[Jack Watts]

Following the same pattern in the aforementioned tutorial include hills as some layers and then manipulate them acordingly like that of the road signs. Now since these layers are 2D they are going to look fairly flat when the camera zooms past them so the best way to avoid this or should i say cheat this is by fooling the camera.Now to achieve this look you are going to have to input an expression. Now this does work but since i do not know what your composition looks like i can only assume. So anyway make all your relevant hill layers 3D. Now to the rotaion properties of the x,y and z axis apply the following expression

X: “lookAt(thisComp.activeCamere.position,position)[0]”
Y: “lookAt(thisComp.activeCamere.position,position)[1]”
Z: “lookAt(thisComp.activeCamere.position,position)[2]”

To apply this just alt+Click on the stopwatch beside each property. Once you have inputed the expression select all the layers in question,right-click go to transform>auto-orientate and select the command to auto-orientate towards camera and there you go as the camera passes it will give the illusion that the hills are fully 3D when they are actually 2D. I hope this is of some help. Also check out Andrew Kramer’s tutorial on blue Planet 3D where he used this expression. It might help seeing it being demonstrated! View tutorial.

[Jack Watts]

My approach would be to have a leaf img as a top layer in an AE comp. Now apply the shatter effect with shatter type as custom.track the custom through an individual leaf layer.(to do this extract a leaf in photoshop and import the psd file in AE and place at the bottom of your compositiion)) Adjust the shatter point accordingly with your comp.place your desired img behind the shatter points. Note the leaf img layer will have to be duplicated with every shatter effect applied.Also make sure the original leaf layer is bigger than the comp in question this will give you enough room to pan around with your camera.

I hope this makes sense and at least gives you some perspective on the effect you are willing to achieve

[Jack Watts]

Have a look at this tutorial on keting and transparency.

VideoCoPilot

[Jack Watts]

Try using the effect cc mr mercury and track mate it through a duplicated layer of your footage. Make sure your duplicated layer only contains the data that you want to track in this case your actor! This could take a while if you cant key out your actor because you will then be manipulating your mask keyframes frame by frame.

[Jack Watts]

I dont mean to insult in any way but make sure you have “selected” your text layer. If you dont then After effect will automatically assume that you want to create a new shape layer and fill it with the default colour in my case red. Look at that tutorial again carefully and you will see that the text layer is highlighted. I recommend that if you are following along with tutorials dont just confine your eyes to the mouse pointer but try to absorb the entire UI as a whole ie layers,settings,Tools etc. I for example always overlook the simple things in my comp and then am left kicking myself hours later when i out figure out what my mistakes were!

[Jack Watts]

Check this out. It will do nicely and is pci.

Graphics Card

[Jack Watts]

You are right there brian. The type of keyframe that you have applied “will” determine your camera movements and fluidity. My Best advice to you is to play around with the keyframes till they suit your comp and you are happy with the end result. allot of people i talk to seem to think that “easy ease” are the way to go and then play around with the position settings,This is not necessarily always the case. Im not to sure if there is a tutorial on keyframes in the podcast section. But do check out Andrew Kramers Tutorial on advanced camera movements over at VideoCoPilot.net

[Jack Watts]

You need to activate the “pan behind tool”. You can do this by pressing “y” on your Keyboard and then manually move the anchor point to the centre of your layer.Remember all animations applied to the layer will animate from the anchor point such as scaling,tracking etc.

For a full list of Keyboard shortcuts see keyboard shortcuts under the help menu within AE or just click on the following link

Keyboard Shortcuts

[Jack Watts]

Another good place for tutorials is the adobe site itself. It features all their products.

http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop

“must have flash enabled”, ha ha the pun. Im just going to go now! Happy Learning!!!

[Jack Watts]

I once had after effects running smoothly but “slowly” on a 2ghz centrino , 512Ram and standard dell chipset graphics,So your comp is fin just be prepared for tedious waitng time when dealing detailed compositions. in relation to upgrading buy a new computer or update your current as Richard Said!