[Jon Bagge]

I’m sure AE CS6 will work on an iMac, but I think accelerated GPU rendering for ray-tracing will require a NVIDIA card, and the iMac’s all use AMD.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I doubt it’s an oversight. I was about to upgrade last time they had a similar offer, and I called them when the disount didn’t work. (It’s not immediately obvious on the website as you don’t get an error message if you apply the discount code, instead nothing happens).
The guy pretty much said the discount was intended for full product purchases.

Would love it if they changed it though.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

In the UK the minimum price is £350, and the ugprade is £317+VAT. Full price is £380, but the difference is VAT which isn’t counted towards the discount.

Wish they’d make it the same as in the US, I’ve got my credit card ready. 🙂

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Very sneaky though, the minimum purchase price to get the discount is higher than the upgrade cost from CS5 to CS5.5, so you can only get the discount if you either buy the whole product or upgrade from an earlier version.

I was just about to buy it myself when I realised. Guess I’ll be waiting till I really need CS6.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

A big part of the decision should be how much RAM you can cram into the machine. Both those models come with 4GB which isn’t really enough. Try and get at least 8GB, and 16GB if you can fit it in. With 8GB you should be able to run multiprocessing with 2 cores (leaving 2 free for the system).

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

What exactly are you trying to achieve?
Also using other warp effects might work too. Things like mesh warp is agnostic about what you do to the underlying layer.

Another option is to apply the puppet tool to a layer/precomp that temporarily has an alpha channel that is bigger than anything that will happen later. The puppet tool will remember this alpha channel even when you remove the temporary alpha and replace it with your animated precomp.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I’m not quite sure I understand what you’re doing here, but I know the puppet tool very well, so here are some pointers:

The puppet tool remembers what the layer looked like when you apply the tool. Specifically it tracks where the edge of the alpha channel is. You can then warp it with the puppet tool. This means you can’t change the layer itself to any great degree without breaking the puppet effect.

So if you apply the puppet tool to a pre-comp, and then animate inside the pre-comp so the position/shape of the alpha channel changes, the puppet tool will break and you will get some strange tearing.

This also means you can’t use continuous rasterization/collapse transformations with the puppet tool. For example if you’re applying the puppet tool to an illustrator layer, you can’t turn on continuous rasterization. This is because it will change the render order and apply transformations before the puppet tool, which may break it for the same reason as the first example.

Does this help?

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

I’d also suggest looking at tv shows/documentaries/advertising/films or whatever interests you and see what other people are doing. Find something you like (which isn’t too complicated), and try to figure out how to make it yourself.

Copying others while learning is fine. There are a whole range of common techniques that have been used a million times, but they are still useable.

Once you are more confident your own style/ideas are more likely to come forward. Don’t worry too much about that too early.

Do watch tutorials (I’ve watched most things out there) to pick up common techniques, but stick to doing projects where you go through the phase of working it out yourself.

Having an idea in mind (wherever you got it from) and then breaking it up into little problem solving tasks is very good experience.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

You can also try a simple Luma Keyer. Set it to key out brighter, and play with the settings. You may need a Matte Choker or something to soften the edge.

When you say drop shadow doesn’t work, what do you mean?

Also are you using the drop shadow effect or the layer style?
For a rotating cog I’d recommend the layer style. The effect gets applied before the transform and the layer style after.

If you’re rotating something (unless the rotation is in the footage itself) using the effect will make the drop shadow rotate as well. So it will point in different directions which isn’t how it should work. Using a layer style will apply the drop shadow after the rotation has been done, and it will point in the same direction no matter how you rotate or move it.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects

[Jon Bagge]

Exponential scaling is a pain. You lose the ability to easy in/out for example.

I’d recommend forgetting all about it and use a 3D camera instead. Put a camera in your scene, make your layer 3D, and move the camera. It may sound unnecessary to go 3D but it will make panning and zooming at the same time much easier.

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https://www.jonbagge.net
Jon Bagge – Editor – London, UK
Avid – FCP – After Effects