[John Cuevas]

If you open the shading slider and turn the ambient to 100 and the diffuse to 0, you will remove most of the shading and be pretty close to the default colors of you original map.

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]

Couple of plugins will do it. That one in your example looks like Plexus. There is also another one called Nodes, but I don’t think it’s as powerful as Plexus. I haven’t experimented with either so I can’t tell you much more than that.

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]

To sell the effect, I think you need to get the uneven look of chalk, Andrew Kramer did a tutorial on creating blueprints that I think might help you. Using some textures and such, will help make it look more organic.

Creating a displacement map from the luminescence of your wall will also sell the effect. It doesn’t have to be much, just a slight displacement. Make a duplicate layer of your wall and precomp it and play with the levels/contrast and use that as your displacement map.

The last step would be to experiment with blending modes. Your wall should show through a bit as it the chalk color will change some as it moves over different areas of the wall.

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]

Really, it’s probably a little less common to make intermediate renders, just because computers are faster now, so I would say the answer is a qualified “Depends”. If I’m rendering a file that is going to take quite awhile, often I will render a small file(draft quality) to check the work, camera moves, lights…and hopefully spot anything that I don’t like before I do the final render.

Other times if I’m confident about the work, it’s not a long render, it’s a simple animation(lower thirds)… I’ll just render to my final format(Avid QT). I’ll import it into the Avid and check the work there and if it needs to be fixed go back and make the change. But that works on stuff that’s generally 5 minutes or less.

Bout a month ago, I did some animation where I made intermediates to check the moves, lights and overall flow of the animations. The animations were HD and about 15 seconds long and my computer didn’t have enough RAM to play the entire thing.

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]

Playing back at full resolution is pretty hard for most computers, CPU just can’t handle it. Check out this post from Todd Kopriva and see if it answers your questions.

Why is my output file huge, and why doesn’t it play back smoothly in a media player?

So CS6 isn’t going to help playback issues unless your copy of CS6 comes bundled with a REALLY REALLY fast computer.

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 method would be to create your text then go to Layer -> Create Shapes from Text. Then open up the shape layer and “Add” -> Wiggle Paths

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 posted the thread last week and after some more research, I leaning towards a geforce GTX 580 over the Quadro. Just doesn’t seem to be nearly enough bang for the MUCHO BUCKS that the Quadro’s deliver. I’d rather spend the money on more more SSD’s.

I’m looking at only 64GB but the same processors and base unit though.

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 the Preserve underlying transparency switch

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]

Key frames(or expressions that randomize) the opacity,scale and position properties with motion blur turned on.

This tutorial tackles what you want to do and a bit more. https://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/motion-graphics/make-a-glitchy-interface-animation/

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]

The price difference in the RAM is actually negligible(looking at the HP 820Z, so I could get 32GB and add later), RAM prices have dropped some.

It looks like the pricing decisions I’m going to have to make for this box will be the video card and the processors.

Thanks for the links Walter, I’m working my way through them, just don’t want to make a decision that will burn me later.

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.