[John Cuevas]

I’m unsure why you would need AE for this, why wouldn’t you just zoom in camera?

If you need AE to do this, it would just be a matter of setting some scale keyframes. Press “S” to open the scale parameter, press the stop watch, move forward in time and adjust the scale for the “push”. Remember that when you scale over 100% you lower quality/resolution. Generally I don’t like to scale more than 120-130.

Also, you can animate the anchor point too. By adjusting the anchor point, you adjust where the image scales from. So before you set you scale keyframes, press “P” to activate the pan behind tool and you can move your anchor point to place you would like the camera to scale from. Then you can move to where the scale needs to finish, press “a” and manually use the numbers to slide the shot to it’s new position. This is also known as the Ken Burns 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]

Do a google search for 360 HDR photography , that returns some usable results(360 HDRI spherical will find some good ones too). I switched it to return large results. I wouldn’t use any of those photos for professional use, but if you need something to practice with…

If you have CS6, you can use CC Environment, or the environment map also.

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 were a lot of 60’s looks in the Dani California video, is there a particular look you are trying to achieve? Here’s the video, if you could tell us the timecode it will be easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sb5aq5HcS1A

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.

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[John Cuevas]

Try the True Comp Duplicator

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]

Right click near where it says “Parent”, go to columns and choose what you need back(I think you want switches). Also you can remove the time information by unclicking the little box at the bottom left(looks like brackets, you can just see it in your image).

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 isn’t an easy plugin or way to do this, you pretty much nailed it with “stuck animating masks on solids with equal point counts”. To make it look good, it’s generally tedious work…but that’s why they pay us the big bucks……LOL

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]

The hard part will be the timing, so the first thing you should do is go to the Menu Bar > Edit > Preference > General and check “Synchronize Time of All Related Items”.

You should have a final comp with CC Sphere applied to a precomp with your map. For best results I find that a map with a a resolution of 2000×1000 works pretty(2×1). Now rotate your sphere in the main comp and when you get to a country you want to highlight, double click the precomp and use whatever method you need to highlight the country. Now it’s highlighted on your globe.

I made a simple project to illustrate the technique, post back if you have any questions: 4839_countryhighlightfolder.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]

Do you mean the text that you can see in the poster frame(TATO). The method I would use would be to create my text layer and texture, and precompose it. Then to get the text to have varying degrees of transparency I would create a solid and add fractal noise to it. Place that above the text layer and change the text layer’s track matte to a luma matte. For fun you could set keyframes on the fractal noises evolution to have the opacity change a bit. Finally I would play with the final transfer mode of the text(looks like an additive mode).

Here’s a quick and dirty example project for you to see, perhaps it will give you some other ideas on how to approach this: 4835_textexamplefolder.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]

Particular doesn’t support displacement mapping from another layer. Perhaps you could use a combination of free form with particular to displace the layer(or for something really quick and dirty the distort -displacement effect).

It’s tough that it has to be particular, cause Form does this type of effect better.

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 would be to take your final animation composition and drag it on to the new comp button. Create a solid and turn off the eyeball for it. Now use the pen tool(g) to cut a mask that you want cut out and change the mask mode to subtract(turn on the eyeball to see what you created). Last change the track matte of your animation layer to alpha mask. Then render your composition to a format that supports an alpha channel. Like Quicktime_Animation. Under the lossless dialogue you will need to change the color from RGB to RGB+Alpha. Here’s a quick example project for you: 4827_pictureframemattefolder.zip

Given that you are a new to AE, I would suggest you look at this PAGE. It’s a collection of resources collected by Todd Kopriva. Try the getting started video tutorials he posted links to in point 4, you will find AE a lot easier once you understand the basic tools.

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.