[Kevin Camp]

if you are talking cs6, I can still run cs4 on yosemite. i was able to run it on mavericks too. i still occasionally have to open some older projects in cs4 due to a few things that don’t render the same in cc and a couple third party effects that they need.

i will say that when i upgrade the os, i partition the main drive, and duplicate the current boot drive (and all the apps) to the new partition. boot to that partition and make sure everything is working fine (maybe run things form that partition for a few days), then upgrade the os on the original partition and see how things go.

that way if there are issues i can always quickly reboot to the other os where everything works as before.

you don’t necessarily need to partition the drive, you could use a second bootable drive, but partitioning OS X is pretty simple and free. if you search for things like ‘OS X partition boot drive upgrade’ you should find all the steps necessary. i used superduper to do the duplicating.

it obviously won’t help you at this point, but if you try to upgrade again, i’d try this method.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

that double box point is the first vertex point. if you were to draw a path with the pen tool, you’d notice that the first place you click will create a point with that double box.

it is also the point where an effect that uses mask paths (like stroke) or a mask property (like trim paths) starts from.

you can change it by selecting a different point on the mask or shape an choose layer>mask & shape>set first vertex.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

you could also add an opacity animator.

i’d try adding it to your existing animator (so it uses the same range/offset keyframes and animator properties) then just set that opacity value to zero and see if that works well enough (it usually does, but it depends on how fast the flip is).

if it’s not quite how you want it, then you’ll need to add it as a separate animator and tweak the various animator properties to get the timing to match the rotation the way you want it.

there may also be a way to do it with an expression on the opacity animator that simply hides the letter when it faces away from the camera. it would be a tricky expression using the per-character animators (beyond me), but you could ask for help on the ae expression forum. the basics for the expression is here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/invisible-facing-away.html

but that would need to get worked into an expression control for the opacity text animator, and that’s where it gets beyond me.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

This expression will resolve the text one character at a time based on layer markers. simply add a layer marker at the point at which you want a letter to resolve.

myText = text.sourceText.split( "" );

n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n--;
}
}

newText = "";
for ( i=n ; i<4 ; i++ ){
r = Math.floor( random( 4 ) );
newText = newText + myText[ r ];
}

text.sourceText.substr( 0,n ) + newText

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

create a text layer and type GCTA into it, then add this expression to the source text and it will randomly jumble just those letters.

myText = text.sourceText.split( "" );
newText = "";

for ( i = 0 ; i < 4 ; i++ ){
r = Math.floor( random( 4 ) );
newText = newText + myText[ r ];
}

newText

then you could simply cut between the text layer with the expression and a text layer with final letters in the right order…. but i think you may have something else planned as it animates to the final resolve, so the expression may need to change to accomplish what you are after.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

I just have the render queue as a tab in the same panel as the preview window.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

if you just want the camera to track the plane, you can use the lookAt() function as an expression for the camera;’s orientation property.

here’s a basic expression that would have the camera track target:

target = thisComp.layer(“plane”); // change “plane” to the name of the layer you want to track
lookAt( position , target.position )

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

an alternate way is to roll-your-own loop expression, like this:

time%key(numKeys).time

this expression will mimic loopOut(‘cycle’) or loopIn(‘cycle’), but not the other loops types.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

when you use time remapping on a pre comp, the last frame is blank. to get around this, move the cgi to one frame before the last time remapping keyframe and add a new keyframe, then delete the last keyframe.

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

i fyou don’t want the layers to move back to their original position, you’ll want to use colin’s second expression.

i modified two lines to limit the moment to the xy plane and it seems to work (at least for my very basic set up)

avoidPos = thisComp.layer("Avoid Camera").position;
maxDisplacement = thisComp.layer("Controls").effect("effect force")("Slider");;
minDistance = thisComp.layer("Controls").effect("effect radius")("Slider");
//--
finalPos = position.valueAtTime(0);
oldDirectionVec = normalize([1,1]);
for( i = 0 ; i <= time; i+= thisComp.frameDuration ){
   try{
      vec = finalPos - avoidPos.valueAtTime( i );
      directionVec = normalize( vec );
      oldDirectionVec = directionVec;
      distance = length( vec );
      displaceAmt = ease( distance , 0 , minDistance , maxDisplacement , 0 );
      displacementVec = displaceAmt * directionVec;
      finalPos += [ displacementVec[0] , displacementVec[1] , 0 ]
      } catch ( exception ){
         finalPos += [ oldDirectionVec[0] , oldDirectionVec[1] , 0 ] * displaceAmt;
      }
}
finalPos

Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW