[Kevin Camp]

I’ve been having the same issue, the plugin makes after effects completely unuseable.

There’s another thread here: https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/50/862862#862862

Thus far, i’ve only heard of macs with yosemite having this issue. I’m considering installing mavericks on another drive and seeing if the issue is still there.

I’m hoping you may have made some progress, or even other failed attempts to share.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

I’ve experienced the same issue, and it makes it unusable. Tried some things mentioned in this post:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/1063454#1063454

But haven’t found a solution yet. I have a 2009 Mac pro, 20gb of ram and have no other issues with any apps or plugins. C4d lite works great by itself. It could be the crappy video card, but I can’t find any info to support that.

It can’t be this way for everyone, nobody would even release a product like this, but it’s interesting that it’s happening across several very different macs… Could be an os thing.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

Write-on is very easy, but limited. If you want to increase the amount (size) of movement, you’ll need to decrease the frequency ( thus decreasing the speed) to get the dots to form a line. You could then take that comp into another comp and speed it up if needed.

If you use particular, create a light and name it “Emitter”. Partcle color will be derived from light color, so you can set that now too. Then Add the first wiggle expression to that light’s position.

Then in particular set emitter type to light. The emitter will now track the light.

A lot of the same properties as partcle world will need to be adjusted, but some of the properties have different names and of the values will be different, birth rate in particular will be much higher. I believe particular will handle the sub-frame sampling so you shouldn’t need to resort to the frame rate trick.

In particular you can set blending modes for the particles, setting them to add may give it more of a glowing, light streak feel.

Once you have settings that are working, you can duplicate the light an set it to a different color and particular will automatically add it as an emitter and you’ll have two different colored light streaks in the same . You can do that multiple times, it’s a pretty neat feature, I don’t know another particle system that can do that.

Particular also has turbulent field settings in the physics settings, which could be pretty cool with this effect.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can get better results if you use a particle system to leave trail of particles…

if you happen to have trapcode’s particular (from red giant), it is well suited for these, but you can do it with the stock particle systems too.

for stock effects, try this:

first create a null (layer new null) and add the previous expression to the position property (we’ll use expressions to track that null).

then create a new solid and add particle world.

to link the producer to the null, you’ll use the following expressions (particle world has an unusual coordinate unit system, this would be much easier in particular):

position x:
target = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”); // change ‘Null 1’ to you null layer if needed
(target.position[0]-(thisComp.width/2))/width

position y:
target = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”); // change ‘Null 1’ to you null layer if needed
(target.position[1]-(thisComp.height/2))/width

position z:
target = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”); // change ‘Null 1’ to you null layer if needed
target.position[2]/width

also set the producer radius’ to 0s.

in physics, set the velocity and gravity to 0, and in particle, set the ‘type’ to added sphere, and the birth and death size to 0.100.

at this point it should be drawing a scabbily line (or string of dots).

to refine it, crank up the birthrate to 300 or more and increase the longevity to 10 or more. in particle settings set size variation to 0 and lower the max opacity to about 1. twirl down the opacity map and make it straight across the top (remove the bell-curve-like ends by clicking in the graph and dragging across the top edge). you can also set the color as needed.

this should get pretty close. the line may seem like a bunch of short straight segments. this is due to the effect not being abel to do sub frame sampling in it’s calculations. to smooth it out, go to the comp settings and set the frame rate to 99, and then add that comp to a new comp with a normal frame rate and the lines will be smoother.

you can make it more interesting by going back into the physics settings and increasing the inherent velocity a bit (try 1, and go from there), and you might add a little resistance, about .1 or so depending the inherent velocity value. this will make the line expand as the particles take some velocity from the producer.

you could also add the glow effect and drop the threshold down and increase the intensity to give it a nice glow.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you could create something similar to the first example with the write-on effect, and simply add an expression like this to the brush position property:

freq = 5; // how quickly the values are changed in times/sec
amount = 200; // in pixels
wiggle(freq, amount)

modifying freq and amount will change the amount of ‘scribble’

the other could use an expression too, but with a sine or cosine function worked into it.

