[John Cuevas]

Try shift+alt+P

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]

One approach is to use a mask as a path, twirl open your text > Path Options > Path and choose the mask as the path. Copy the mask to the other text layers. You can create a “parent” mask that controls the child masks also, so you only have to adjust one path. Just copy the first mask to the child layers, open up the mask properties, alt-click on “mask path” and pick whip that to your “parent” mask path.

I made an example project that should help you start out: 5641_curvetext.zip

Also, under the obsolete effects is a Path Text effect that will accomplish what you want, but if you use that, you are giving up a lot of control and animation properties that you have with the text tool.

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 that video it looked like the Color Channel > Change Color or Change to Color effects. For selecting one color there are a few different ways to attempt it. Check out these Links:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/202/876632#876667

Google + Pleasantville effect tutorials.

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]

What codec did you select when you render? I don’t know Vegas, but do you have to set anything in that program to let it know you want to use an alpha channel?

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]

Yeah, that’s one of those gotchas that you don’t figure out until you’ve been got. Glad I was able to help you out.

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]

Sounds like when you are importing you have the checkbox in the corner selected “Pict Sequence” “Tiff Sequence” that imports your photos like an animation. This happens when AE finds a bunch of photos with sequential numbers in them. I use this feature a lot when I’m rendering from Cinema 4D–cause I’m render to .tiff files.

Just uncheck it and you should be good.

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 instead of using a slider, you use Effects > Expression Controls > Angle Control, you can go over 1,000,000. I have no idea why angle control can do this and slider can’t, but it’s a good little work around.

So use the counter link that Mr. Bourke provided, but in the directions where it says use a slider, just change that to angle control.

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]

Try using fractal noise as a layer to create some of the smoke effect. Also, create a high contrast version of fractal noise in a precomp and use that as a layer to drive the effect distort > displacement.

Here is a tutorial on using displacement maps that should get you started in the right direction. Invisible Cape

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]

So I’m going to continue the conversation in this forum, if you have more questions.

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]

Here is a CS5 version of the sample project. Take a look at that and if you have more questions, let me know.

5625_rotationcs5.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.