[John Cuevas]

Here’s a little bounce script I made(adapted from Dan Eberts), that you may find useful.

Copy the Control layer to your text comp. Copy the expression on the scale layer of the white solid and paste it to each of your text layers(if you use the Copy expression only by right clicking you can paste it to all your layers at once). Add keyframes for you scale and the expression will provide overshoot, adjust the control layer to change how much and for how long the layer bounces.

Cool thing about this expression is you can add it to rotation or position also, don’t need to change anything(though you might want multiple controllers if you are working with more than one property—so you will have to update that)

7693_scalebouncecontroller.aep.zip

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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]

Precomp your particle playground layer, moving all effects into the precomp, then either mask or matte the area you want the snow to appear.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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]

Okay, that really shouldn’t make a difference, unless you have some different transformations going on in the precomp vs the final comp, effects in either comp? What type of file are we talking about, is it a bitmap or an illustrator vector based file?

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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 have scaled your comp up 400%, reset your comp window to 100% and it will be crisp. When you zoom into your comp, images, vectors, text, all become pixelated, AE doesn’t rasterize for comp zoom in.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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’ve have Creating Motion Graphics, got it during the AE 5.5 days(not CS 5.5), over 14 years ago. And it still has a spot on my shelf, near my graphics station at work and still gets referenced(opened it couple months ago). Looking at the 2nd book, I would say, if you are brand new to AE/Motion Graphics/Video, I would suggest getting both books and DVD—and start with CMG.

I’ve worked with and trained people interns, people new to the industry who can use the software, but can’t create anything really original because they don’t know how things work, the why, what channels are…they are limited to just stacking effects on video and text. CMG not only teaches the basics of AE, but it explains the fundamentals of video(though with HD, 4K, codecs, streaming there so much more to learn). Also, the book builds from the most basic building blocks and moves in a logical progressive way. I tore through that first book in about 2 weeks and super slow computer(2000 something) and have loved AE ever since.

It looks like the 2nd book adds a lot of the bells and whistles that AE added later, rotobezier, shape layers, text animations…and these are all great things, but I would strongly suggest you start with CMG first. And for my 2 cents, buy used copies that include the DVD’s. For me learning works better, when I follow along, manipulate the project files and actually physically do each step.

Along with the books, there are some awesome free online resources you can use too. The COW has some awesome tutorials, along with Video CoPilot. Todd Kopriva(Adobe Rep) has compiled quote the list of resources with Getting started with After Effects (CS4, CS5, CS5.5, CS6, & CC), definitely check some of them out.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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’ve used it and should have mentioned it. It’s a good little tool for quickly colorizing things. Thx for the reminder.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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 right there in the tutorial at around 19:00 minutes. Instead of cranking up red/decreasing blue, you would do the opposite. Crank up the blue channel, decrease red.

Also, you could just add a hue saturation effect and rotate the hue until you turned it blue.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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 probably need to export in layers, particularly the black rectangles as there own export with an alpha channel. I don’t work with FCP, but in Avid/Premiere you would import that with an alpha channel and then use that as a matte or stencil in in your final project. For instance, in Avid, if I wanted those rectangles to have different video in them, then my background, i would step into the rectangle matte layer and swap out the fill, or I could use the matte effect. There is probably a similar procedure in FCP

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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]

if it’s for scale, you could do it like this:

x = thisLayer.scale[0];
y = effect("Slider Control")("Slider");
yFinal = y * (thisComp.layer("Null 1").effect("Final Adustment")("Slider")/100);

[x,yFinal]


Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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 would look to Trapcode Form

Maybe one of these Tutorials, could give you a starting point.

Johnny Cuevas, Editor
ThinkCK

“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.