[John Cuevas]

Trapcode Particular has some pretty good presets that you could use as a fuse. It’s a “3D” effect, in that it respects AE’s 3D space, so it’s pretty flexible to what you may need.

It has a trial download, so take a look.

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]

Second: the audio file only plays for 15 seconds which i dont understand since in the template is goes for the whole ‘show’ and the movie seems to stagger a bit, its not as fast as the preview file..here im talking about the mov file too

The following link should explain the stuttering:

FAQ: Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

Unless I miss my guess you are creating a quicktime file with the animation codec. That’s a lossless compression that really isn’t meant for playback on a computer system. I can’t speak for macs, but if you were to play it off a PC, I would suggest creating a Windows Media file(.wmv) at a bit rate of 5000. To change these settings, click the “Lossless” link in the render queue, change the “Format” pulldown to windows media and then click the “Format Options”. Change the max bitrate to 5000 and the Image Quality to 100.

For the audio, make sure you have audio throughout your project. Move to 10 seconds and press “.” if there is audio it will preview. Go to 20,30,40 seconds and test to make sure you have audio turned on. If everything seems good, do a test. Press “B” to set the start of your work area and “N” to set the end. That will render only a portion of the video, if there are issues, don’t render everything until they are worked out. So do a few tests and then get back to us if it doesn’t work.

And yes you can delete the first rendered quicktime file, if it doesn’t work, it’s junk, get rid of it and it’s taking up space on your hard drive.

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 would use one of the keying tools to do this. It’s a bit more complicated than the others, but if you have a good key, “Keylight” should do the trick. If your key isn’t that good(bad lighting, shadows…) then you you will have more work to achieve a clean key.

As Todd said, if you start keying and aren’t getting it to come out well, post some screen shots and we’ll see what specific steps you need to take.

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]

Glad I was able to 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]

Thanks for the heads-up.

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]

Twirl open the text and you will need to add a text animator and enable individual character 3D. From there you Animate the Z-position and then twirl open the advance Range parameters and enable randomize.

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]

Most of his tutorials don’t require any additional footage. For ones like motion tracking, you need to supply your own footage or just follow along, take notes and apply them to footage when the issue comes up.

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]

Creating a second comp(SEQ) and dropping it into the second, is creating a precomp. So if you were to take all your video layers and precomp them, then drop that into your final comp what your layer layer flow would be this: Final > SEQ(which is a precomp) > SEQ precomp. You are adding an extra composition that you don’t need.

I’m not near AE right now, so I can’t demonstrate this, but if you try your idea out, you can go open up the flow chart window and you will see you have one extra comp that is just flowing into the next. It won’t hurt anything really, but it’s just creating extra steps for yourself. For instance if you were working in “Final” and wanted to change one shot, you would need to double click “SEQ” to open that layer, then double-click the precomp. Always strive to streamline your organization if possible.

Hope this is clear.

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]

It looks like they used one from Action Essentials 2

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]

Lens flares are basically reflected light hitting a camera lens, they always point towards the camera. No way to really turn them around. You will have to play with the options to make a flare that is more subtle to create the realism you are trying to achieve.

You might want to go with a smaller flare and use the beam effect for the actual laser.

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.