[Kevin Camp]

I have noticed this issue with newer versions of After Effects when using CC Composite with text layers. Most of the time, the only way I have found to fix the issue is to do an Edit>Purge All.

However, with this preset, I didn’t even need to use CC Composite… set the Circle effect’s Blending Mode property to from ‘None’ to ‘Normal’ and delete CC Composite and it should fix the issue.

Also here’s the new, simplified, preset:

10532_singalong.ffx.zip

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you might look at good ole cc page turn. if you set the controls to classic and then the fold direction to 180 and start dragging the fold position point you’ll see if it might create the curl your looking of.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

I’d try the shatter effect.

apply it to the text layer and then set the pattern to custom and set the custom shatter map to the text layer.

then try animating the position and/or radius of force 1 to move or wipe across the text. you might also try setting the gravity direction to move off screen-right too.

fiddle around with force 1 strength and rotational speed of the letters and i think you can get a pretty descent effect.

look for some tutorials on shatter, particularly using a gradient layer to control the shatter and you can probably create something very nice.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

a very simple, yet manual way, is to simply copy/paste line 1, and add a keyframe to to the source text property. skip down the timeline to where you want line 2 to appear, and copy/paste that into to the text layer before the previous line of text.

repeat for all lines of text.

then, as you move through the timeline, each new line will add at the top of the text layer, effectively moving the previous line down a line.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

For the CS versions AE, the Xeon will likely out perform the Core i5 in most render tasks due to hyperthreading, so I’d be tempted to go that route, though I don’t know that the performance difference would be huge.

If you were going to upgrade to the CC version of AE, then the iMac may start to catch up to the Mac Pro, largely due to the SSD and the newer software’s media caching method… but you could always add an SSD to the Mac Pro in the future.

Either system should be faster than your current system.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

this will generate a unique random position for each layer and then ‘wiggle’ it around that random value, but still allow you to manually adjust the random position (i.e., use the position property value). it generates the random position from a volume defined by the x, y, z variables for the back-lower-right corner and then it’s inverse for the front-upper-left corner of a cube. you can link those variable to your sliders. if needed, you could set up separate sliders to define the front-upper-left corner rathe than simply using the inverse. the rest of the code is from dan’s looping wiggle expression — which I think you are familiar with 😉
seedRandom(index,true);
x = 300;
y = 300;
z = 300;
p = random(-[x,y,z],[x,y,z])
freq = 1;
amp = 110;
loopTime = 3;
t = time % loopTime;
wiggle1 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t);
wiggle2 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t - loopTime);
w = linear(t, 0, loopTime, wiggle1, wiggle2);
normalize(value) + p + w

—– edit —-

scratch the ‘normalize()’ from the last line… completely unnecessary. should be just: p + w

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think you could get close to the second animation by using displacement map..

first you’ll create a gradient map to use for the displacement map. i’d try creating a comp, add a new layer, add fractal noise and then the mosaic, setting mosaic to make vertical bars of varying shades of gray.

bring that comp into a comp with your logo, apply displacement map on the logo and then select the gradient comp as the displacement map. animate the vertical displacement property (set the other to 0).

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

If you haven’t already, you should look into which OS X versions can run AE CS5.5. And/or which OS X versions can run on a new iMac.

I know AE CS5 did not run well, if at all, on the version of OS X that shipped with the new iMacs we got about 9 months ago… interestingly, CS4 ran pretty well…

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you might be able to get close with vegas (the effect).

add it to a keyed layer, set the stroke to image contours, channel to ‘alpha’, blending mode to ‘under’ and set the various opacities and hardness to 1. then set the width and color as needed.

duplicate vegas and set the color for that instance, and repeat that process as needed. as it expands out, you may need to adjust the segments.

if you just had two colors for the ‘strokes’, then you could just animate the width of the first vegas effect, and then add a loopOut() expression and I think it would work. with more than that, you’ll need to explore how to animate it.

—- edit —

i had mentioned adjusting the segments to try and fix an issue with the ‘hardness’ of the stroke, but that doesn’t do it.. you might have to use a levels or curves effect to tighten up the alpha in between the vegas effects.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

that is really weird… have you rebooted?

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW