[John Cuevas]

Scott,

If you are still having trouble, post your project here(use the file upload button, last icon above) and I’ll take a closer look to make sure there isn’t some little “gotcha” slipping you up. You only need to upload the “.aep” file. I’ll download the maxafter project to recreate the globe portion.

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]

Scott,

Now that I have a more clear idea of what you are doing, I think you can take the entire Earth part of the project and precompose it and build it per the tutorial. It will rotate and work correctly in it’s own composition. Just take the final output of the earth layers and drop that into your final and enable it’s 3D button.

Again you will want to then turn off “accept lights” because whatever lights you have affecting your text/logo will then affect your earth. You should be lighting/shading the earth using the CCSphere plugin.

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]

Well looking at your comp, the new galaxy logo isn’t 3D. I’m sure it’s 3D in the pre-comp, but if it’s not 3D in this comp, it’s just a 2d layer that looks 3d.

Exactly how are you getting that logo to spin around. If it’s with a null object, you should be able to turn on the collapse transformations toggle(looks like a little sun) and it should orbit around your earth.

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 it doesn’t help, try posting in the expressions forum, they will come up with something that will work for you.

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 method to cleaning up masks is to use the lock feature on the mask. Then go to Layer > Mask > Hide Locked Masks.

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]

I just read the comments below the tutorial and found this expression that I applied to the anchor point(you have to add a layer marker to your layer or it returns an error)

freq=1.0;//oscillation per second
amplitude = -30;
decay = 1.0;
t = time - marker.key(1).time;
posCos = Math.abs(Math.cos(freq*t*2*Math.PI));
y = amplitude*posCos/Math.exp(decay*t);
anchorPoint - [0,y]

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 precomp with the high contrast image you could mask out the part with the person. Then place a grey solid underneath, since it’s neutral it shouldn’t displace the image in the final comp.

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]

I’d duplicate the video layer and precomp it. Then use curves(preferred) or brightness contrast effects to create more contrast on the white wall. In the final comp apply Distort > Displacement Map to your image layer and tweak the results. You might want to add a soft blur to the image and then play with the transfer mode.

Here’s a quick sample project I made that you might want to look at as a jumping off point: 5101_displacementmapfolder.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]

On the PC you would hold down “shift+cntl” when creating your shape and will scale from the center. That will not put the anchor point in the center though. You can use the Pan Behind/Re-position Anchor Point Tool(Y) to do that though and if you hold down “cntl” you can get the anchor point to snap to the center of your shape.

Starting with Tutorial 17, Andrew Davis covers pretty much everything you could ever want to know about shape layers. After Effects basics tutorials by Andrew Devis

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 can get particular as a trial

I agree with Vishesh that it’s just a text layer being used as a “layer” emitter. Once you take a look at some of the tutorials he linked, take a look at this page for to see some different & freebubble presets.

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.