[Jacob Wessler]

William,

You can always bring your stills into the comp and then add a “wiggle” expression to the position. This is not a very elegant solution but would provide some “movement” in the background without having to do a lot of keyframing.

Having not seen the iPhoto slideshow you mentioned, I’m not sure I can help re-create that motion, but wiggle will at least move the images around.

If you want them to slide into view one at a time, that’s going to take some keyframing.

To add wiggle – alt-click on the position stopwatch to add an expression and type wiggle(x, y). The x will tell the computer how fast to perform the wiggle and the y will tell it how much to vary from the position it started.

Example:
wiggle(2, 50) will move the picture up to 50 pixels twice a second
wiggle(0.5, 50) will move the picture up to 50 pixels every other second

If you want to control x, y, and z individually – try this

x= wiggle(2, 50);
y= wiggle(2, 75);
z= wiggle(2, 100);
[x, y, z]

Change the numbers to suit your taste.

Good Luck,
Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Michael,

Check out Andrew Kramer’s site – http://www.videocopilot.net

He has an excellent blog as well as great tutorials for After Effects (beginners, and more advanced stuff).

Specifically, check out this blog post:
https://www.videocopilot.net/blog/2009/01/new-tutorial-presets-more/

Dowload his presents and install them as instructed.

Then, look for the “3D Orbit” preset and apply to your layer (make sure it’s a 3D layer!!).

This will give you a nice circular orbit that you can stretch at will to make an ellipse. Rotate along the X axis for “near…..FAR” effects and animate at will.

Good Luck,
Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Dustin,

I’ve run into this issue many times as well. I echo what Mr. LaRonde says about copying the music track into the new composition and syncing.

I would add, however, that you can make the layer a “guide layer” by right-clicking the layer and select “Guide Layer” (or something equivalent).

When you render, make sure that you have Guide Layers set to Off in your output module and AE won’t render the sound.

Otherwise, you get twice the volume in areas where there is two copies of the same music, and that can be noticable and annoying!

Good Luck,
Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Anne,

I agree, Aaharon’s tutorials are great.

Andrew Kramer also has a TON of great tutorials at http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/. He has a section for beginners on the right-hand side of the screen. Of course, I would also recommend starting with tutorial #1 and working your way through the 70 or so that are after it. Great stuff and each tutorial has little tips and tricks.

Good luck with starting out – and ask questions!!

Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Nick,

Okay, the beam effect.

This effect needs to be applied to a solid layer. It really doesn’t matter what color the solid is because you can generate the inside and outside colors of the beam. Add a new solid to your comp and go to “Effect>Generate>Beam.”

Hit F3 to open the Effect Controls panel and you’ll see all the options. If you “alt-click” on the stopwatch, you can add an expression to it. Use the pickwhip to select the position property of the null object you already placed at the correct corner of your sign. (The position property of the null object should be pickwhipped to your sign with adjustments to put it in the top left or right hand corner).

You can adjust the beam thickness to taste. A smaller width will look more like a cable. Can’t do chains with this effect, but it’s quick and dirty.

Keyframe your sign and the ropes will follow along.

Hopefully this makes some sense. If you want a peek at a sample project, I can e-mail you one. Send me a message through my profile.

Good Luck!!!

Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Nick,

I’ll have to wait until later to comment on the beam effect, but I’ll post exactly how I did it when I get home from work.

As for the expression, it’s a way of linking information between layers and properties on your comp.

I can’t tell from your post what property you are applying your expression to, but I’m going to assume it’s the orientation because you are using an array ([x, 0, 0]).

Let’s break down your expression:
x = (thisComp.layer(‘Chord02/simpleChristmasMG.psd’).transform.zRotation)*-5;

value + [x,0,0]

You are defining a variable “x” for later use in your expression. You define this variable as the Z rotation property for the layer ‘Chord02/simplechristmasMG.psd’. This part of the expression will look at the ‘Chord02/simple…’ layer and pick out the Z rotation value at each and every frame and insert it into your expression. You then modify that value with the *-5. This multiplies the value by -5. So, a value of 2 becomes -10. So, your x variable is now defined as -10.

