[John Cuevas]

You should check it out, if I understand correctly what you are trying to accomplish, Transition -> Card Wipe will do what you want almost automatically.

If you have any questions, come back.

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]

Is there a reason you are not using the card wipe effect, that would be a lot easier?

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 link to the Clone Stamp help

Angle is if you use an elongated/oval brush. Pick one of those brushes an adjust the angle and you will see what I mean.

Spacing = The distance between the brush marks in a stroke, measured as a percentage of the brush diameter. When this option is deselected, the speed at which you drag to create the stroke determines the spacing.

Both angle and spacing are more for painting then cloning.

AE tracks fairly well. I’ve replaced the logo on a guys shirt on a handheld shot using the tracking tools in AE. Unless you have attempted it and it’s just not going to work I wouldn’t dimiss that as an option.

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 registered, I searched for october_freebie, october and freebie and did not find any template.

I registered, downloaded a comp and it worked fine. Try uploading just the project files(none of the videos, grx, just the .aep file) here, you can do that with the last icon above. I’ll download it and take a look.

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 template did you download?

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]

Did you buy this template? Generally those have instructions and/or precomps where you place the replacement images.

Without seeing or having access to the project it’s pretty difficult to know exactly how it’s set up and be able to give you much more than general help.

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 are a few free Film Damage clips you can download from here.

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]

A Track matte is where you have a layer used the layer above it to determine what part of the layer will show through.

Create a solid and add the effect Generate ->4-color gradient effect to it. Now add use the text tool and make any text, make the text the top layer. Now use the TrkMat pulldown and choose Alpha Matte(if you don’t see the track matte pulldown, press F4 or right click in your timeline and go to Columns -> Modes). Your solid layer will now use the alpha channel of the text and only show up there. If you choose alpha inverted, where there is text the gradient won’t show up.

You also have luma and luma inverted. This check the lightness of the level above and uses those pixels for to show what will show and won’t show. So add a the effect Generate -> Gradient to your text and choose the luma track mattes. Now your gradient layer should gradually fall off as the layer goes from white(bright) to dark(black).

Here is a project where illustrating the above technique: 4550_trackmatteexamples.aep.zip

Also being new you probably would benefit from working your way through the Video Copilot Basic Training series, Number 4 covers track mattes.

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 get the preset free at Red Giant People, you just have to register. Here’s a link to his preset.

From there you can see how he created Sandstorm.

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]

Don’t think you could accomplish it with card dance, but you should be able to accomplish that with Shatter, using a gradient layer to control the AE’s shatter. You could even make a custom shatter map to absolutely control how the transformer breaks up. Then you would just have to precomp your shatter animation and time remap it backwards.

Here’s a pretty good tutorial on the basics of shatter.

Also Element from video copilot looks like it could be up to the task also. But it requires a little more prep work in a 3D program, check out this tutorial at 20:00.

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.