[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Sounds like you are following a tutorial of some kind. I would imagine (without seeing your situation) that you would use the smudge tool on the bitmap mask following the direction of the hair to soften the edges. (Then again, I’ve seen people use the smudge tool on the hair in the image — which I would never do myself…)

You can have both vector masks and bitmap masks on the same layer, the effect is added together. So if you want to paint the hair with a bitmap mask, make sure the vector mask doesn’t cut off the hair but leaves space for the bitmap mask to do the masking.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

You can do this with two consecutive warps (Object>Envelope distort>Make with warp>):

1) “Fish” at -25%

2) Expand object

3) Warp “wave” -20%

This way you don’t have to worry about the vertical lines becoming warped off-vertical.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Copy the expression to the text layer’s Position property.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Ok, looks good, so this same expression for each but with a different holdOff value, I gather?

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

You can copy the AI or PS paths into shape paths as well, at least in the current versions. Obviously it’s not the same thing as being able to draw them directly in AE. So: Perhaps you can use AE’s built-in Motion Sketch for this purpose, and copy the motion path to a shape layer…? Motion sketch basically creates a path in the “freeform” fashion, (just have to drag an object of some kind around with it). Then you wouldn’t have to switch between programs. Haven’t tried it, but it should be possible, since AE supposedly can copy from any kind of path to any other kind of path.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

The up and down arrow keys do that.

The full details can be found here:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/creating-shapes-masks.html#create_a_shape_or_mask_by_dragging_with_shape_tools

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

To make them look like they’re flying past the camera, you should make them 3D layers, not 2D layers that are scaling. Scaling 2D layers will make it look like they are slowing down as the scaling goes higher, whereas real motion towards camera in 3D is exponential, not linear in terms of scale. Although with 3D you will have to deal with the layers not being 0 scale in the beginning by fading them in.

Several ways of making a random end point with a common beginning point. It’s not a big deal to do it manually either, as you can first have the layers starting at the same time and keyframe the beginning positions to be the same, then at another point in time keyframe them to be different and finally offset the layers.

If you want to do it with expressions, you could use this for random X/Y position, (doesn’t affect Z, so you’d have to animate it or modify this accordingly):

seedRandom(index, true);
end_offset_x = random(250)-random(250);
end_offset_y = random(250)-random(250);
xy_offset=(time-startTime)*[end_offset_x,end_offset_y,0];
value+xy_offset

250 may not be the right value for you, you’ll have to see what works in your comp.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Better blink expressions here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/14265

Although you’ll have to connect the values to sliders that you can then animate.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Better scale the mask to 88%, not the whole layer. Select all points of the mask and press ctrl+T for transform. The layer should be larger than the mask, otherwise it will get cut off at the edges of the layer no matter what.

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Hi Larry.

The 2-second keyframe for motion path is the default setting that copying the path always gives an object. The beginning keyframe is at current time indicator and the end keyframe 2 seconds later. you can simply grab the beginning or end keyframe and drag it to where you want it, everything in between will stretch accordingly.

For attaching an animated object, you would be better off pasting the motion path to a null object and parenting the animated object to the null. That way it will follow the motion path but it will be simpler to adjust other properties, like scale, relative position, rotation, etc by changing those properties in the aimated object (or in the null).