[John Winthrop]

Element allows for the actually 3d model to be imported into an aae scene. It can be rotated, scaled, and moved in 3 dimensions *in the after effects timeline/keyframe system*. This means I can parent it to other things, I can use expressions, its’ still *part of after effects* rather than a video layer providing a window into another program. That has an enormouse advantage for so many situations.

I realize that c4d is better at actually creating models themselves, but I usually just created models in blender or maya if i needed them created, then could use e3d to import the .obj files into AAE.

From what I can tell the dynamic link between C4D and After Effects does nothing more than save you the step of rendering the C4D file and importing it into after effects, rather than having it act like a function within the same program.

If a 3rd party developer can make element 3d do what it does i don’t see any reason After Effects itself couldn’t somehow gain the ability to import .obj files itself. Don’t get me wrong I love After Effects for a million reasons, but if they added this feature it would make my life so much easier.

[John Winthrop]

I think it might just be a bunch of photos that were taken with the subject in *exactly* the same place, then heavily feathered masks revealing each one from the top left to bottom right. Then liquify applied afterwards.

Let me know if you figure it out, looks very cool.

[John Winthrop]

Dan does it again. Thank you!

[John Winthrop]

So does it actually HELP the render speeds to leave After effects/premiere open? (i use adobe media encoder to render.)

It isn’t a problem to close them but if it helps the render speeds I would prefer to leave them open because these renders are taking a couple of hours sometimes. If it DOESN’T help to leave the programs running I would prefer to simply close them and use that memory to work on other projects while the render is going on.

[John Winthrop]

CPU: Intel(R) Core i7-4790K @ 4Ghz
RAM: 32GB
GPU:NVIDIA GeForceGTX 980

[John Winthrop]

Ohhhh ok, thank you!

[John Winthrop]

Worked perfectly, thanks again Dan.

Do you mind me asking what about adding “*Math.PI*2” made that difference? I know Math.PI as a javascript function simply represents the number PI (the general ratio of circumference to diameter) but how does that doubled affect this equation? I have seen you use “*Math.PI*2” in other expressions and never really understood what that was achieving.

Thank you it has been quite some time since I took geometry.

[John Winthrop]

Hi Dan, no sorry I did not explain properly.

I just mean the little clock right above the bottom left section (above your layers) that displays the time your cursor is currently at in the timeline.

As far as I can tell you can only display that in either “Hours;Minutes;Seconds;Frames” or just “Frames”.

I would like to set it up as “Hours;Minutes;Seconds;1/100ths of second”.

All of the time inputs in the expressions are done as “Seconds.hundreths” so if I want an expression to start where my cursor is and I see “0;00;20;16, I have to convert the frames (at 60fps) to decimal places ie “time=20.27;”. Its not the end of the world but would be really convenient if instead of displaying “0;00;20;16” it would just say “0;00;20;27” to save me the step of looking at the conversion sheet.

[John Winthrop]

I want it to maintain the rotation speed it has when they intersect, so that when it switches from the exponential increase to the linear one, the increase is at the rate that the exponential was when the switched.

Imagine a fan turning on, it has to keep accelerating then once it gets there it maintains that speed.

[John Winthrop]

Okay, I think I understand but just to make sure I understand can you confirm (last post I promise).

So Math.max simply looks through your values (provided in the parenthesis separated by commas), and outputs the highest one? (Math.min I assume outputs the lowest)

So applying Math.max to variables that change over time tells your Math.max to become the highest number at any given point?

So in your equation “t” is defined as either “time-5″ or 0” depending on which is larger.

So at
1 second >>> 1-5=-4 >>> 0 is the larger number >>> output 0.

2 Seconds >>> 2-5=-3 >>> 0 is the larger number >>> output 0.
…..
……
…….
5.1 seconds >>> 5.1-5=0.1 >>> 0.1 is the larger number >>> Output 0.1 as the rotation value

And defining tStart allows you to easily change all the variables at once depending on your time needs.

If I understand correctly that is GENIUS!!! Thank you so much for your help!