[Kevin Camp]

one last thing that i can’t compensate for (but idon’t think is the problem here)… if viewing the credit roll, you will need to be able to view the actual size… so if you are working in 2k film rez, you will need to see view it at full rez to see how well it is working, otherwise, due the the scaling, the antialiasing will not be correct.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

hey jimmy,

there are two things that can be the down fall of a credit roll, the antialiasing of the edges of text and the amount of movement… the preset fixes the anitaliasing part of the problem, but if the movement per frame is too great (which seems to be values greater than about 1 percent of the comp height, so for sd, values greater than 5) you will start to see a strobe like effect.

if using the preset, there are two ways to decrease the per frame movement, increase the duration of the comp or decrease the length (height) of the credit list. decreasing the height of the list is often a better way for fine tuning a credit roll. you can usually easily do this by adjusting the leading (linespacing) font size or even just scaling it a little.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can determine if it is an ae setting by finding the ae pref files and moving it to the desktops, then testing ae on the 3 computers again… the pref files are in users/username/library/preferences/adobe/afer effects/versionnumber. its called adobe after effects [version] prefs. don’t throw them out, just move them out of that folder. when you open ae a new pref file will be created with the default settings, don’t change them just do a render of the same project on each computer.

if the results are still the same, you should run the disk utility to make sure the hard disk is ok. you should also run the hardware test from the osx install disk (instruction on running the test are printed on the disk). run the extensive test (note, it will take a long time).

if none of that is helping (or giving you any clue to the problem) you’ll need to look at what else might be different on the systems… drive speeds, drive space, other applications, osx version, extra hardware (pci, graphics cards), etc…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

waveworld is an excellent wave simulator… i might also suggest using it in conjunction with caustics for more realism of displacement… it can also give your waves highlights, or even a reflecting sky, if that is what you’re after. but what bogie said about wavworld goes for caustics too… they are not the easiest plugins to use, but excellent non the less.

if you want something easy, that can create a watery ripple-like movement, turbulent displace may work quite well, and it is very easy to use…. its settings are a bit like fractal noise, animate the evolution property, then adjust the amount, size and complexity.

with turbulent displace, you’ll at least be able to see if this will work for you in about 5 minutes… with waveworld it might be more like an hour.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

unfortunately, i don’t think you can use an expression to generate position for the pins… (at least not if you use my imageSource expression to generate z position). this is because the pin needs an x,y coordinate first to get the z coordinate from the imageSouce expression… it’s a bit like circular logic problems (which came first the chicken or the egg…). i know this, not beacuse i’m incredibly bright, but because i tried it…

but a script (possibly like the layers2grid script) that positioned a number of layers into a grid should work (a script should define new x,y coordinates to each layer)

ce shape extruder may work, along with the other ways of extruding that maltaannon (and aharon in his podcast covering 3d extrusion methods too)… my only concern about the the duplicating layer/repeating shapes extrusion methods are the number of layers that will be involved and how well ae will handle that, but it may be the only way. and i think the the shatter method, that both aharon and maltaannon mention, will have the same downfall as the cc cylindar, where it only seems to work in the plugin’s 3d space, not ae’s 3d space…

as far as using ae or a 3d app… a 3d app can quite easily handle creating the pins and the number of pins/polygons and arranging the pins. you’ll also get benefits of lighting, shadows and relfections for a more realistic looking pin mould (if you use the multi-layer/shape reapeater extrusion method in ae you won’t get realistic shading, but you can fake a lot this). in my old version of c4d, i can’t think of a way to ‘easily’ press another shape into the pin mould, but if it wasn’t going to be a lot of text (or other shapes), i think i could follow the shape of the text with a selection tool by hand, then just keyrame the z positions for those selected pins.

so, as much as i’d like to use the imageSource expression in cs3, and i might explore this a little more… i think i would end up using a 3d app. if i felt comfortable in the 3d software.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think it’s time to call adobe to get help… i would tell them you tried the install on two diffent computers, but the aoftware crashes or stalls at the same point when you try to open it… this is pretty unusual, but they have a lot more info about software conflicts and other issues that may be causing the problem.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i’m glad you liked it, but before you get too excited, there are things that will need to get worked out… like how to make a realistic 3d pin, arrange the pin comps in the mould comp and then i think you will need to take that comp into a third comp for camera positioning.

i only gave you a way to do have z displacement of a layer based on the alpha transparency of another layer…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think the education version used to be the same as the standard version (but with a discount and a promise that you would not do paid work witht he educational version)… but now, since there is only one version of ae (the pro version) i guess every one gets whole bundle.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you have cs3, you could use the imageSample expression to sample the text layer and convert that data to position…

i came up with this to be appied to the 3d position property of the pin… it looks at the layer (called ‘text’) and samples it at the x-y position of the pin layer, using just the alpha value to generate the displacement. the sample radius is half the layer size and displacement is a multiplier:

radius = div([width, height], 2);
imageMap = thisComp.layer(“text”).sampleImage([position[0], position[1]], radius);
displacement = -100;
z = imageMap[3] * displacement;
value + [0,0,z]

i think i would link the displacement value to a slider on a null to allow the animation of the pins to push out.

you will need to figure out how to make the 3d pin (i had though cc cylinder might work, but it didn’t seem to) in a separate comp, then apply the expression to the nested 3d pin comp.

after that you’ll still need to duplicate your 3d pin comp (with expression) and get them arranged in a grid… i found this script that may help called layers2grid.

good luck 🙂

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

thanks filip, that’s pretty much what i thought. and the scripting option doesn’t really work well, since it would only know the state of the switch when the script was ran. if the switch was toggled after that the script would need to be run again…

thanks

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW