham Macfarlane
3D animator and VFX specialist
London UK