[John Cuevas]

I think a big part of the issue is you really don’t see volumtric light that is coming from behind the camera. It needs to be from a side or in front of the camera moving forward.

[John Cuevas]

Kevin, the free version of Particle Illusion will output with an alpha channel.

[John Cuevas]

Other than maybe those are older tutorials, I don’t have a reason why you would create MP4’s through Media Encoder now(except maybe there is more functionality for customizing the encode). For our clients who want an MP4, I export directly from AE using the 40bit preset.

[John Cuevas]

I messed around with some solids and it’s a little inconsistent(probably due to background and luminance) , but basically for whatever size feather you use on your mask, you need to subtract a little more than half that from you mask expansion. If you have a feather of 200, you need need a Mask Expansion a little higher than -100. Also, you can add a levels effect to each picture, change the channel to alpha and increase the contrast.

Look at my example project.

Feather.aep 156 KB After Effects Project Files - Click to view

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[John Cuevas]

I can’t say for sure because I can’t find the documentation, but I think it’s a default light like you get in most 3D applications. It’s on so you can place your objects, model, etc., before creating your final lighting setup. Once you create other lights, the default light will no longer effect your scene.

[John Cuevas]

Neil, I understand what you want to do but you are still being way too vague to offer much assistance. For example, if you are trying to create a 1970’s version of fictional channel, then it would be best to have an clip of a real channel of that period and then tell us what are the particular things from that clip that you are having trouble recreating.

Also, you might want to find one of the 100’s of youtube channels that offer free basic learning of the AE software. Trying to just recreate/mock Channel Ident’s without learning knowing the basics is comparable to trying to learn to swim by jumping off the dock into the ocean.

[John Cuevas]

Can you upload the project files where that is happening? It’s hard to speculate based on the screen capture.

[John Cuevas]

I looked up a .ron and it doesn’t look like a format for video delivery.

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I would ask for more clarification.

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[John Cuevas]

You can figure out the best size, then create an action in Photoshop to change the photos to that size and then batch run the action on the folder with the photos.

Say you want them all to be 1280 x 720. You would open the actions window and start recording an action. Change the “Image Size” to 720—this will either scale up or scale down the photo. Then change the canvas size to 1280. Larger picture might get cropped on the sides, but you won’t have to worry about cutting off heads.

[John Cuevas]

Hi Joe,

Sorry for the delay in response, been a busy last few days. This is a project that could be done in a quite a few ways, such as the text animator approach above. Create a follow the leader expression with the valueAtTime command, a particle system(Particular would work very well) would also be an easy way to achieve that effect.

I think using shape layers would also work well, here are the steps I did to create a flowing arrow project.

1. Create a solid layer and then use the mask tool to trace the path you want for your arrows. The way this is setup, you can adjust this mask later and the arrows will update.
2. Under Window, scroll down and select the Create Nulls from Path tool, select the path you just created and click Trace Path, the press “U” to open up all the properties that have been changed.
3. Using the Polystar tool, create an arrow head. Open the contents, and use pickwhip the position and rotation to the position and rotation your Trace Paths layer.
4. Click in the rotation expression and at the end of the expression type + value, this will allow you to adjust the arrow heads value, if it’s not lined up correctly.
5. From contents, add a new group, then in that group and name it “Arrow Body”, add a Path, Stroke and Trim Paths.
6. Open up trim paths and pickwhip to your path.
7. Open up the Arrow Body’s transform and change the position to 960, 540.
8. Set your stroke width to taste, and change the line cap and line join to “Round”
9. Open the trim paths and pickwhip the Start and End to the Trace Path Progress.
10. Click in the “End” expression and at the end subtract an amount you want for the tail length “- 8”
11. Adjust the trace path keyframes to change the speed of your arrow flow.
12. You can duplicate the Arrow layer and offset it, or like I did, add an echo effect to the layer and adjust to taste to create the follow arrows—I had to just fiddle around until I got evenly spaced arrows.

Take a look at my sample project and feel free to use that as a starting point.

Animated-Arrow.aep 460 KB After Effects Project Files - Click to view

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