[John Cuevas]

Check out Newton, the physics engine for AE at Motionboutique

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 has a feature where you can use one layer to obscure the particles. IE, the will disappear when they go behind it and be seen when they are in front of it.

You may have to precomp your text(not sure how particular deals with text) and then turn the layer’s 3d switch on. Now in particular go to the visibility settings and change the “Obscuration” pull down to your text layer.

Here’s a link on trapcodes site for building a simple obscuration layer project:
https://www.trapcode-content.com/help/particular/obscure.html

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]

Basically the same work flow. Open your final comp and lock the comp viewer.

If you want you can use the pulldown and create another comp viewer for your pre-composition or just open your precomp and double click the layer in question and it will open up your layer window. You can drag the layer viewer into your precomps viewer to save real-estate, but if you paint in the layer viewer it will update in the final comp.

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]

1440 x 1080 is a squeezed size. When you bring your square pixels PSD into AE, it’s going to get squeezed in a 1440 x 1080 comp.

At some point it will be unsqueezed to a 1920 x 1080 and it will look normal, but I think that will stretch it a little.

I would recreate your PSD document at 1920 x 1080. If you are working with 1440 x 1080 1.33 footage you can drop that into a 1920 x 1080 comp and stretch it or put your PSD in the 1440 comp and scale it down.

When you go for your final render you can make it 1920 then and everything will look normal.

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]

Edit This, Look At That. You need to set up multiple viewers, generally by locking one.

It’s really easy in CS5.5, but if you are working in an earlier here’s the help from adobe about it:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WSCF40A9D1-B832-4bc8-B4B2-636CF77C7984.html

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]

Select your layer(s) and press the U key to see all properties that have been keyframed. Press UU and anything that has been changed will be displayed – such a layer that has a mask on it or a layer with an expression.

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 these tutorials at VideoCopilot:

Blast Wave
Smoke Trails

List of Tutorials

You might want to look at 72-76, a series on a meteor crash and crater. Andrew often uses trapcode plugins, you can download demos of them. Good Luck with your project.

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]

Exactly what action is occuring that you want to eliminate. Without seeing your project, my first thought is a “boomeranging” problem with the camera, but it sounds like you checked that.

If you have the time, why not make a copy of the project, delete everything but the camera and null(put some kind of tag near the problem keyframes) and upload it here. I can take a quick look and see if I notice anything unusual.

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]

CC Glue Gun would be the place I would start. I can’t vouch for this tutorial(haven’t watched it), but it looks like it might cover some of the techniques you need to get started.

https://vimeo.com/4568341

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 you sure you have roving keyframes? Your first and last keyframe would be normal and the all the in-between keyframes would be circles that auto-adjust when you move the first and last keyframe. If they are roving, you just need to select all your keyframes, right click on them and go to “rove across time” and uncheck it.

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.