[John Cuevas]

I might have overkilled it, but I have 4 SSD’s. One for my programs(223 GB), one for CACHE(223), one for Source/Assets(120) and one for Render(120).

It depends on how/what you preview. You can do a background render to cache, work on another comp, then when you RAM preview it loads the cached frames super fast. Also if you shut down for the night much of your work will be cached and when you start up again it loads right up.

Unless you place your assets/footage on that drive I don’t think it will increase your RAM previews that much.

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 a PC with a standard install they would be here:

C:Program FilesAdobeAdobe After Effects CS6Support FilesPlug-ins

can’t help you with a MAC

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’m not sure if it’s because it’s on top, but sometimes if you have 2D layers in between the layers that can mess things up.

Another thing is if you set the pull down of particular to a 2D layer, it won’t recognize it, even if you change it to 3D later. You would have to set the pull down back to none and then back to the 3D layer before particular would see it.

Glad you were able to get it working.

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 your main proton a 3D layer. Now in particular twirl open visibility and under obscuration layer change the pull down to the proton 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]

You could do it like this. Create a null and that will be your inital position. Add the layer you want to offset above the null layer in the layer stack and this expression:

var offset = 500;
x= thisComp.layer(index+1).transform.position[0]+offset;
y= transform.position[1];
[x,y]

Now every time you duplicate that layer it will move 500 px to the right of the previous layer. Here’s an example project to check out: 4688_positionexpression.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]

Try video—hive.net(take out the dashes, for some reason if I put that in it sets off language filter). You may find the one you are looking for(I didn’t see it), but you will find a ton that look very similiar, you might be able to get your client to sign off on one of those.

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’s what this forum is here for, learning from the people who have already made the mistakes you want to avoid.

Since you are getting started you might enjoy these free basic series for learning AE. Video Copilot Basic Training series

After Effects basics tutorials by Andrew Devis

Check out this page from Todd Kopriva from Adobe. Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, & CS6) It has a lot of great resources for when you first start out.

And besides the Andrew Davis tutorials, there are hundreds of other great tutorials here at the cow.

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 way is that you could twirl open your text and alt-click on the “Source Text” to create an expression, then using place your text inside quotes —> “Example”. Not the most elegant solution.

Another way, which isn’t exactly what you wanted but I think would work better would be to apply effects and layer styles. You could do a fill effect for color and a layer style for stroke. Then your copy and paste and it would change the effects at all.

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 was taken out of CS6. Check out Element 3D for using 3d models in AE.

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]

Press Cntl+Alt+O and make sure that Orient to Point of Interest is selected.

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.