[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Not all that familiar with javascript date method limitations, but this works for me:

txt = "2018-08-06T00:00:00";
date = new Date(txt);
parsed = date.toString();
parsed

The first issue was using a reserved variable “text”, which the AE tries to interpret as the text content of the layer.

The second seems to be the formatting of the date with milliseconds, taking those out handled the error message.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Well, if it is just one line and the text size doesn’t change (does it?), you can replace the entire second half of the result, meaning the y-dimension or height, with a fixed number.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

The problem is that the value of title.height changes depending on your text. I would suggest rounding the value to the closest multiple of the line spacing to avoid this issue.

Should be something like this:

linespacing = XXX; // replace XXX with your line spacing value
title = thisComp.layer("Text Line 2").sourceRectAtTime();
padding = effect("Padding")("Slider");
[title.width + padding, linespacing*Math.round(title.height/linespacing) + padding]

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

That certainly doesn’t sound like intended behavior. I don’t have the latest version to see if that happens every time, but if it does, that would be a bug for sure. But good that you found a way round it in the process.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Hmm… Vector… Clip-art… Photoshop…

The first thing that sounds dicey is that the procedure starts out in Photoshop. Photoshop is not a vector-based program, rather a bitmap based program with some vector capabilities. So I would cut that middle man out right off the bat and start in Illustrator.

In Illustrator you should already have vector shapes. So if the images are not vectors there, they won’t magically become vector in After Effects (although it is possible to convert them to such). So the next question is: Are they vector images to begin with? If not, you should convert them to such in Illustrator before going further. It will make life easier if you convert all text to outlines while in Illustrator.

Importing into After Effects: That should work fine once they really are vector. Then again, you may have better success pasting them directly onto a shape layer as shapes. Depends on how complex the art is. I can’t tell from those screenshots where everything comes in as boxes. (Which to me implies they are likely to be bitmap images placed in Illustrator rather than vector images, and what you are getting there is the outer bounds of the bitmap images.)

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

No, you’re not the only one that noticed. That was almost more exciting than the other Orb capabilities to me too.

(Bye-bye Horizon…)

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Hi Ronald, that sounds good. However, a new thread was just posted with the words “VideoCopilot Orb” right in the title yet it doesn’t show up in this hybrid forum. Keyword issue?

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

????
I take those settings worked for you. The one thing I wasn’t sure about is what happens if the person starts moving around too much too fast, there may be “ghost” shapes showing up. If that happens, you can probably compensate for it with the refine settings.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Step and repeat generates separate objects. I would use a single table instead.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Trapcode Particular is my go-to solution for such. Smoke simulation is the other option, more realistic, but takes much more time, like on the order of 100 times longer.

Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer