[Joseph W. bourke]

Simon –

I think I’ve read in my travels that there have been some problems with Wacom and Nvidia drivers and AE CS4, if you have either of those on your system. You might do a search on them. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Jon –

It somewhat depends on what you want to do with this 3D pipe. Will there be a camera traveling down the pipe from one computer to the other, following a data stream? In that case, I’d do it in 3DS Max using a tube primitive and a particle system for the data. If you just want a 3D “looking” pipe that you never see into or travel through, you could accomplish it with shapes and gradient fills in AE. With a true 3D program like Max, you could even do a cutaway pipe that shows the data flowing from computer to computer. There’s also a wealth of free models out there (Turbosquid.com has many) of computers and all sorts of technology. You’ll need to know a bit more than the basics of Max to get the job done, but it will be a good test of your skills, and there are thousands of tutorials on the web to help you achieve the goal.

By outputting RLA or RPF files out of Max, you can send the camera data to AE, giving you the ability to make your AE side of things match the Max camera. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Collin –

It sounds as if you just need to convert your MIDI files to a .wav format. I own Sonar, so I just patch my MIDI right into various instruments I want to use and export a .wav.

Here’s another way:

https://users.lmi.net/bblackie/music/winamp/midi2wav.html

Winamp claims to be able to do it as well, but my guess is that the quality of the .wav will depend on the quality of your sound card. It could end up sounding cheesy.

Here’s another:

https://www.hymnsite.com/how_to/midi2wav.html

Haven’t used either, but I know that once you get the MIDI to a .wav, you’ll be able to use the file in AE. It sounds as if you want to use the trigger point from the MIDI file, rather than the audio portion, because you want precision. Once you get the .wav into AE, you can always input manual markers as you play the file, then animate as you wish.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Say Jim –

Does this new Bird Poo plugin you’re developing have the ability to splat when it hits an alpha channel? Or can you set it up so that there’s a floor it can splat on? I really hope there’s a hummingbird preset…

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi John –

Having spent a lot of time as a kid on an island off the coast of Maine, I have first-hand experience with seagull poo (actually being hit by it, as a matter of fact). I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching it as it spreads and splatters (I know…).

The texture of it is sort of like melted soft serve ice cream, whitish with some grey and black in it (this is from the Herring Gull by the way…my only direct poo experience). It comes out of the gull in a stream, then quickly spreads into a flat, inverted bowl with the edges almost like the milk drops you see in high speed photography, but less symmetrical (think Harold Edgerton –

https://web.mit.edu/Edgerton/www/HighSpeed.html)

If you can do a single After Effects layer of the stream sizing and scaling into the flat shape, then make a couple of variations of it, you can make those layers part of a particle system, and repeat as needed to create the “rain”.

The shooting it option will only work if you can get a perfect blue sky day, and cooperative seagulls. If you can get near where there’s a crowd of them, then lock off your camera to just below where they’re flying, you might luck out and get some useable shots that you could then key in AE, and then use the layers in a particle system as above. The only problem will be whether your camera can be adjusted to shoot at high speed – otherwise, you’ll probably just get a white blur.

I am truly amazed at the trivial garbage we retain from when we were 12 years old. I forget the important stuff, but remember what seagull poo is shaped like. Go figure!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

I’m sorry – I don’t know anything about Motion software. You will get a quicker response in the future if you state what software package you’re using as part of the question. I’m sure someone will weigh in now that they know what the question is regarding.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Hi Tatiana –

What software are you referring to? If it’s After Effects, you can use the B (beginning) and N (end) keys. The N key will become active where your current time indicator sits. Then whatever you output or render to RAM (unless “from current time” is selected in the RAM preview box) will use these points.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Mark –
This is from a previous post, but it will give you my input to other users on the Vista 64 advantages:

Here are the specs on my machine that I configured (with help from the Cow members) about 6 months ago:

Intel Motherboard – DP45SG – this has an ESATA connector for a RAID
Quad Core2 Q9550, 2.83GHz, 1333MHz, L2 12M
8GB of PC3-10600 CL9 DDR3 240p DIMM RAM
GEForce GTX 260 – EVGA graphics card
2 – 500GB Seagate SATA2 7200rpm hard disks – one for OS, one for Applications
2 – 750GB 7200rpm 32mb SATA2 hard drives – for media files – this is NOT striped – at some point I will probably add a RAID array for doing HD – I haven’t tried editing true HD on this pup yet
600watt silent fan power supply – this thing is really quiet – I can probably do audio recording in the same room with this running.
Case – X-Cruiser Black system chassis – this is a gamer case with plenty of room for expansion.

That’s about it, other than that it’s running Vista Business 64-bit. I was originally going to go with XP Pro 64-bit, but I think the upgrade path to Win7 will be smoother, plus Adobe recommends Vista 64 for the CS4 production bundle, and so far, I can see why. This thing screams! I just loaded 40 minutes of cloud footage I shot yesterday in 1080i; it loaded fine in .mts (Canon native format) format into AE, and I was able to speed it up 2000 times, giving me a really nice, smooth time-lapse effect, without the usual light stutter you get when you use the intervalometer setting on a camera. It will render about one and a half minutes or better to RAM with the current 8MB of RAM.

UPDATE: I have finished a three minute HD project in Premiere CS4 working with HVC200 P2 footage, shot at 1920 x 1080. Working from my single 500gb media drive (no RAID), I have had absolutely no problems handling the footage at full res. That said, I do have to render a few things here and there for realtime playback, but I’m very happy so far, and it rendered for distribution sizes in no time. And this machine cost me 1600 dollars! Next on the docket is a RAID array.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

Here’s a link to Jim Tierney’s (one of the masters of plugin creation) take on creating your own plugins – it’s way beyond me:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/893065

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Joseph W. bourke]

It sounds as if this may be a candidate for one of AE’s particle systems (of course you don’t say what you want to accomplish this in, so I’m assuming AE). It would also be possible in Combustion or Illusion.

Set up your type on individual layers, then assign the layers to the particle system. There are a number of “look” presets, some of which are nice and swirly looking, which could approximate liquid. The trick will be to make the words park. You could also play around with Shatter, which does text nicely, and you would just have to play the clip backwards to get the text to park. Back to the particles: with the particles, you would most likely have to dissolve to the fully formed words, which could be hand animated (a lot less work) to match into the last few frames of the liquid layer.

Also take a look at AE’s text animation presets. They are very powerful, in that you can start with something that’s close to what you want, then deconstruct it to get exactly what you want. I think that combining the particle system with motion blur will give you close to what you want. Of course you don’t say what you want to do this with, so I’m flying blind. Good luck!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com