[John Cuevas]

Okay, I got it and I have it figured out. That was a little tricky, but it did boil down to a layer style. There was a white drop shadow layer style on the titles and it was filling in your dots layer with 100% white drop shadow. It’s supposed to be just an edge for the logos, but since your dots were at such a low opacity it ends up looking like something is messed up with the dots. The best way I saw to fix this was to duplicate the “Main Title” layers and make one for the titles and one for the dots. Then just turn off the dots drop shadow layer style in the dots.

The only thing I couldn’t figure out was why at half resolution it wasn’t showing up, but at full or rendered it would, must be something with layer styles that I don’t know about.

Since I wasn’t doing anything, I went ahead and just fixed the entire project. Also noticed a couple of things with the text and screen reveals(screens 1 & 5 especially) where you could see the text before it was supposed to be revealed, so I fixed that too. You should be able to take the file I’m going to upload and drop it into your folder where the old .aep file resides. Open the new one and it should link to your graphics and everything should be good to go.

3891_copyofcleanscreensvhupdatedcs5.aep.zip. Also you can click on your name, go to files an deactivate the link to your files now.

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]

As someone starting off in AE, you might want to check out this page.

But for your specific problem, try this. Starting in a new composition where you haven’t applied any presets place your graphics. Press “T” to twirl down your opacity property of your top layer. Move the time indicator to where you want the layer to fade out and press the stop watch icon. Now move the time indicator to where you want the layer to be completely invisible and change the opacity from 100% to 0%. AE will automatically put a key frame at this spot now. If you select both key frames you can copy and paste them to other layers.

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]

Still not seeing link to your file.

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 made some adjustments to your project based on this tutorial, but you have 9.0 and I’m CS5 so I’m not sure if you will be able to see my final project.

Gobo Light Tutorial

First I deleted the masks in your Mask comp and added Keying -> Luma Key and changed the threshold to 22.

In comp, I deleted “layer 3 Mask” comp and I added a thin mask to the remaning fractal “mask” layer(vertical mask, few pixels wide) and enabled 3d.

Add a null layer and enable 3D switch. I moved the null to directly behind the fractal mask layer and really far back in Z space, 1510, 501, 3091(numbers work for my project). Parent the null to the fractal mask layer and rotate “mask” layer, for me it was x = -58 y = 0 z = -19

Add adjusment layer and add trapcode shine and add expression to source point: src = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”); src.toComp(src.anchorPoint)

Change the shine transfer mode to Normal and Base on to Alpha. I cranked up the boost light to 400. Once you get to this point you can start to move the null around and play with other settings to improve the look. Moving the null farther away in z space will make the lights appear to be straighter up, but will also make them diminish in intensity. This isn’t going to ever get every light 100% straight, but i think it’s closer than where you were.

I uploaded my work file, not sure if you have a way of opening it. I think I covered all my step.
3885_shineupdated.aep.zip

Also a picture of my final settings:
3887_shinesettings.jpg.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]

I believe after the file has been approved by management(hopefully doesn’t take long), you will have to deactivate the link so as not to have people continually downloading it if you don’t won’t to share the file.

I can let you know when I have downloaded 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.

[John Cuevas]

Add null to your composition and add the Generate -> Fill effect to it. Select your cube sides and add the Fill effect to them. Twirl down the effect properties of your null and one of the cube sides. Alt-Click the stop watch of the color property of the fill effect and pickwhip the color property of your null and hit enter on the number keypad. The result should be: thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Fill”)(“Color”)

Now click the color property with the expression, go to edit and choose “Copy Expression only”. Now select all your other sides and press cntl+v

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]

Sometimes AE can have issues with layer styles? If it’s not too much trouble, can you zip the project up and post it here? I could take a quick look and see if I can find you a quick solution.

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 looks like you have an effect on the dots, shine/radial blur to create the backlighting but its not being rendered. Is the effect on an adjustment layer, was that inadverntly turned off or does the adjustment layer not span the length of the comp.

Also check when you render the comp in Render Settings, there is a “Effects” pulldown that will turn off all effects in the 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]

There’s a scipt that came out for CS3 that would do it. It should still work.

https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&loc=en_us&extid=1242019

CS4 & Cs5 version:
https://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?event=extensionDetail&extid=1698043

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]

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-cow-after-effects-tutorials/digits-man-part-1/

https://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-cow-after-effects-tutorials/digits-man-part-2/

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.