[Kevin Camp]

if you use use an expression to do the type-on effect, you can use sourceRecAtTime() function to animate the position or anchor point to make the layer move up the page as each new line starts to type on.

try this expression for the layer’s source text property:

rate = 40; // in characters per second
value.substr(0,time*rate)

and then this for the anchor point:

rect = sourceRectAtTime();
y = rect.height;
value + [0,y]

the text should type on and move upwards with each new line.

if you need to add a cursor (like maybe a | ) to the end of the text as it types on, that can be done too.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you might look at the cell pattern effect (there are various patterns).

you can flatten out the shaded patterns with something like the threshold effect or levels effect. find edges might even be helpful.

colorize it with something like the tint effect (tritone or colorama would work too, but tint is great for 2-tone colorizing)

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

there’s not really a good way to do what you want with expressions… to do it with expressions, you’d need to scan every pixel, every frame and return the bottom most opaque pixel. it’s possible but not very practical. maybe limiting the scan to just the bottom 100px or so might help, but it’s still not very efficient. there was an old expression that someone had to detect the size of a text layer that used this same process, it would probably apply to what you are doing (search the cow or google for ‘text size detection after effects’, i first saw the expression about 5 years ago).

a script might be better. you’d need to run the script each time you updated the logo, but the script would scan the image and set the flare point once, rather than every frame.

you should try posting in the after effects expressions forum (or maybe you did, i haven’t checked there yet).

i love expressions, but honestly, i think it would be easier to manually adjust the flare point each time, even for lots of logo updates…

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i would try creating (or finding) a grey scale horizontal line or bar-like texture and use that as the displacement map layer for the displacement map effect on the layer/footage to be distorted. then animate the max horizontal displacement value (set vertical displacement to 0)

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i think you can still render it, it will just render with the cpu rather than the nvidia cuda cores. the render will take longer, but the result should be the same.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

Well I learned a lot of it here on this forum… that and tutorials.

As for my own tutorials, I’ve thought about it, but never seem to find the time… it’s more convenient for me to peruse the forums when i have down time.

I meant to ask you this before, but i curious about how you’d create the text portrait in Photoshop… would you do it by hand, or is there some short of cool plugin or process that can help out?

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you are able to create the text portrait in photoshop, assuming the text will be created on separate layers, you could import that psd into ae as a comp (with retain layer sizes checked).

then you could use a simple expression and expression control to animate the layers in 3d space by doing the following:

1. create a new null (layer>new>null layer) and name it ‘control null’
2. add a 3d point control to the null (effects>expression control>3d point control)
3. select your first text layer, reveal the position property, select that property and choose animation>add expression
4. copy and paste this expression into the expression field:
   p1 = thisComp.layer(“control null”).effect(“3D Point Control”)(“3D Point”);
   seedRandom(index, true);
   value + random(-p1, p1)
5. then right-click the position property and choose copy expression only
6. select all the other text layers and choose edit>paste
7. then select all the text layers and make them 3d (click the little 3d cube icon from the layers switches of one of the selected layers)

now all the layers will be randomly positioned within he range set bu the 3d point control. animate the point control to go from, say, 1000,1000,1000 to 0,0,0 and the layers should all animate from being randomly spread out, to being in their original position. set the animation values as needed.

you can also animate any of the text layers as needed, if some are distracting, or need to be in the frame at certain points in the animation, just animate their positions to move them as needed.

—-edit—–

i should also add that you could animate a 3d camera moving through the text as it comes together to mimic the example.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

have you tried using earlier versions of ae? versions back to cs6 are available as part of the creative cloud license. i’d be curious if its an issue with cc2015…

to install older versions, click cloud icon in the menu bar, select apps, then scroll down to ‘additional apps’, click ‘all apps’, then ‘view previous versions’ and find the other versions of ae. after installing, you’ll likely need to update them.

cc2015 projects open fine in cc2014, for cc(12) you’ll need to use the ‘save for cc12 option’ in the save as menu. if you want to go back to cs6, you’ll need to use cc12 to ‘save as cs6’.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you’re talking about the 4 or 5 second mark where the shot shatters like glass, then I think you could try the shatter effect, setting the shape pattern to glass to get started with.

and then cc pixel poly on another layer to create the finer particles (or shatter, with higher shape repetitions, or another particle system)

with shatter, you can also create your own shatter map to get glass shards more like the example. you should be abel to find several tutorials on that.

you’ll need to finesse that more, but I think you can get close.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

it is a curious anomaly, and you might want to file a bug report. i’m seeing the same issue in cc2014 too…

the blur issue when you resize the comp is due to the anchor point shifting half a pixel. if you set the anchor point back to whole numbers it should be sharp again… not sure if that helps you much…

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW