[John Cuevas]

If you are new to AE, then you really need to start here. AE is an incredible program, but it has a steep learning curve and and it’s not a program where you can run before you walk.

All that being said, I understand that sometimes you have to figure it out as you go, so to address your question, there are multiple ways to approach this shot. If I was doing this project, I think I would try to pull a key off that window. I think I would use the luma key effect, set Key Type to “Key Out Brighter” and start the threshold at 250 and see how that works. Then fill the hole in the background with the outside shot you would like. You might have to add a layer on top, with some mask around the window frame if the luma key cuts some of it out.

Another approach(more difficult) would be to use a mask around the window & curtain, set it to subtract, and use a couple of keyframes to follow the camera movement. That will cut a hole in your video and you can put your replacement video into that hole, by placing the replacement layer underneath your video.

Another approach would be to use Mocha to track your shot, but that’s probably overkill for this shot.

Now you would add another layer of video on top and either use masks to put the women back into the shot or use the rotobrush to replace the woman.

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 a fan of VideoCoPilot’s Optical Flares.

Another good one are the Knoll Light Factory flares

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 didn’t mention what version of AE you are using, but AE has in the past not always worked well with GOP compression. You may want to bring the audio into another program(Audition ?) and export just a wave file for AE to use.

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]

Sorry for the delay, don’t have CS6 at home.

What you are trying to do is a pretty difficult task, combing shatter with PSD layers to create a cube. Shatter projects a 3d look from a 2d layer, it interacts with a 3d camera. But it’s not a true 3d object, turn on it’s 3d box and rotate it and the illusion of 3d disappears and you will see it’s a flat 2d object.

Yeah, I want to “extrude” all sides of the cube. I did what you said, but for some reason, now it won’t conforme to the layer size. I get a comp sized extruded frame. It sits over the remaining sides.

Shatter conforms to the layer it’s applied, not the texture layer. You applied it to a solid that is comp size 1280×720, your psds(texture) are 760×760. When applied as a texture they are stretched to the solid size. So you would need to make your shatter layer 760×760 and also make your psds, 100% in scale, it won’t match up otherwise.

And try as I might, I can’t rotate it using the set camera. I even changed to comp camera.

It may be possible to line them up with shatter and work with a camera(I’m using the camera in your project and it still works), but I don’t think you could extrude those 5 sides using shatter. As I said before, shatter doesn’t truly create a 3d object.

A project like this would probably be better suited to Cinema 4d.

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 pretty basic expression that should do what you need:

// set end time to comp duration
beginTime = 1;
endTime = 10;
counterStart = 269;
counterEnd = 130;
Math.floor(linear(time , beginTime, endTime, counterStart , counterEnd ))

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]

Check out this Light Wrap tutorial by Andrew Davis. You should be able to modify his technique to create your rim light.

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]

Sounds like you want hold keyframes. Easy way would be to set your first keyframe and press “cntl+alt+h” that will turn the first keyframe into a hold keyframe and every keyframe you set after that will also be a hold keyframe.

You can also create all your keyframes, select them all at once and then do “cntl+alt+h” and that will turn them all into holds at one time. Also, you can right click on a keyframe and select “Toggle Hold Keyframe”

And if that wasn’t enough ways, “cntl + alt + click” will change a regular keyframe into a hold keyframe and vice-versa if you do it twice.

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 think I get what you are trying to do(not 100% sure). If I understand correctly, what you need to do is in the shatter effect twirl down Textures and change the pulldown “Front Layer” to layer 8(Front.psd). That will give you an extruded layer.

I’m not exactly sure if you really want to mess with the rest of the cube than or not.

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]

Are the forces(they cause the objects to shatter) intersecting with your object. If you turn the view to wireframe + forces it will look like a blue ball right in the middle of your screen. You can move this forward or backward, so it doesn’t intersect and you should see your image. Keyframing the force is what causes objects to shatter.

If you determine it’s not the force object, I could take a look at the project. Use the “Collect Files” command, zip your project and upload it here. I’ll take a look at your workflow and see if I can figure out what’s causing the problem.

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 works in AE space by projecting particle from a 2d layer into AE’s 3d space. If you turn on the 3d for the layer, ignore the warning, twirl down rotation and rotate on the y axis, you’ll see clearly that particular is a 2d effect. In essence it has it’s own 3d space that works within AE’s 3d space. Hope that makes sense, cause it’s an important concept in working with particular(or any of the Faux 3d effects in AE).

There are a couple of methods you can use to tie the emitter to a position in 3d, one would be to write/pick whip some simple expressions to the emitter position.

A easier solution is to use a 3d light as your emitter. Create a light and rename it “Emitter”-has to have that name(you can change the name, if you open up the options of particular). Open up particular and change the Emitter type to light and now you can move that light/parent it to a 3d object and your particles will be generated from it.

You may want to look at the Particles/sec modifier. By default it uses light intensity to modify the amount of particles-so you might want to change that to “none”.

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.