The next line of the expression uses the current value of the property in which your expression is located (I am assuming that you are using orientation because it is a three variable property for rotation. You could also use the axis-specific “Rotation” properties and achieve a similar effect).

So, you take the current value of your property and add your variable x. BUT, since the orientation property has three values – x, y, and z, you need to define WHICH variable you are adding your “x” value to. You could just have easily had “value + [x,x,0]”. This would have added “-10” to BOTH the x and y variables of the orientation.

An orientation value of “[5, 5, 5]” now becomes [-5, 5, 5] because we subtracted 10 from the x value of 5.

Check out Dan Ebbert’s EXCELLENT guide at http://www.motionscript.com. You can also post expression questions in the AE Expressions forum. They are a powerful way to integrate and animate.

Anyway, I’ll post more info on the Beam effect when I get home. Hopefully, this gives you a good place to start.

Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

I ran into a similar situation a while back and here is my somewhat “broad-stroke” solution.

I had to create a comp that had two ladybugs carrying a sign and “dropping” it into place so it hung below some lettering.

I used the “beam” effect to generate the cable. While it’s not as nice looking as a chain element, it provided a lot of flexibility.

Using expressions, I connected the beginning point of each of two beam effects to the position of my ladybugs. I then linked the end point of each beam effect to a null object placed at the correct corner of my sign. (One null object parented to the top left corner and another null object parented to the top right corner).

Once that was all set up, I just had to animate the position of the lady bug flying across the screen as well as the position of the sign. Moving the sign back and forth would create the illusion of it lagging behind the ladybugs and then swinging in front of them. Slower movements looked “heavier” while quick movements looked like a “lighter” sign.

It’s a different approach but worked well and didn’t involve a terrible amount of keyframing. The beams just went where they needed to.

Just another idea.

Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

David,

Here’s one possible approach:

You need to track your footage – either with AE’s tracker, or a 3rd party tracker (whatever you can afford!)

Once that’s done, apply the tracking data to a null object – you can now parent all other layers to that null object and have them follow the rotation etc.

Create a new composition for your flourish – create it from vector art from Illustrator (or other program) or use one of Andrew Kramer’s Evolution pieces (http://www.videocopilot.net). These things are awesome and totally worth the money!!

As for camera movements, it’s easiest to use null objects (again, see Andrew Kramer for help Tutorial #54)

Those should be some good places to start.

Good luck,
Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

April,

AE understands alpha channels in your composition and uses them when you stack layers. Some layers have alpha built in (text, shapes, etc) and some layers don’t (video layers (unless they were created with an alpha channel!)).

When you render your composition, you have the option of including the alpha channel or not. If you choose just “RGB,” AE will render a video (or image sequence) that is the size of your composition (assuming you didn’t scale in the output module). This video will contain an alpha channel that is essentially completely white and the exact dimensions of your composition EVEN IF your composition has transparent areas visible in the comp window.

When you render with RGB+Alpha, AE will take into account any transparency in your composition and provide that information in the final video.

That’s the long answer for “you need to re-render.” There are some plug-ins that can remove the black background from your image, but I don’t remember their names and it’ll probably be easier (and better quality) to re-render your videos.

Now you get to decide on straight or premultiplied alpha channels and that’s another story entirely. The main difference comes from how AE handles edges that aren’t 100% black or 100% white. Premultiplied can have the tendency to bring some of your background color into the edge of your video (adding a black color to smoke edges, for example). However, most programs can interpret straight or premultiplied so it isn’t that big of a deal.

When you’re in photoshop, you do need to add an alpha channel for transparency. If you apply a mask to a layer, your alpha channel is automatically added.

That’s a lot of words that I certainly hope makes sense.

Good luck,
Jacob

[Jacob Wessler]

Aza,

You can set the blend mode of your text layer to “Difference.” This would make the text white when it was over black, and black when your picture is white (of course, it’ll also do all the shades inbetween. If you want more control, you can create a gradient layer behind your text and pre-compose it. That will give you options for controlling when the text changes color. You could also animate a gradient (use the ramp effect for a simple gradient, or the 4-color effect for more color control).

As for the shadows, is your text layer close enough to the layer below it to cast the shadow? If the text is too far away, the shadow will have dissolved by the time it “reaches” your layer.

Hope that helps,
Jacob