[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

It should be simple: You would use an expression that adds the value of your multiple-finger control to the individual control. If you know how to do it with one slider, all you need is a “+” and the expression for the second slider.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

I would assume you can use an animated track matte for the adjustment layer (a shape layer or masked solid linked to the scale value) so that the adjustment affects the masked area only (or the outside).

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Trapcode Mir does displacement as well, and since it draws faces between the point, it remains a complete surface.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

That’s correct. Remember to add the bleed (extra image outside the trim area) to both the image and the final PDF (the usual delivery format), and crop marks. If you have trouble adding the crop marks and bleed in output, you can make the artboard slightly larger to account for bleed and crop marks and include them in the image itself.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

That is either a displacement or refraction (glass).

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

I’m afraid the biggest issue in post is going to be the time you’re going to be spending on this one thing. It can turn out to be much longer than the time you’ll spend editing the piece. For a realistic result you’ll have to 3D camera track the steadycam shots and like Ted suggests, use several layers for the view out the window. Just camera tracking the footage can take days and days.

If this is a long piece, I’d look for a practical solution, i.e. actually putting something behind the window, or having it covered up with curtains for the most part and then only use the blue-screened view when absolutely necessary. It will save possibly hundreds of hours in trying to make a believable view out the window if it is frequently in frame.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

If the file names are sequential (filename-001.jpeg, filename-002.jpeg, etc.) you can open them as image sequence, set the frame rate and you’ll be done. Since this is definitely the simplest way, it might be worth renaming the files if they aren’t.

Export as Quicktime, and it will show up with controls, and you can then roll the video back and forth with the playhead. Not everybody has Quicktime player installed by default, but plenty of people do. You could also export to Flash with largely the same result (except a smaller file size, probably slightly better supported than Quicktime). If you can watch YouTube, the chances are Flash is installed (although YouTube dropped Flash recently for HTML5).

Installing the video onto the website can be a more involved question.

For YouTube upload best to render as H264.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Illustrator maximum image size is smaller than that.

To keep it simple, I would ask the printer if you can send it to them at 50% size and they can output it at 200%.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

In its simplest form, you can use this expression for the position:

pos = transform.position;
pos_y = pos[1]+ time*100;
new_pos = [pos[0], pos_y, pos[2]]

Now, that will make all the layers move down at the same exact speed.

For some variance, you can add a different random speed for every layer like so:

seedRandom(index,true);
spd = 75+random(50);
pos = transform.position;
pos_y = pos[1]+ time*spd;
new_pos = [pos[0], pos_y, pos[2]]

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Do you need Ray-traced 3D for something? That would be the first thing I would change.