[John Cuevas]

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]

That one has gotten me a few times, 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]

There are a few ways of going about this, one way is use the Distort > Displacement Map effect. Create a higher contrast version of the picture in a precomp and bring that to your final composition. Now add the Displacement Map effect to your text and chose your precomp as the Displacment Map Layer.

I made and example project. I masked out the subject so that only when the text is projected against the subject does it displace. Doing it this way is the quick and dirty way of accomplishing this effect: 4998_displacementeffectfolder.zip

Another more exact method would be to actually create/paint a full on displacement map. Basically you paint a layer using full white for the areas closest to the camera and black for farther away, then use the displacement map effect push and pull your animation. There is some information about that in this tutorial: Displacement Mapping

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu used the depth map technique to produce commercial(though he doesn’t use it to distort text, he uses it to make photos appear 3D): https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1010346#1010348

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 you have “RotoBezier” selected. When you select your pen tool, RotoBezier will show up at the end of your tools pallet. Uncheck it and your pen tool should return back to normal.

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]

Nice work with the reflections Tom. And a big thanks for the link Ted, that Superman logo was way cool.

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]

Without seeing a screen grab to know exactly what your color picker looks like right now, I’m going to take a guess that you may have changed the toggle of the picker. The button to reset things back to the default is the “H”ue selection.

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]

Make sure your fill point is over the text(that will generally fill just one letter though).

If you want to fill with one color, I think the easiest way is to change the “Fill Selector” to Alpha Channel, make a selection that isn’t on your text layer and finally invert the fill. Of course if you are using just one color, the Fill effect you mentioned before is a lot faster and easier to use.

Paint Bucket works if you need to paint multiple colors or an area with opacity/an alpha channel. Check out that example project I made, you’ll see what I mean.

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 here are a couple of tutorials on using shatter(it can be a bit over-whelming):

This tutorial is quite old, but shatter hasn’t changed in 10 years so it’s still relevant: Basic Shatter: Introduction to the Shatter Effect

A new Tutorial from Rob Mize: Shatter-Mation in After Effects

To answer your question though, a layer shatter when it is hit by a 3D force. When you first apply shatter you will get a wireframe plus forces view. The blue lines are the force hitting your layer like a wrecking ball causing it to break up. By twirling down the force parameter you can control when your layer is hit, where it’s hit and how it’s hit.

You can’t reverse shatter a logo per se, you need to shatter the logo and precomp the effect. Now you can apply a Layer > Time > Time Remap to have the shatter reverse and explode out again.

I made an example project illustrating how shatter works and how you would time remap it. Take a look at the tutorials/my project and if you have any more questions, come back and ask.

4977_shatterexample.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]

Add you layer to a composition and select the layer. Now on the menu bar go to Layer > Create Shapes from Vector Layer.

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]

Another method is to use the paint bucket effect. That will work well if you have solid lines and need multiple colors—you just need to apply the effect for each color, like this: 4975_paintbucket.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.