Kevin Camp
Forum Replies Created
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Current Time Indicator (fancy talk for the line that marks where you currently are in the timeline)
time blend is pretty cool, and I don’t know why it’s been discontinued… the only frustration is usually if you do a render and forget to clear the cached frames or move the CTI to the beginning of the comp and then find out you need to re-render….
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I assume that the layers have ‘continuously rasterize’ enabled or they are text layers (text layers have that option always enabled)…
since your layers are parented, you probably just need to use the parent’s position in the expression:
parent.position * 400 / effect(“Roughen Edges”)(“Scale”)
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
If you’re not using cc2015, CC Time Blend is very similar and will render very fast.
If you don’t have an earlier version of AE installed you can install cc2014 (or earlier) and get Time Blend.
Time Blend works with cached frames, which is what makes it render so fast. However, the control values are based on cache sizes, so it will take a little fiddling to get values that will close to where you are with Widetime.
Also, since it uses cached frames, you will need to click the ‘clear’ word at the top of the effects controls after every change you make, and before you render. you’ll also want to start have the CTI at the beginning of the comp before starting a ram preview.
And set the ‘clear to’ to ‘current frame’.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I have noticed the same issue (Ae 13.8, OS X 10.11.5).
It’s seems to be specifically the size attribute (comp size or solid size). layer attributes, like position, scale etc, behave normally.
I did try to rebuild the preference file, but no effect…. I’m thinking it’s just a bug.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
card wipe and card dance will break up a layer into a grid of ‘cards’ and flip and/or scale those cards.
if you are unfamiliar with either, card wipe is a little easier to manipulate without checking out some tutorials (though, you might want to look up a few).
the tricky part for your pattern is that you’ll need to break up your octagon-square pattern into two layers (or pre-comps), one with just octagons and the other with just squares, apply card wipe to each and find a grid spacing/size the will lineup with both patterns.
after that it’s pretty straight forward, you’ll time up the transition completion property so that it looks like both layers are flipping off together.
card dance has more robust ‘card’ manipulation, but you’ll control the card attributes with gradient maps, which (if you haven’t used them before) have a bit of a learning curve.
if you like expressions, you can control layer properties like rotation and/or scale with a gradient layer/map and a sampleImage() expression.
assuming that your shape pattern i made of individual layers and each layer has it’s anchor point in the center of it’s shape, it wouldn’t be too hard to set up.
first you’ll want to create a layer to use as a your gradient map, so create a new comp, name it “Layer Map”, add a comp-sized solid and for simplicity add the linear wipe effect, animate the transition from 0-100 and set the feather to 200 (or so).
So now you have a solid that wipes off the screen. drop that comp into the comp with your shapes and hide it (we’ll direct the expression to it, but you won’t need to see it).
select one of your shape layers twirldownd the properties to the scale property, select it and choose animation>add expression. In the expression field copy/paste the following:
map = thisComp.layer("Layer Map");
v = map.sampleImage(position, radius = [.5, .5])[3];
s = linear(v,0,1,0,100);
[s,s]if you scrub through the timeline, that layer should scale down as the Layer Map wipes off.
to get that expression on the other octagons and squares, select the scale property that has the expression and choose edit>copy expression only. then select all the octagons and squares and choose edit>paste.
they should now all scale down as the layer map wipe off.
to explain the expression a bit, the first line just sets the layer that will act as the map.
the second line is sampling the alpha channel of the map at a single pixel at the point where the octagon or square is positioned. radius=[.5,.5] is one pixel, and the [3] is returning the alpha component of and RGBA layer, setting that to [0] would look at the red channel, for instance.
the third line is converting the value of the alpha channel (a value between 0 and 1) to a scale value (0 to 100)
and the last line just make the x and y scales the same value (s).
you can change the animation of the layer map any way you want it… you could change the angle of the linear wipe, or have a circular mask cut a hole in the solid and grow outward to fill the screen or a bunch of smaller layers fading away… and when you go back to the comp with your shapes, they should scale based off the new animation in the Layer Map comp.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
the first one is pretty simple, use the gradient wipe effect (or cc image wipe).
but first you’ll need a gradient to use as the gradient layer. find or make a cloudy grayscale image (photoshop render clouds, or pre-comp a layer that has fractal noise will work pretty well).
add that gradient layer to the comp with the logo (or layer the will ‘erode’ away), then add the gradient wipe effect to the logo. select the gradient layer as the ‘gradient layer’ in the effect and the animate the transition property. fiddle with the settings as needed.
you can get more complex, as the effect will also use footage (like time-lapse clouds) or an animated gradient layer, which can be pretty cool.
