[John Cuevas]

Not sure about the template(and I wouldn’t pay for it anyway, that’s really simple). You could create that with a wood background and an animated mask(if you don’t have any water/ink matted footage)

Take wood background and place as lower layer. Duplicate wood background and add a color effect to make it look wet. Add your text layer that you want to appear. Now take the wet wood and text and precomp them(shift + cntl + c).

In your main comp add a solid above your precomped text wood layer. Turn the opacity(T) to 50%. Now using the pen tool draw a rough mask around text layer that should be about where the water spills out. I would add the effect Stylize > Roughen Edges. Now you could just scale the layer to create the water spilling out, but I would animate the mask some as it scales up and play with the evolution of the roughen edges effect also.

Once you create a solid that animates like spilled water, change the opacity back to 100% and change the track matte of your wood/text layer to Alpha.

You can find free ink bleeds by doing a google search. Or buy them at video copilot in the riot gear package.

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]

Start with VideoCopilots Basic Training. That should get you started on creating lower thirds.

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]

Yes, create your animation in the precomp. For instance, in a precomp apply fractal noise to a layer, bring it to your main comp and change the track matte of your layer to “luma matte”. You can use alpha/alpha inverted/luma inverted also.

If you don’t see the track matte option, click near where it says “source name” and choose modes. Here’s a tutorial covering some Track Matting

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 have this happen to me when my preferences became corrupted, so you might want to try deleting them upon start-up. If you’re on a Mac, hold down the Command + Option + Shift keys as you start After Effects, this will allow you to delete the corrupt preference file. On a PC its Control + Alt + Shift.

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 are going to need to provide a bit more detail or an example of what your are trying to achieve. Does this line when it gets to the where you want the words actually create the letters themselves(writes them on) or does the line just reveal the letters as it passes.

What you are describing reminds me of the end credits of the Bourne Identity, but I maybe be wrong on what you are trying to accomplish. If that is it though, here’s a tutorial on how to achieve that effect.

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 Tom. That is a great script.

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]

This is where I come unstuck. The render queue is suggesting a 67 hour wait and telling me ‘Warning: Estimated file size exceeds available disk space’

AE doesn’t think that you have a large enough hard drive for the file at your current settings.

Hello,

I’m very new to AE and have managed to figure most things out so far, I’ve made some little videos and posted to YouTube no problem, however … I’ve been working on quite a big 10min long project – it’s finished (ish) and now I’d like to render it.

I’ve tried a few things to reduce the file size, but lets face it, I haven’t a clue. My last attempt was to use Best settings, Quicktime with Animation compression. I’m working on a pretty bog-standard laptop and CS3.

Quicktime-Animation is uncompressed video, it looks great but it will create huge files. Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

If this is for youtube, try Render settings “Best” Output Module – Windows Media. Press the codec button and change it to WMV9 Advanced. You can experiment with the Max Bitrate, but 3000 should be good. Make sure you check the audio output at the bottom.

Pre-rendering individual comps will help, but you if you do that, you want to render them to a lossless file, like a QT-animation(which create large files) before stitching everything together in your final. If you render the individual pieces to a compressed codec, you will be compressing it, then compressing again for the final, so consider that. Though if the final is for youtube, it might not be too noticeable.

If you are having hard-drive space issues, you might want to invest in a cheap terabyte external drive. The drawback is that AE will really slow down if it has to access files over an external drive via USB.

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]

Just saw this and thought you might be interested: https://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/how-to-use-the-amazing-free-new-preset-cover-flow/

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]

1. Yes, AE is perfectly suited to the task.

2. I think tutorials that reveal strokes and lines are what you need. The blueprint reveal is a logo reveal but might give you some ideas: Blueprint reveal

Using Paths in After Effects

If you are starting, here are some good courses for beginners: Video Copilot Basic Training series

After Effects basics tutorials by Andrew Devis

Lynda.com and ae.tutsplus.com are also great places to learn. Lynda is really good cause you can find your level and it’s very step by step. , aetutsplus has all kinds tuts, but they are generally more advanced and you need to have a good understanding fundamentals.

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’t really get the particles to accumulate in that sense, but you can fake it in some cases. Create a floor at a -45 degree angle. Then just move the emitter in z-space and as the particles hit the floor, it will look like they are stacking on top of each other. Check out this real simple example project I created: 4891_particularaccumulationcs5.5.aep.zip

Otherwise you would need a real physics system like that provided by Newton or Cinema4D

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.