[Jason Milligan]

I’m surprised more people haven’t posted in this thread.
This question is one of those “hot-button” issues like “Mac vs. PC.”
I’m generally part of the work in CMYK camp. I’ve never heard a convincing argument why one should work RGB if their intent is print (unless that person intends to use a variety of RGB-only filters).

I find color-correcting and color-mixing much more intuitive in CMYK.
You have more control over your ink specifications and your plates if you work CMYK.
You needn’t worry about color shifts from a conversion.
You’ll be in the color space you intend to deliver.

That being said, I think the only real answer is the same as “Mac vs. PC.”
In which do you feel more comfortable working?

[Jason Milligan]

You didn’t recently upgrade Quicktime by chance, did you?

[Jason Milligan]

I am AE guy and haven’t used Nuke, but I assume it gives you options for interpreting your footage. In AE, changing that interpretation to “premultiply” matted with white would probably solve that problem. I would imagine there is a similar option in Nuke, although it may be worded differently.

[Jason Milligan]

This is the method I would probably use:

Create a comp with an animated drop gliding from top to bottom with a slight trail behind it. I would do this with various masks or shape layers.

Duplicate this comp multiple times inside a new comp, offset them physically and temporally.

I would then create a gray image with various gradients littered about to use as a displacement map on that comp. This would give variation to the movement of your drops.

[Jason Milligan]

For clouds:
https://www.videocopilot.net/realclouds.html

[Jason Milligan]

What is the purpose of the files you are rendering?
Are they test footage to see how your work is turning out, samples for a client, final files you intend to cut to DVD, files for the internet, etc.?

[Jason Milligan]

I can’t give you exactly what you are asking for, but I can show you an example of an animation I made using Flash CS3 in conjunction with AE CS3.

A Beautiful Life

The clincher for me was being able to import swf files directly into AE where it still treats them as vectors. I was able to do character animation in Flash, publish a swf, and bring that into AE for compositing where it was fully scalable.

[Jason Milligan]

I would create an image of teeth and anything else you want inside the mouth.
Then I would create a layer above it with a mask and use it as a track matte.
Then, you can keyframe the mask shape.

[Jason Milligan]

I’m guessing you clicked with the text tool instead of dragging and creating a text field, correct? That would make the difference.

[Jason Milligan]

Thanks for pointing that out.
I certainly didn’t mean to insinuate using rich black for text and I didn’t think to ask if that was what the black would be used for. Nice save.