[Kevin Camp]

if the leaves will also be at 30%, just work at 100%, then bring that ‘vine and leaf’ comp into another comp and decrease the opacity of the vine and leaf comp…

but i suppose the leaves are not at 30%… maybe they are 60%. it’s been a while since i’ve seen the tutorial, but i think i would just create everything at 100%. once that’s done, precomp just the vine part. now precomp all the leaves in another precomp. duplicate the vine precomp and move it above the leaves comp, and set the leaves comp to use the vine comp as a track matte. set the opacities as needed.

i think taht should work… if there is a bit of a gap between the leaves and vine, try putting simpler choker on the track matte vine to see if you can get rid of it.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

first, i wnat to make sure you are not running ae under rosetta, select the appliaction in the finder, then choose file>get info. ther is a check box that says something like open in rosetta. that should be unchecked. there are some issues with cs3 and rosetta, ae does have a work around if needed.

the best way to test performance, is to have a common ground. here’s a link tobarefeats.com. they have actually has tested your mac (although loaded with 16gb of ram) with cs3 using a project called total benchmark (they provide a link to download it too). download the poject file (it is for an older version, so acs3 will tell you its missing something, but its not).

open the project and render it (there are two parts, just tell it where to render the files, note that one will render a sequence so make a folder for it). take note of the render time (this is just for testing against other settings), then quit ae and delete any of the rendere files.

now try pulling the prefs file onto the desktop… you’ll find it in users/username/library/preferences/adobe/afeter effects/8.0, the one you want is simply called adobe after effect 8.0 prefs. don’t delete it, just put it somewhere you can find it.

then start up ae, open that same project and render it… take note of the render times. since that was the default settings you don’t need to save them. quit ae.

delete the rendered files, restart ae, then set the muliprocessing on (don’t change the ram cache or disk cache yet), open the project and render again. take note of the render times… hopefully by now its looking better. quit and throw away the rendered files.

restart ae and try setting the ram cache to a value that will allow the multiprocessing to use all processors… ae tells you how many additional processors will be used in the multiprocessing settings. my guess would be a ram cache of around 1.2gb. leave the disk cache off.. for performance reasons its best to leave disk cache off, you may find that you need to turn it on for some projects, but deal with it that time. render and note the render times.

which is the fastest? now use those settings (you may even want to make a copy of the prefs, just in case you want to do more testing later, that way you’ll be able to restore the settings easily).

i think the total benchmark project file is for version 6, so you can test it in 6.5, if you’d like.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i’ve noticed that time remap occasionally won’t let me extend the out point… it’s been a while since i had it happen, but i think figured out that it was often after i had repositioned the footage in the timeline (i mean the footage no longer started at the beginning of the comp). try positioning the footage at the beginning of the comp, then apply time remapping, and see how things go….

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you are seeing the banding only on the duplicate layers, and particularly when the camera is close up, you may be seeing the edges of the layers…

can you easily add more layers and tighten up the spacing at this point? or could you quickly reconstruct the 3d text with adjusted layer spacing…. you can link the spacing offset to a slider on a null, then you’ll have control over the spacing as needed.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

where are you seeing the banding… on the duplicate text layers, or on other layers in the scene. and, are you using the two light sources to shade the ‘3d’ text or to provide a shadow on the other layers in the scene?

i’m trying to figure out if you can limit the shadow casting or receiving properties to over come the problem…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

try duplicating the footage in the comp, then apply the motion tile effect and keyframe the tile center property vertically.

then adjsut the opacity and/or blending modes to get the blending you desire with the origal footage.

does that get you close?

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

nice job…. ty (or is it paul).

i couldn’t get the file you posted, but the process sounds excellent… i don’t know why anchor point escaped me. jack owes you a beer. 😉

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

are you seeing the problem in the ram preview or after rendering with fields in an nle on a broadcast monitor?

i’m trying to determine if the problem is a field jutter issue or an antialiasing issue.

for now, i think i’d try a little directional blur… i’d try fast blur, set to about 1, veritcal only. see how that works… but you may find that subtly moving, high contrast hard edges are problematic.

you might also try a text color that is less contrasty with the background image, maybe even decrease the opacity a little… and if you have too, add a little noise over everything to try and mask the hard edges…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

here’s a tutorial that could be adapted to your project, called text that blows away like sand. you may even be able to adapt it to particular….

but, to give you a some quick help in particular… set the emitter to layer or layer grid, then select the layer to be used (it needs to be a separate layer than the one the effect is applied to). choose thelayer rgb usage as rgb particle color. if using layer grid, click the ‘options’ at the top of the effect, on the right side of the options window will be grid emitter settings, these will affect the spacing or the particles as they are first emitted.

that should get you to a point where the layer kind of bursts into particles. after that it is a matter adjusting amount of partcles and how they behave after birth…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i’m kind of curious what preferences were causing the problem… 22min – 2min…!?? is there a check box for render like it was the mid-90s?

😉

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW