Well, the final product looks nice, good job, sorry you didn’t get paid.

I don’t use blender, so I’m not sure what is causing the issue. As far as fixing it, I would just choke the matte, using one of the matte effects like “Simple Choker” or “Matte Choker”.

You could use the rd Comp Setter script. Set up each precomp, then when you make your final renders, use the script to change the size of all the precomps at one time. I use it all the time for changing frame rates, comp sizes, etc.

https://aescripts.com/rd-compsetter/

I’m a little flumoxed, because before I posted my answer, I tried to use the Num Key * and it didn’t work for me. I saw Chris’s replay, and I just started AE again, and tried again and it is working for me. It might that my first project was too complicated to playback in realtime, not sure. But Chris is right and you should be able to use his…

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I don’t know if you can do it in AE, but you can in Premiere. So I would just open the composition in Premiere, play it and just tap “M” where you need markers. Only workaround I know.

Might be a corrupted preferences file. I would try these steps.

To delete After Effects preferences on startup, <mark>hold down the Ctrl + Alt + Shift keys on Windows or Command + Option + Shift on Mac while launching the application</mark>; this will prompt a dialog box asking if you want to delete the preference file, where you can click “OK” to…

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If you select the keyframes and Alt+click them you can cycle through the interpolations.

First things first, there is an AE Expressions forum with the absolute best expressions guy ever, Dan Ebberts, so you might want to post there first.

I have a few questions though. Is the null moving? You have hundreds of objects, and they are all going to be going to the null, is there going to be a delay between object 1 then 2, then 3… are…

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Open up your scene elements, click on the object and then click on surface options. Then just invert the normals. Once I did that, the material showed up on the other side. I just had to rotate it around.

The normals, created in C4D, point perpendicular to the surface of the object. I think because this object really doesn’t have any…

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I tried to use your .obj in Element and had issues right away. I opened it in C4D and I just think the way Creo(don’t use it) creates geometry isn’t optimized for Element. My product wall wasn’t exactly the shape of your object, so I went into C4D and created a new object(Cyc Wall) as close as I could to what you made and just added it into the…

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Not sure why using element didn’t work. I exported an object from C4D, brought it into element then just added a material to the diffuse channel and worked fine. See example.

The simplest way would be to render out what you want to put on the curved screen, then in C4D create a material and add the video to one of the channels(color in the physical renderer—turn off the other channels), then apply it to your object. Then render that out. If there is audio-you might have to marry it back in AE or Premiere.

I’m getting the same result you do when I create lines and I’m not exactly sure why. If I create shapes using the shape tools, the anchor point is centered exactly as it should be, in the center of the shape(when the checked in the preferences). For lines, if you use the Transform tool for the layer, it rotates properly from the anchor point,…

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Shape layers aren’t actually just the size of the shape, like if you made a new solid and it was 80×120 the anchor point would be at the center of that solid. Shape layers are the size of the entire comp size. So the anchor point isn’t for the actual shape, but the full layer size. Imagine you created a full solid, and could place your shape on…

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I think you could benefit from watching this tutorial on Multi-Bevel effects. I used his technique and created a 2 layer multi-layer bevel. The Text layer I turned off. The Bevel Angular, has an expression back to the source text, to update the text. I used a text animator to change the color of the bevel to be gold. Then made a shape layer…

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You can’t do that with the Echo effect. If you were to go into more detail, I or others could attempt to write an expression that could accomplish what you are trying to do.

In case anyone needs to do something like this, the trick is to add a matrix object to the project. Then change the mode to Object and use the cloner as the object. Then use the matrix object in the Xpresso to drive your non-dynamic objects.

Attached is the updated version if anyone needs to use it as a reference.

Did you switch to the “expressions” tab. Because the pulldown I was mentioned is there.

In your preferences check under application scripting and check “Allow scripts to write files and access network” and see if that changes things.

The only other thing that I can think of is going into the project settings “Cntl+Alt+Shift+K” and change the Expressions Engine.

Also, if you want to upload some of the scripts, I’d be willing to test…

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It’s becoming less transparent because you have two 50% layers on top of each other. The way AE works takes those together and will give you a channel with a 75% alpha. You can solo the layer, and check this out with the info panel. If you want the box to be about 50%, looking through two panes, you would need to reduce the opacity to around 35%

In your timeline, you can click the render time button(or right click and add render time to your columns) and that will show you how long everything is taking to render. That way you can zero in on what is causing the slowdown. Without knowing your project, we are guessing blind, but things that can cause slowdowns are expressions with lots of…

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I have been following this tutorial(below & cued up) to stick a texture to a bunch of clones. Everything works fine until I get to the last section where Xpresso is supposed to use the look at the hierarchy-index of my objects and connect them back to the index of my rigid body cloner.

My objects only move to the initial position of the…

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Is this any different that just selecting all layers and pressing “U” which reveals anything property that has a keyframe?

If the transitions are all the same but with different video, you just need to build one in a precomp and then duplicate it for each transition you need, then replace the video in the precomps. You can replace the video in the precomp by selecting the video layer to be replaced. Go to your project window and select the replacement layer and…

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Just my 2 cents, but if this was essential for anything I needed to use for a paid client, I would just find and pay(and bill it to them) for a properly lit shot. The amount of work needed to make that shot look good will never cost as much as just buying better footage.

After auto-orienting to the path, you can still open up your rotation property and keyframes orientation or the XYZ rotation.

You might want to try in the expressions forum. I think you could your line that gets masked from the text alpha. Then create a round cap for it. There are search expressions that could find the end of your line post masking and then attach your round cap to it.

I found years ago online and saved it, but I couldn’t modify it exactly for what…

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Maybe the answer will make a difference to others, my attempted solution isn’t working. Sorry

Does your line need to go in between the letters like in the example(blue lines) or can it stop at the start/end of each line(red lines)?

I’m sure there has to be a way of extracting the data from the position of the object position(other than copy/paste), but I’m not sure. I was able to do the opposite though, create a stroke and then have the head of it follow the stroke(so it looks like it’s in front of it). See if this helps you, otherwise I would suggest posting in the AE…

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If you wanted to do each line as a single layer, you could lookup and use an automated shape box. Just google, there are lots of tutorials.

If you want to do it with just effects. I did it by Adding a channel blur to the alpha, a levels effect to the alpha, a fill effect and then CC Composite. Please see my example project.

Try posting this in the AE Expressions forum. I have to admit, I’ve wasted a day trying to get it to work and I’ve gotten close, but no cigar.

I used the script that’s included with AE to trace the path and then reworked it from the null to the snakes head. Then I used the follow the leader expression for the body segments to look at the segment one layer above as it’s position minus a time time delay. The time delay is on the Delay controller null.

Then I just pressed “cntl+alt+O” to…

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I think a big part of the issue is you really don’t see volumtric light that is coming from behind the camera. It needs to be from a side or in front of the camera moving forward.

Kevin, the free version of Particle Illusion will output with an alpha channel.

Other than maybe those are older tutorials, I don’t have a reason why you would create MP4’s through Media Encoder now(except maybe there is more functionality for customizing the encode). For our clients who want an MP4, I export directly from AE using the 40bit preset.

I messed around with some solids and it’s a little inconsistent(probably due to background and luminance) , but basically for whatever size feather you use on your mask, you need to subtract a little more than half that from you mask expansion. If you have a feather of 200, you need need a Mask Expansion a little higher than -100. Also, you can…

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I can’t say for sure because I can’t find the documentation, but I think it’s a default light like you get in most 3D applications. It’s on so you can place your objects, model, etc., before creating your final lighting setup. Once you create other lights, the default light will no longer effect your scene.

Neil, I understand what you want to do but you are still being way too vague to offer much assistance. For example, if you are trying to create a 1970’s version of fictional channel, then it would be best to have an clip of a real channel of that period and then tell us what are the particular things from that clip that you are having trouble…

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Can you upload the project files where that is happening? It’s hard to speculate based on the screen capture.

I looked up a .ron and it doesn’t look like a format for video delivery.

What Is RON? Your Guide to Remote Online Notarization

I would ask for more clarification.

You can figure out the best size, then create an action in Photoshop to change the photos to that size and then batch run the action on the folder with the photos.

Say you want them all to be 1280 x 720. You would open the actions window and start recording an action. Change the “Image Size” to 720—this will either scale up or scale down the…

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Hi Joe,

Sorry for the delay in response, been a busy last few days. This is a project that could be done in a quite a few ways, such as the text animator approach above. Create a follow the leader expression with the valueAtTime command, a particle system(Particular would work very well) would also be an easy way to achieve that effect.

I think…

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There are many ways to do this, but one question — do the arrows need to bend, when moving around curves, that will increase the difficulty?

The first think I would try is to create a junk matte around the people and the roughly follow them through the shot. Then just try to key/extract the colors from that area rather than the entire video. If that fails, you might have to resort to rotobrush or frame by frame rotoscoping.

Here is a great video that will really help you dig into this old school effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzzEy76cCXo

I had to go really old school, but I think I figured out how to do create this effect. I used Particle Playground, an effect that was created in 1992!

Drop your shape(I’m calling it the snowflake) into a new composition. Create a solid, add Particle Playground. PP has 3 different particle systems and you want to use the layer exploder system.…

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The easiest way would be to use Trapcode Form or Particular. Then you would have all the particles created and in the start position and then use a force to displace break them apart. That’s why it looks different than the one you are trying to recreate, the particles are moving from the initial position to a new position from the force and…

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Joe, if you are still working on this, could you upload the map to help give everyone a better idea of what we are working with?

Tom,

Under the visibility settings there is a Far Vanish setting. Your emitter is going beyond the point where you would be able to see the particles being emitted. Just change the Far Vanish point to something like 500,000(it looks like the settings stop at 100,000) and in my test it looks like everything works again.

There is also a free…

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