[John Cuevas]

In your composition, right click above your layers near source name and choose switches. Also the very bottom icon all the way to the left will collapse or open your switches.

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 correct about the lights within a precomp.

Take a look at this tutorial by Eran Stern, he makes the lights in his comps adjustment layers to help control what the lights illuminate…might be some help to you.

Adjustment Lights

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]

Actually did a little looking around and this isn’t that easy to automate. I had thought an expression might be able to be linked from the height and width of a text layer to a shape layer, but apparently text doesn’t have a physical height and width to use. I haven’t seen an automated way of doing what you are asking yet.

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 would create a precomp with a seamlessly looping blinking light. Bring that into your final comp and use that as custom sprite. Then for Particle -> Time Sampling choose Random Loop.

For a 15 x 3 comp I made my emmiter create 45 particles a second and made my custom particle loop over 1 second.

Here’s what I came up with: 4580_blinking.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]

Yes, in your final composition you can always double-click any precomps you’ve made to open them and work on them. They are also available in the project window and can be accessed that way too.

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]

Many methods to creating an effect like this, but the way I would do it would be to use a track matte. So I would create my background and animate it’s position, then duplicate the layer. Now create your text an animate that from offscreen to it’s final position.

Now place the text underneath the duplicate and change it’s track matte to alpha matte.

Here’s a quick project demonstrating the technique: 4577_lowerthirdanimation.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]

Keyframe the scale & position properties of a layer over 10 frames with multiple keyframes. Turn on motion blur for the layer and composition.

Quick example project illustrating the technique: 4574_textblur.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]

If it’s just a background change, put that in it’s own precomp and put that precomp into all the compostions. Then when you need to change all the BKG’s, you change the one and all will update.

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 won’t be easy, I was thinking you would track the scar.

Without seeing the video, my workflow would be to create a clone/fake hair layer that will blend and cover the scar. Track the scar and then hopefully apply the tracking data to the clone/fake hair layer. It might be that you can’t get a good track, then you may very well will have to manually do this.

If you have CS6 you might want to give the new 3D camera tracker a shot too.

Good luck with it, going to be tough, I know, I’ve been there.

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]

Besides the layers motion blur switch are you enabling motion blur for the composition also? #1 enables motion blur for the layer, but until you press #2 and enable it for the composition it’s turned off. Makes it easier to work if AE doesn’t have to calculate the blur for every frame, just turn it on before rendering.

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.