Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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you should notice a render/preview speed difference… it won’t be 2 times faster with 2 processors, since several of more common render intensive effects/features in ae7 used multiprocessing (like gausian blur and motion blur, etc.). but, maybe, 1.5 times faster…
you’d also like to have about 4gb of ram for cs3 to take full advantage of those 2 processors. also be aware that you may need cs3 versions of third-party effects. most of these are free updates, but some may require upgrading, just look on their websites for cs3 compatibility.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
this was from the help menu for examples of text animation. it shows how to use offset characters, which sounds like what you want to do…
Create a new composition.
Create a new text layer with the word Galaxy.
Choose Animation > Animate Text > Character Offset.
In the Timeline panel, set the Character Offset value to 5.
Expand Range Selector 1.
Click the Start stopwatch to set an initial keyframe at 0 seconds and set the value to 0%.
Move the current-time indicator to 5 seconds and set the Start value to 100%.
Set Character Alignment to Center.
Preview the composition.hope that helps.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
don’t get too intimidated by all the changes… the bulk of the application works the same, you add keyframes the same way and most of the effects are the same. for the most part, what you remember from 4.0 will still apply to cs3. you’ll probably be happy to know that ae now comes with the old final effects (now designated by cc effectname, rather than fe).
the new stuff that you’ll probably find useful and use frequently as you get back into cs3 are things like 3d, the new text tool and text animation presets, and expressions (don’t be afraid, they can be very easy and very useful).
also the interface looks different, but it is basicly the same, just now the panels are all ‘docked’ within a main window. i actually really like it that way, it’s a lot easier to keep track of all those panels… but if you can’t stand it, you can ‘undock’ them.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
also, is the shadow color black, and/or, is opengl turned off? i think there is still a problem with opengl rendering shadows if they are any color other than black…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
is the logo animated? if not, i would use photoshop… it sounds like there are some jpeg like artifacts around the edges, and if the colors you are trying to keep are close to white, you will have problems. photoshop has better selective blurring tools to help smooth those out.
if you don’t have photosop, the logo is animated or you just like to work in ae. you might try looking at the individual channels (r, g, or b) with the show channel selector in the preview window (colored circles button). if one looks better than the others, better contrast or less noise, then you could try and use that channel to create a matte.
duplicate the logo layer and use the channel combiner effect on the duplicate to make that color channel luminance only. add a levels adjustment to make dark areas black and the light areas white (white will be opaque, black transparent in the next step). set the original logo layer to use the duplicate as a track matte. if you get a white fringe, precomp those two layers and then add remove color mattting, with the color set to white.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
do you have illustrator?
if you do, you could try the method of morphing in thistutorial. depneding on you version of illustrator, you may need to add a step in illustrator (the tutorial is a bit old, but still works). if you think it will work for you, and have problems, just post.
i would also recommend making the morph pretty darn quick… the morph between a 4 and pacman is going to look a bit strange no matter what. you can ‘blend’ more step/shapes than you need in illustrator and use time remapping to speed up the morph thru the awkward parts.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
interesting…
in the interest of sniffing out problems, i have a 2x3ghz dual-core intel macpro, 4gb ram, osx 10.4.10 and ae cs3 (8.0.1.8).
i have no problems hiding the app.
i do have a problem saving a preset from the effects & presets panel. i can only save a preset from the animation menu, but only if i didn’t first try to save it from the effects panel… i then have to deselect the effects & properties and reselect them to chose the save option from the animation menu…!? actually, i can also save a preset for an individual effect from the effect controls window, but that won’t work for multiple effects…
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
processing time depends a lot on the composition and effects used. you can help things out by precomping portions of the main comp that you will not be changing, then pre-render those precomps, which will automaticly import the footage and replace the precomps with the rendered footage (it won’t delete the precomps, just replace them in the comps that use them). this will help speed things up as you work in the main comp.
you can also set the resoltion and magnification down just for previews… a setting of 50% magnification and half resolution will speed things up about 4 times for previews.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
this will give you constant movement on the x axis of a 3d camera:
rate = 1;
x = Math.abs(position[0] * time) * rate;
value + [x,0,0]a positive rate value, will give you left to right movement, negative right to left… the initial x position is just the x position of the camera, this could be a set value like 500, if you needed. just change the ‘position[0]’ to the value needed.
if i have a little more time, i’ll look into the keyframe direction change, or would it be better to have a set time, like 10 seconds, and then the camera chagnes direction… i also assume you would want it to ease in and out of the direction change?
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
from the window menu, you can set workspaces… you could try choosing a workspace from there… will that work?
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW