[John Cuevas]

You have the “Cntl + Alt + Shift + P” which will open your most recent project. There is also a script that will do it too, Load Project or Template at Startup

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Drop the next image into the compostion, press “T” to bring up the opacity settings, move the CTI(current time indicator) to where you want the fade to start, change the opacity to 0% and press the stopwatch to set a keyframe. Move the CTI to where you want the fade to end and change the opacity to 100%

This is as basic as it gets, and that you don’t know this indicates you would really benefit from Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6, & CC)—lot of great information and free learning there that will teach you the basics of AE.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

If you looked at my example, I had both beam effects on the same solid. If you add another beam effect to that same solid, it overwrites the first one. That’s why on every Beam after the first you have to tell it to “composite on original”, that you can stack the effects together on one solid.

You could also just work with multiple solids and not worry about “composite on original”, I just thinking working with one, keeps your project less cluttered.

Glad I could help.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

You want an “expression”, not a script. Apply this to the flares brightness by “alt + click”

freq = 3;
amp = 20;

wiggle(freq,amp)

Change the freq number to make it flicker more each second(right now it’s set to 3), change the amp to increase the how much the brightness value will change. Right now I have it set to 20, so that’s the max that will be added or subtracted from the flares brightness.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Jimmy and Tina don’t move much, the cameras focus on them, you run it through a switcher, there’s a pre-made matte, the two layers are composited together and it’s fed out, that’s the basics. I forget some of the terms since it’s been over 16 years since I used a switcher.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

First, that effect was created using Plexus, so using the beams effect is just a work around. If you have a lot of titles graphics and lines you want to animate, using Beams is going to take a real long time. What this expression does, is convert 3D space to 2D space, basically faking the position for AE(it’s all fake anyway as it’s a 2D monitor and 3D space is just forced perspecive…)

Here is how you would do this for 1 LINE with 3 points. First you need to create 3 points in space(in my example I use text, you could use nulls, solids, whatever). I would animate them first.

Next you would create a solid, name it beam 1. This will connect point 1 to point 2. Add the beam effect to the layer. “Alt+click” the “Starting point” to start the expression and type StartPointLayer= and using the pickwhip(looks like a little spiral) connect it to your first layer(just connect to the layer name), then type a “;”(semi-colon). Press Enter to start a new line and type “StartPointLayer.toComp([0,0,0])”.

In my example my layer name is “position 1” so my expression is simply: StartPointLayer=thisComp.layer("Position 1");
StartPointLayer.toComp([0,0,0])

Now we need to do an ending point which will be the same but with a different variable. Alt click the “Ending Point” type “EndPointLayer=” and pickwhip to your 2nd layer, the type “EndPointLayer.toComp([0,0,0])“. My example: EndPointLayer=thisComp.layer("Position 2");
EndPointLayer.toComp([0,0,0])

Now to connect that line to the next point, you would just duplicate the beam effect, and your startpoint will the endpoint of the first effect(position 2) and the end point will be Position 3. Finally check the setting “composite on original:

Check out my example project to and see if it helps you figure this out, I added a camera you can turn on an off too.: 7245_beamseffect.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Open up the mask shape for mask 1 and click on “mask path” and “Cntl+V” to copy the path. I would add a null, press “P” to open it’s position, click “Position” and “Cntl + P” to paste the path. When you paste, AE, will create roving keyframes, so you just need to grab the last keyframe to adjust your animation. Then repeat for each mask and paste to your null after the previous keyframes. Place your pen layer into it’s starting position and parent to the null.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Are you not able to do it in the way I suggested? What issues are you having?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

In your example what that was uploaded to youtube, exactly what did you upload, and how did you render it?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

[John Cuevas]

Depends on the emitter, but there are a couple of ways of doing it. With particular, you want to throw your particles out there, by setting a high initial particle count and quickly moving to 0, and using a high velocity. Then using hold keyframes, animate the Physics Time Factor to 0. If you have particular you can see this done in the Star field Static Preset. (You can get a free trial of particular from Red Giant)

With CC Particle World, you would set up a large particle emitter, animate the particle count from from a high number to 0 over a few frames, like particular. Just set the velocity and gravity to 0, and the particle life to the length of your comp. You also will want to adjust the particle opacity to be a constant rather then the default curve.

I made a couple quick example star fields showing how to do this. 7230_particlesystems.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com

“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.