[Jeff Salman]

Thanks again, Walter. I’ve been struggling for two days to find the answer to something and, again, your answer from 5 years ago helped me even today. This physics part as a way to slow down Particular was exactly what I needed (and didn’t realize that physics could be used to slow down or even go backwards in time).

With the way I have particular set up right now, the only way I could generate longer tails was by setting the velocity very, very high. But then I couldn’t figure out how to get that visual result … and just slow every thing down. The info was exactly what I needed. Much appreciated, Walter.

[Jeff Salman]

Thanks, Walter. 5 years later, and your answer still helped me. Much appreciated!

[Jeff Salman]

I was racking my brain and couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find any other posts on the web about how to snap guides to nulls or objects. There was another post below yours that gave an alternative approach to your technique, so it seemed like there were two people who knew how to snap guides to nulls. That explains it. Sounds good, and thanks for letting me know!

Yeah, I noticed that if I zoom in enough, I can place the guide precisely enough. Thanks for the help!

[Jeff Salman]

I am trying to figure out the same thing (how to position a guide precisely).

Michael Szalapski mentioned the “snap guide to the null” technique. I can’t find anywhere how to make a guide snap to a null (or anything else). Would someone mind sharing how to do that? Would really appreciate it. Thanks.

[Jeff Salman]

Hi dor peer,

What is the graphic in the precomp that you’re trying to place? B/c – in my mind – the correct approach will depend on what is in that precomp. For ex., in the visual example you gave, if the precomp is one of those dots, then I would do it differently than if the precomp is a triangle made up of three of those dots.

Let me know and I’ll see if I can help. And maybe you can post a pic of the precomp … that may help in figuring out exactly what you’re trying to do.

[Jeff Salman]

In case it helps someone else …

The 3D scene I had set up in AE was very, very large. I scaled the whole scene down quite a bit, and now the objects in Element 3D move in the 3D space as expected at Full Resolution.

So it seems that at very large scales, at Full Resolution, the E3D object jumps sometimes, at certain positions in World/3D space, to another spot in World/3D space other than the one that it is supposed to be at. In my case, this happened when I was rotating the E3D object’s group null in space. I had also tried just deleting the group null and pasting the world position where the problem was occurring directly into the position of the E3D object and I was able to recreate the issue. For some reason, at those large scales, (and only at Full Resolution … at any less Resolution they behaved as expected), the objects within that Element 3D layer were not liking certain positions in world space and would jump to a different space. Don’t know exactly why that happens, but again, as a workaround/solution-for-now, scaling down the whole scene made E3D behave even at Full Resolution.

[Jeff Salman]

Updated to the latest version of AE. That didn’t help. Don’t have the option to try a machine that’s more graphics friendly than mine at the moment, unfortunately.

I’m on:
OSX 10.8.5
16Gb Ram
Nvidia GeForce GT650M processor with CUDA, OpenGL (not too well-versed with these specs), with 1Gb of Vram)

Trying it on a machine with different specs is a good thought, though. I’ll keep trouble-shooting and if I find anything, I’ll post back.

[Jeff Salman]

I have already tried purging all Memory & Disk Cache. Unfortunately that didn’t help. Thanks for the effort, Cassius.

[Jeff Salman]

Hi Walter,

Yeah, the scene is, unfortunately, very spread out. I’m still relatively new and I was following a workflow I read about to make precomps very large to get around the issue of not being able to have precomps both Continuously Rasterized (to keep vectors sharp) and still have the layers within that precomp cast shadows. In any case, lesson learned and I’ll adjust my workflow in the future.

The Shift+Alt+Cmd+\ shortcut was very helpful. Thanks for that. I figure that the large scale of the scene is the culprit, and I’ll just keep an eye on the ortho views on future projects.

Just on a curious note tho … if you:
1). open the file i uploaded
2). go to the left view

…. you can select and highlight the Base 2 layer (to the left), the Base 4 layer (to the right), and the Base 3 layer (in the middle), but if you select the Base 1 layer, nothing is highlighted in the View (even though Base 1 should be in front of Base 3 in that view, just closer to the camera from that view. Then if you

3). Shift+Alt+Cmd+\ while having the Base 1 layer selected, it’ll zoom into that in the view. If you then,
4). Zoom back out to where the view was before, so that Base 2, 3, and 4 are back in the View (just as they were when you opened the file), now the when the Base 1 layer is selected, you can see it highlighted in the View. This is different from when you first open the file.

Base 1 is between Base 2 (to the left) and Base 4 (to the right), pretty much on top of Base 3. But where it wasn’t able to be highlighted in the View before, it is now after I do the keyboard shortcut you told me about.

That shortcut helps a lot, so thanks! Does seem to me like there is something a bit quirky going on with the ortho view, at least at very large scales. In any case … thanks so much for taking the time! I see you and a few others that are regular (and major) helpers on this board. Much appreciated!

[Jeff Salman]

Thanks for the help Walter (sorry for the late reply … I have a habit of trying to problem solve every little thing that comes up instead of just figuring out work-arounds – wanting to know the ins and outs of every program so I’m prepared in the future – and for once I tried to just finish the project).

In any case, I’ve tried navigating within the ortho views, and it doesn’t seem like that’s the issue. I’m uploading the file just for curiosity’s sake – at this point it’s academic … I’ve noticed that if I can’t find something in one ortho view, I can usually find it in the opposite ortho view, so I’m at least able to keep working.

I’ve simplified the file so that it has just the elements/layers to problem-shoot this. Appreciate the efforts and if anyone has any input/answers, it’d be greatly appreciated. (And I’m afraid that someone is going to find out that I just didn’t have something simple clicked or switched on … but if that’s the case, always good to know).

8146_creativecoworthotest.aep.zip