—- edit —-
you could also use the footage/render clouds/fractal noise layer as a track matte, if you prefer.
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one way to do the dripping effect is covered in this tutorial:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/horror_text2/video-tutorial
and the crumbling likely uses the shatter effect. that effect is pretty deep, but if you search for tutorials that cover creating custom shatter maps, and controlling shatter using gradients you should be able to learn what you need.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
the fans will kick in during render, but they are not too loud… they are more quiet that the older mac pro towers.
the biggest negative compared to the old towers is having to add a bunch of external drives for media storage.
the iMac’s SSD is extremely fast, and the usb3 ports are faster than the sata2 bus in the towers, but i currently have all my usb3 ports filled (with mostly with storage and a backup) and the 2 thunderbolt ports are used for additional displays (the old ones from my tower). those external drives make more noise than the iMac.
there is an additional SSd slot on the mother board, but getting to it is pretty difficult… but it might be worth the effort. It would be nice to put a smallish SSD in that slot and use it as a cache/media cache drive for AE, but my company would not likely let me crack mine open, at least not until the warrantee expires.
for the money, the i7 iMac is a good deal, better than the lower end 2013 Mac Pro — unless you use final cut or another application that can justify the expense of those AMD graphics cards.
I think you’d do well with a 2010 mac pro if you go that route… since those xeon cpus are so similar to what’s in the 2013 mac pros, i don’t think there will be an OS X (or macOS) version that will make them obsolete anytime too soon — and if apple moves away from intel and starts using proprietary cut like the A series, then all intel mac’s lives will be on the line.
personally, if i was a freelancer, i’d lean towards the 2010 mac pro if i was going with a mac. i like having the control of choosing my video card and the flexibility of PCIe expansion slots — though i think i might fill up all the PCIe slots with 2 video cards, a SSD/M.2 card and a thunderbolt/usb3 card…. but the i7 iMac is still a very good option.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
the latest iMac (with a core i7) will outperform the 4-core 2013 mac pro in After Effects… and will likely be cheaper, unless you will be keeping your existing monitors, keyboard and mouse…. we recently upgraded and that was the path we chose.
an advantage of the older 2010 mac pro is that you can upgrade the CPUs to newer Xeons, and you can upgrade the video card and choose an nvidia model (like what you’ve spec’d, though the high end gaming cards often out perform the pro cards) which will help with most adobe products.
the 2010 12-core mac pro will have slower ram, but i think it will likely be faster than the 2013 mac pro or the iMac…. but as you mention, there could be concerns with future versions of OS X.
search barefeats.com. rob benchmarks lots of macs, and you’ll likely find a comparison of pro software on all these macs.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
i don’t think you’d be able to do that with cc ball action….
you could try a particle system like cc particle world.
- in a new comp, create a new layer, and add cc particle world and set the birthrate to around 5
- in the producer settings set the x and y radius to 1 and the z radius to 0.
- in physics, set the animation to direction axis, gravity to 0, and then in the direction axis settings, set x to 1, y to 0 and z to .00001 (there’s a flaw in the plugin where if z is 0, the particles move away from the producer, but setting it to a very small value will work fine).
- in the particle settings set the type to shaded sphere, max opacity to 100 and color map to origin constant
you should now have a virtually endless star field similar to the ball action version in the tutorial.
another added benefit is now you can add echo to the same layer (after the particle world effect) without have to pre-comp it to get the light streaks.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
if your not going for the realism in the example, and would settle for a simple bending of a spine layer, cc bend it can very easily bend a layer which could mimic the behavior of a spine.
you can easily see if it will work for you, just find a picture of a spine and add cc bend it. you’ll have two anchor points to effect the bend, the ‘start’ is the base, or fixed point, and the ‘end’ is point that will effect the bend. place the start point at a point you want the bend to start (like the base of the spine), then manipulate the end point to create the bending.
it is a simple distortion effect, and the you will get distortion in the vertebrae, but if the bending isn’t too extreme it may work for what you are doing.
to do it more correctly would involve linking separate vertebrae layers with expressions so when you move one vertebra, the others move and rotate independently as needed to more accurately follow the adjusted vertebra. it’s possible, but a little complicated to work out math and expressions involved.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW