[Keith Mcgregor]

I dunno about 3 monitors (ain’t got the money) but it sounds like it’s good to go.
“Which slots should I put the graphic cards in?” whichever is recommended. It should be the lower lanes though as those are faster. And when you searched for “GeForce vs Quadro on mac” what did you find? I know one works better than the other but it could also be user fantasy.
-Keith

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

AE doesn’t do this on it’s own. AE is not a 3d application. Nor does it do volume (I don’t know cs6 so maybe they added it?) all of us are content to fake it. I would use a solid with a heavily feathered mask on it and try to add some perspective to the shape of the mask.
All really great things are achieved with time, patience and third party effects. Trapcode probably has what you are looking for so check out https://www.videocopilot.net/ and watch the tuts and check out his plugins. Then go here and check out theirs: https://www.trapcode.com/products/ then decide if you want to purchase or if you can simulate it enough to fool the average american (pretty easy if you ask me).
Enjoy!
-Keith

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

That is a huge file. Did you also keep the full resolution instead of reducing to 72 pixels pre inch? AE doesn’t care about dpi at all, so it doesn’t really matter if it’s above 72. That’s where the real memory drain appears (from my experience) so do that and create a new project and redo it. If you import the original project into the new one you can use it as a guide to quickly rebuild it.

I don’t think the cropped layers option is the problem, If they are precomped then you should be able to re-center them in the pre’s and the other comps shouldn’t change position, but they will be reduced in size causing it to seem as if they have moved, when they just scaled down. If your precomps are the size of the original and you are outputting to a smaller resolution, then unless you are scaling up to 300% there’s really no reason for the giant file dimensions. Then again, I don’t know what kind of animation/transformation/effects you are doing.
Hope this helps.
-Keith

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

Your compression scheme is not listed, which software are you using? In mac, the standard right click and choose compress just throws out redundant and repeated code, providing in a smaller file. In video that is high quality and not GOP there really is no redundancy or repeated code so hence no real reduction. When I use stuffit deluxe I might get a 25% reduction when I really try to squish it. Again, with video we need that information and there is no repeating code so hence no reduction in file size.
If you change the depth to 8, millions of colors, then you’ll see a reduction in both size and quality, but if you do a test can you visibly see the difference? Most peeps won’t notice, and if it still looks good to the eye then mebbie the producers won’t know either.

Here’s an interesting read I found:
https://www.maximumcompression.com/data/jpg.php

Hope this helps.
-Keith

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

You could hide all the other parts and just render out the bow and then render out the other parts minus the bow and in AE place the bow under the other parts and voila! Happy affecting.
-Keith

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

Can’t have it both ways, if you don’t want to degrade your footage then you cannot have small files, this info takes space. Your best bet is using the lossless option, a photoshop sequence or don’t pre-render, just precomp and keep stacking em. Are you running out of memory? (edit>purge) is the project that huge? (proxies, half resolution files) I find it odd you are doing it this way since AE can hold a ton of data and effects stacked and multiple precomps, but each to their own I guess.
Are you using video footage? I assume you are using stills arranged in a sequence. In AE you don’t need the high resolution photos as video will always be only 72 pixels per inch, whereas photos can be 300 and upward DOTS per square inch. Lowering your resolution will save you a ton of memory and improve performance. Your output size also needs to be taken into account. If you aren’t going to 4k then they don’t need to be full size at all, just the size of your final output.
Hope this helps!
-Keith

ps- don’t touch the 444 as I have seen nothing but noise from it. (my experience only)

Reality? What did you make it?

[Keith Mcgregor]

The light edges could just be a plain white solid with an oval mask squished and feathered, and probably has been expanded a little, to give it a “button” look to it. (There are many tuts for this but they use webpages as examples and photoshop for the creation).
You could set it for “add” and even use an adjustment layer just above the white solid and use a fast blur to get even more fuzziness. Use an expression pickwhip to parent the position of the white solid to the layer under it and rotate the white solid to your hearts content. But make sure you place the anchor point for the white solid to the center of the circle it rotates around.
Hope this helps!
-Keith

[Keith Mcgregor]

I will assume you don’t have CS6 otherwise the camera tracker is quite good. You will run into problems (I think) until you match the distortion of the lens. Optics compensation might help for the photoshop file but it’s pretty distorted. A lot of times you will have to manually fudge footage if you are tracking. I have yet to ever get a pure and awesome track from any program (AE, Maya, Matchmover, PfHoe pro/Track, Nuke, SynthEyes) without spending quite a lot of time re-solving, choosing different track points, manually tracking and generally freaking out. Matchmoving and tracking are about the perception of it looking right and fooling the viewer (who will not see the details we see for they don’t know them like we do).

Helpful links:

https://www.imagineersystems.com/products/mochaAE
and of course youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBZnNaEenn4

And remember to always have patience as tracking takes some time, and sometimes liquor helps the pain.

-Keith

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[Keith Mcgregor]

Johns way works and will be easier for you, but doing it the way you’re doing it you would just have to open a new comp viewer and drag the tab to the side of the other comp viewer (purple trapezoid denotes where) and you can have the 2 comps display at the same time. In each comp viewer lock the view to the desired comp and when you work in one you see the results!
This will help in future projects, trust me.
-Keith

[Keith Mcgregor]

In other words, no, there is no text size choice. You would have to find out how to zoom in to the screen and depending on your os it will be different. Or maybe there is a magnifying app for what’s under the cursor, but you would always be zooming in which moves the rest of the panels offscreen and then zooming out to see the effects of your changes.

Reality? What did you make it?