[Jon Bagge]

I’m not quite sure I understand what’s going on, but it sounds like you may be able to get something like what you want using masks inside a single copy of Form. You make the mask in the shape of the text (make sure you precompose), and you should be able to control certain attributes of form, like colour, size, disperse, opacity.
Using inverted versions of this mask you can affect either the text or the other particles. Play around with it for a while and I’m sure you can make something nice.

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

[Jon Bagge]

– We have been told to shot a very ‘flat’ image for better post-work. We use a Canon EOS 550d with the Magic Lantern firmware. Settings are:

Movie rec. size: 1920×1080, 25 frames
Auto Lighting Optimizer: Disable
Picture Style – CineStyle
– Sharpness: 3 (scale 0 to +7)
– Contrast: -3 (scale -4 to +4)
– Saturation: 0 (scale -4 to +4)
– Colour tone: 0 (scale -4 to +4)
ISO: 320
Apeture: f/4.5
Shutter: 1/48
WhiteBalance: 6500k
Bit Rate:
– Mode: CBR
– CBR Factore: 1.4x
– QScale factor: -12

Shooting on a camera that uses very heavy compression is never going to give you good results for keying. But you’ve made it worse by using these settings. You should always use ‘neutral’ shooting style when shooting with these cameras, especially for keying. But I’d use it for everything, since it stops the camera from doing too much processing. You want to add contrast/sharpening in post.
Also shooting on anything other than 100 ISO when you want to do keying is probably also bad.

I don’t know what lens you’ve used, but my general advice would be to not shoot with the aperture wide open, and not zooming all the way in or out. Then at least the lens isn’t giving you more trouble.

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

[Jon Bagge]

The point was that if you do that you *must* render everything out of the same folder on a network. If you don’t spend the money getting fast enough network/HDs, you lose the benefits of multi node render.

If you buy another licence it can render on it’s own HD, and you don’t need to invest in complicated network solutions.

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

[Jon Bagge]

It’s almost certainly not possible to re-engineer this without fundamentally changing the way effects work, which will completely break every project ever made.

This has to do with the After effects render order. AE normally renders in the following order:
1. Masks
2. Effects
3. Transforms
4. Layer Styles

3D is part of the transforms. This is where layers get scaled, rotated, placed in 3D space and possibly intersect each other.
So masks & effects on 3D layers are fine, since they will be calculated before the 3D calculations.

Layer styles are not fine, since you can’t add a layer style to a layer that has already been placed in 3d space (and may be interacting with other layers)

Adjustment layers also break 3D, because an adjustment layer is applied to the composite of everything below. You can’t do that unless you’ve calculated the composite first.

If you use collapse transformations you change the render order. The order is now:
1. Transforms
2. Masks (masks might still be before transforms, I’m not sure)
3. Effects
4. Layer styles

This allows the transforms in your main comp to be applied directly to the transforms in the sub comp, so they’re calculated together. Thus 3D objects in your main comp can interact with 3D objects in your sub comp.

As above you can’t then apply effects and layer styles after the objects have been placed in 3D space together.

You have to apply textures and effects to the individual layers before they’re put in 3D space. This is not that different from the basic principle of a real 3D program, except AE is limited to flat layers and is missing many other 3D features.

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

[Jon Bagge]

Also consider the cost of just buying an additional licence for AE to run on a second machine with it’s own HD. Then copy the whole project over manually. May not be as fancy, but sophisticated network solutions will very quickly amount to more.

And whereas you might have the whole production suite on your main workstation, you’d only need AE on the render machine.

Bear in mind this will make upgrade costs higher every time.

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

[Jon Bagge]

Pickwhip the position of the layer like you did, but before pressing ‘enter’ add ‘ +value ‘ to the expression.

This will add the value of the parameter the expression is applied to. You can now re-position the flare as you like, and it will still move with the other layer.

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

[Jon Bagge]

Maybe you should discuss with them options for achieving what they want without using green screen? Badly done green screen is very distracting and your project is much more likely to look professional and be effective if done simpler.

So if you have an interview for example, simply cutting away to another shot, or maybe compositing an image on top may be acceptable.

It depends on what the project is, but I’m sure there are alternative ways that will end up looking much better.

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

[Jon Bagge]

As a general rule you should use whatever format you’re mastering onto. So if you shoot in HDV, but are delivering in 1920×1080, you should use 1920×1080 in AE.

If you correctly interpret (via Interpret Footage dialogue box) your footage, AE will scale everything so it fits together.

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

[Jon Bagge]

I second the others in suggesting you should talk to a technical person who works for your client and get exact requirements.

But mainly I think you’re confusing screen aspect ratio and pixel aspect ratio (or quite possibly your client is confusing them).

Screen aspect ratio is the ratio of the dimensions of the physical screen the video is displayed on.

Pixel aspect ratio is the ratio of the dimensions of the individual pixels. If the pixel aspect ratio is anything other than 1:1 it’s known as non-square pixels. Anamorphic video uses non-square pixels.

So for example 1920×1080 has 16:9 screen aspect ratio, and 1:1 pixel aspect ratio.
1440×1080 HD has 16:9 screen aspect ratio and 1.33:1 pixel aspect ratio.

Most likely your client is wanting 3:1 screen aspect ratio because they have a screen 3 times as wide as it is tall. So you should use 1:1 pixel aspect ratio, and find out the dimensions of the screen. It could be 3000×1000 or something entirely different. It may also use non-square pixels in which case you REALLY need to talk to someone who knows exactly.

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

[Jon Bagge]

You have Custom View on. Turn it to Active Camera and it should work.

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