—–edit——-

i should have added to reduce the brush spacing value to get something closer to a line than a string of dots.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

depending a lot on the wine glass footage, you may be able to either key the wine as it is filling, or create a luma matte by crushing the blacks and whites to create a high contrast image to use as a luma track matte.

if neither are possible, you could rotoscope out the wine as it fills the cut with a mask, or try rotobrush.

however you do it, to use that layer as a track matte, simply stack it above the logo layer in the timeline and then set the logo layer to use the layer above it as a track matte from the ‘modes’ options for the layer. you’ll choose ‘alpha’ if the logo layer should use the matte layer’s alpha (likely option if you roto’d the wine), use inverted alpha to take the transparent areas of the matt, rather than the opaque (likely option if you keyed the wine out), or use the luma options if you create a black and white matte.

if the wine fills up pretty quick, i.e., not too many frames to roto, or the wine is not red, shot over white or something high contrast, i think i might just draw a mask, it will likely be faster than tweaking setting to create a key or matte.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you could also do something similar with parent and without the first 2 expression and just a single expression on the first text line…

you’d make the first text line right justified and the second text layer left justified, then parent the vector layer and the other text layer to the first text layer.

arrange them so they are in a line, and then on the first text layer you’d add this expression:

vectGfx = thisComp.layer(“My Vector Gfx”);
text2Lyr = thisComp.layer(“My Second Text Layer”);
xOffset = 0;

txt1Rect = sourceRectAtTime(time);
txt2Rect = text2Lyr.sourceRectAtTime(time);

wTotal = (vectGfx.width * vectGfx.scale[0] / 100) + txt2Rect.width – txt1Rect.width;
x = (thisComp.width – wTotal) / 2 + xOffset;

[x, value[1]]

it should do a reasonable job of keeping all the layers centered on screen when the text or the vector layer change. it may not be perfect, do to the sourceRectAtTime() function trimming off spaces, but it should do a pretty good job

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

[siva kumar] “here the width and scale refers to text layer or vector image ?”

the set up would involve sandwiching a layer (vector image) between 2 text layers.

the vector image would look at the preceding text layer’s position and width (along with it’s own width) to determine it’s horizontal position.

the second text layer would look at the vector layer’s width and position to determine it’s horizontal position.

i would keep the text layer’s justification as left (it makes the expressions easier). if you needed to center all three layers horizontally, then you could add an expression to the first text layer’s position:

vectGfx = thisComp.layer(“MyVectorGfx”);
text2Lyr = thisComp.layer(“My Second Text Layer”);
pad = 10; // set this as the same pad value as the other expressions
xOffset = 0; // use this to offset x position if it doesn’t need to center in comp

txt1Rect = sourceRectAtTime(time);
txt2Rect = text2Lyr.sourceRectAtTime(time);

wTotal = txt1Rect.width + (vectGfx.width * vectGfx.scale[0] / 100) + txt2Rect.width + (pad * 2 )- position[0];
x = (thisComp.width – wTotal) / 2 + xOffset;

[x, value[1]]

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

in cc 2014 and later, there is an expression function that can get the size a text layer (or a shape layer). it’s sourceRectAtTime().

so, for the position of the vector graphic you could use that function to get the width of the preceding text layer, add it to the position of that text layer.

there’s a few things that i’ll assume, first, the preceding text layer is left justified (so anchor point is on the left edge). second, the vector graphic’s anchor point is in it’s center.

in the position property of the vector graphic, try this expression:

myText = thisComp.layer(‘Your Text Layer’); //point this at your text layer
pad = 10;
textRec = myText.sourceRectAtTime(time);
x = myText.position[0] + textRec.width + pad + (width * scale[0] / 200);
[x, value[1]]

that should place the vector layer at the end of the text layer. set the pad value as needed to create extra space between the text layer and the vector layer.

to add the second text layer at the end of the vector image you modify that expression to something like this:

vectGfx = thisComp.layer(“YourVectorGfx”);
pad = 10;
x = vectGfx.position[0] + (vectGfx.width * vectGfx.scale[0] / 200) + pad;
[x, value[1]]

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

the expression code box converted all the < > (greater than less than signs) to &lt and &gt (html tag equivalents).

i’ll try pasting this as preformated text:

opacityMin = 0;
opacityMax = 100;

fadeInStart = 600;
fadeInEnd = 500;
fadeOutStart = 300;
fadeOutEnd = 200;

y = toComp(anchorPoint)[1];

if (y <= fadeOutEnd || y >= fadeInStart){
	opacityMin;
}else if (y < fadeInStart && y > fadeInEnd){
	linear(y, fadeInEnd, fadeInStart, opacityMax, opacityMin);
}else if (y < fadeOutStart && y > fadeOutEnd){
	linear(y, fadeOutEnd, fadeOutStart, opacityMin, opacityMax);
}else{
	opacityMax;
}

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW