[John Cuevas]

Cntl + Enter will do a background cache comp, you can do that then a RAM preview which will be pretty fast since everything would be cached.

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]

Perhaps some of the techniques in Rob Mize’s Snowglobe Tutorial will be helpful.

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]

Here you go, just place this file into the folder with the others and everything should link up.

4593_shattercs5.0.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]

I’ll post you a CS5 version tonight, hope you will find it useful.

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 got me all excited Tom, I watched the video and was even more excited…then I saw no Windows version yet…. 🙁

Guess I’ll have to check back, anything to keep my comps more organized is always appreciated, thanks for the link.

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]

It’s not really. In prior versions before anchor point snapping, it was a lot quicker to use the script and snap the anchor point to the top of a layer, a corner or center. I still use it and for me, find it a bit quicker to use the script to snap my anchor point to a position rather than try and drag it to where I want it to go.

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]

Which version of AE are you using. I saved it to a CS5.5 and CS6 format. I could go back to CS5 when I get home, but if you follow the steps you should be able to work it out. If you run into problems, just come back here and we will see what we can do to help you out.

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]

Here’s a ‘name your own price’ script, repositionAnchorPoint that you might find handy for quickly adjusting the anchor point for scaling purposes.

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 you are just learning this is a high intermediate project to tackle, but still doable.

First off here are a few tutorials, you should check out to familiarize yourself with the techniques needed to accomplish this.

Basic Shatter(an oldie, but provides a good foundation for understand shatter)

Custom Shatter Maps

Shattering Glass Tutorial-good tutorial using shatter

So I attempted to recreate the project from the opening credits in your link. Step 1 was to create a pre-comp(PC_Text) with the text fading & scaling up.

Next I grabbed an explosion still from the web and quickly animated it in its own precomp(PC_Explosion). Obviously if you were doing this for a real set of credits you would want to buy some explosion footage to use.

I also found some broken glass and dropped that into a precomp(PC_Shatter Map) to use as a custom shatter map. In my project I created to final compositions, one using the shatter map(it’s VERY rough, creating your own will produce MUCH BETTER results) and one using AE’s default glass shatter map.

Create a final comp and drop all the precomps into it. Apply the effect Simulation -> Shatter to your PC_Text Layer. The first thing I do when working with shatter is twirl open force and move the “Depth” position to a positive number so it’s not breaking anything(it defaults to 0 which explodes the layer.) Next, position the force to where you want it to start breaking the layer and adjust the “Radius” to an appropriate size.

Change the “Shape” to either Glass or Custom. If you are using your own custom shatter map, you will also need to change the “Custom Shatter Map” pulldown.

The next step is to match the Force to your explosion(or whatever object you using to break the layer) by animating the “Depth” of the layer. Positives Numbers are move the force backwards, negative numbers move it forward—you can add a camera to the scene and rotate it around to see how this works(just change “Camera System to “Comp Camera”. Lastly, adjust the Force 1-Strength parameter to change the strength of the explosion.

The rest of the project you will find a lot of parameters you will now adjust to taste. Shape Repetitions and Extrusion will control how many pieces you have and the thickness of them(I used different sizes in my projects, based on how it looked). Physics–in my project to match the movie I turned gravity down to .25. Under Textures I chose for the “Side” to use Color + Opacity and used the color white and adjusted the opacity between .5 and .75

Lastly I added a light and animated it’s intensity as the shatter happens. If you don’t animate the intensity the light will show up before the shatter occurs, I only want my light to provide highlights on the pieces as they explode so I quickly ramp it up as my shards are moving. Finally I went back to the Shatter effect and adjusted the “Materials” to provide the highligts.

Here’s my project, hope you find it helpful: 4585_shatterexamplefolder.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]

There is a very long & tedious method to do this if you are so inclined.

Bring in your text as masks. On the Menu Bar choose Layer -> Shape Layer. Twirl it open and choose Add – Group(empty). Now choose Add – Path(when I do this I get an error, but it still works). Go to your text/mask layer and open it up(Press M-that should open all the mask paths), copy the first mask and paste it into the path you created on your shape layer.

Now you would repeat the create mask create mask copy/paste step for every mask in your text(told you it was tedious). When you are done, you would add fills, gradients to your shape layer. Letters with holes like A or E…copy those mask too, for me they correctly subtracted.

Here’s a project I made showing my work for a few letters (not sure it’s going to help, it’s just copy and pasting)—4582_maskstoshapes.aep.zip

Is there a reason not to create the text in AE and just use Layer -> “Create Shapes from Text”?

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.