[Kevin Camp]

I think it’s likely that you’ve tried to transfer your square into a rectangle using the lyre’s transform properties… try adjusting the shape layer’s path size properties (probably something like contents>rectangle>rectangle path>size, though your shape may be named differently)

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you could ry using the echo effect. it takes instances of a layer in time and composites it back onto itself. you just need the layer to move to the positions that you need to make the design, then have echo composite those back onto itself…

to create the inner circle, add the transform effect. in that effect adjust the scale to make the footage the size that it needs to be, then animate the rotation to go from 0 to 360 over the number of frames that you need instances of (in the case of the inner circle, it would be 8 frames). and since we will be instancing the time to maintain the position, we’ll need that rotation to loop. an easy way is to enable expressions (with rotation elected choose animation>add expressions) and type loopOut() in the expression field.

now add the echo effect, set the echo time to 1/[your comp’s frame rate].. .so if you are working in 25 fps, type 1/25 in the field. and then set the number of echo to the number of instances in that circle (again, 8 for the inner circle).

to get the flowers to form the inner circle, in the transfer effect setting, start dragging the anchor point values to get the radius and positioning that you need.

if your echo time is positive (which is what i would do), you find that in the last 8 frames of the layer, the instance will remove one by one, so you’ll want to make your com a little longer than needed, and set the work area to trim that off. if the echo time is negative, then use the work area to rime the front off.

you should be able to do the same for the outer circle on another layer — you could do it on a single layer, but you’d need to animate the anchor point to set a new radius for the outer circle, and then change the rotation animation to do another 360 over 18 frames. you’d also need a loopOut() expression on the anchor point animation, and set the number of echoes to 26 (8+18)… it would be a little tricky, but doable.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can do this, but you don’t really want to get into conditional checkbox controls… it rarely ends up well.

you might consider setting the different ramp effects on different layers, then using a layer control to select the layer. if your comp structure will remain this simple (with a control layer and only BG layers) this might be the best way to go.

once you’ve added the layer control to the control layer, you’d use an expression like this to control the bg layers’ opacity:

target = thisComp.layer(“Control”);
bg = target.effect(“Layer Control”)(“Layer”).name;

if (bg == name) 100 else 0

if you only had the 2 bg options, you could use a checkbox, but i’d only use one… label it “BG Red” and have that control the opacity of the red bg layer.

or if you only wanted a single bg layer, but control the color, don’t add another ramp effect, just add keyframes to the ramp colors and control which keyframes to use if the red checkbox is selected.

ex: set the first keyframe of each ramp color chip to be the red options, then set the second keyframe to be the blue options. then the expressions for each color chip would be something like this:

target = thisComp.layer(“sparkles Comp 2”);
bg = thisComp.layer(“sparkles Comp 2”).effect(“Red BG”)(“Checkbox”);

if (bg == true) key(1).value else key(2).value

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

since you have particular, you could use that and a layer emitter.

to use text as a layer emitter, you’ll need to pre-comp it (unless that’s bee fixed in a later version of particular), so pre comp you text layer and make it 3d.

add a new solid and add particular to it.

in the emitter settings, choose:

• emitter type: ‘layer’
• layer: [your text layer]
• velocity: 0
• velocity random: 0
• velocitiy fomr motion: 0
• emitter Z size: 0

in the particle settings:

• life: 1 (or relatively short)
• particle type: ‘star’
• opacity over life: pick or draw a graphic that fades in and out

set that layer;s blending mode to add and you should get pretty close to what you are looking for.

you could also adjust life random, size random, size over life, maybe even opacity random to see how that effects the overall look.

if you wanted you could looking to making a custom star particle.

another way you can do this is with fractal noise and trapcode starglow. simply duplicate your text layer (no precomping required). add fractal noise and adjust the brightness and contrast to crush the blacks, to leave just smallish specks of white, and animate the evolution setting. then add starglow and set the layer’s blending mode to add.

you’ll need to tweak the evolutions, brightness contrast and straggled settings to get the sparkles the way you want, but it’s a pretty effective method.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

I know you said that the largest ellipse is parented to the bubble, but you example shows it distributing out with the movement (which i think is the way i’d do it).

I think this would get you close.

larger ellipse:
p1 = thisComp.layer("Fixed").transform.position;
p2 = thisComp.layer("Bubble").transform.position;
d = p2-p1;
value + 2*d/3
smaller ellipse:
p1 = thisComp.layer("Fixed").transform.position;
p2 = thisComp.layer("Bubble").transform.position;
d = p2-p1;
value + d/3
you should just need to change the layer name references in the expressions to the names of your layers. when you first apply the expressions, the ellipse will likely move out of place. simple move it to where it should be and it’s position should stay relative to the bubble and the fixed ellipse.

if you have layers parented, then we’ll need to add a layer space transform function.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

If you can, try and talk with the LED sign guys that will be loading your animation into the LED board software/hardware to find out exactly what they can take.

It’s been my experience that they always request uncompressed AVI, but will take Quicktime or even MP4.

If you want to try and send a MOV, use an old standard codec like Photo-JPEG, and send it early so if there is an issue, you’ll have time to fix it. I do stadium boards every year, and the same guys that do the football stadium, do the baseball field and several other arenas in the area, so they could be at a different site each day, and if your file does;t work when they need it, they may have trouble recovering.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

[Bill Gaines] “I can’t seem to find out what color space the orgrigonal .mov file is.”

I haven;t captured an iPhone screen from quicktime, but i know when copy/pasting frames from quicktime to photoshop, the color profile is usually the monitor’s color profile…

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you can usually represent none with empty quotes: “” or ”

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i don’t think so (at least I’ve never found a way).

what i’ve done before is to import the new/altered psd file (as a comp), open that new comp, select he layers that were added and then copy/paste them into the previous psd comp. then delete the recently imported comp. then do a file>dependencies>remove unused footage to clear out the duplicate psd layers and move the newly imported layers into the folder with the other psd layers.

obviously, the more complicated the psd file, the less appealing that process is…

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

sorry Tiago, I made a mistake in the syntax.

try this:

h = sourceRectAtTime().height;
if (h==0) s=0 else s = 70/h*100;
[s,s]

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW