Kyle Hamrick
Forum Replies Created
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Lee,
It’s been awhile since I used Velocity myself (and it was SD) but just an off-hand thought….
Any updates to the .dps driver for AE or anything of that nature?
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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GASP! A hotkey I didn’t know about?!
:-O
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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Depending on how you want this to look, I’d probably recommend one of the following:
Make your word in two chunks (“toni” and “ght,” for example), which will allow you to easily move them apart to accomodate for the extra letters. Simply animate those extra letters into the middle as desired. More versatile, and allows for smoother animation, but will probably be harder to space correctly.
OR
On your text layer, open up to where you can see “Source Text,” and click it’s stopwatch. Move forward one frame, add an “i” into the middle. Lather, rinse, repeat. Adjust timing as necessary. Easier to do, but animation will be more chunky.
Take your pick, depending on what kind of look you’re going for.
Also, make sure to pay attention to your text alignment, especially if you go for option 2.Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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This obviously only works if your new clip is shorter than the timeline, but hotkeys make this mighty fast:
Assuming your layer starts are the beginning of the comp…
Select the layer in question.
O (Out point of the layer)
N (Set end of render area)
Then, if desired, right-click in your render area and “Trim Comp to Work Area” or whatever the option is named.If it doesn’t start at the beginning of the comp, IBON.
Boom. Super-fast.
If my comp is shorter than the layer in question, I usually just open comp settings, set my comp length to some value WAY over what’s needed (rather than doing the math) and then do the above hotkey trick.
Hope that helps!
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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…What Dave said.
If you want to try some troubleshooting yourself, here are some things to look for:
– Is it consistently failing at the same spot? If so, that’s where to begin looking for the problem. Could be an effect that’s using up too much memory, a reference to a file that is corrupt or moved, etc. Find that spot, and start testing. Maybe set up a render area about 1 sec long, over that trouble spot, so you can start turning layers off one-by-one until the render succeeds. Keep narrowing it down until you find your problem.
– Is AE giving you any sort of error message or code? If so, Google is your friend. I doubt there’s any problem you can create in AE that someone else hasn’t already solved elsewhere.
– You said you’re basically making 20 variations of the same thing. Once you get your problem pinned down and solved, you should probably look into doing some pre-rendering. For example, if all of these projects use the same background elements, pre-render that background only, which can then help significantly decrease your render times. Do a little searching on this topic – it’s essentially the same as doing your normal renders, but with a few minor changes.
Good luck!
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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If it’s convenient for what you’re working on, you might try skipping the rendering-for-AE step altogether, by using either Automatic Duck or FCP to AE.
Kind of depends on how much work you’ve done in FCP already, but I do this pretty much exclusively.
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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P.S. CS3 on Mac.
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The more high-contrast your tracking area is, the better. I try to find a small area that looks unlike anything else around it.
Sometimes I pretreat my footage with levels or something similar to boost the contrast (you’ll have to precompose for this to take effect correctly, then just shut it off after tracking is done).
You might try tracking some other objects near the light – whatever you can find that’s high contrast will work.
If the footage is shaky, I’m guessing you’re maybe having motion blur problems? If that’s the case, there’s only one real answer, and it sucks. Track as best as you can (I’d go slowly if it’s having problems, and adjust it any time it comes out of place too much) and then…. step back through frame by frame, and fix it. Welcome to the wonderful world of compositing. =)
If it’s really bad, you might decide it’s worse to track in the first place, and it’d be easier to just position it all manually. If this is the case, I would maybe recommend making your points every 10 frames (easy to jump through with Shift+PgUp/Dn). That’ll get you close, then jump through and make those adjustments every 5 frames. Assess. Keep refining as necessary. I find this to be much easier (and produce better results) than actually adjusting each frame as I go.
If you’re getting decent tracks off the two other lights, you might be able to use a combination of the above – parent your bad light to one of the others – it won’t be perfect, since they’re at different differences from the camera, but it’ll at least help compensate for the camera shake.
Good luck!
Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist
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I did a quick test, and am experiencing the same thing….
Possible workaround:
– Close your path manually, set desired first vertex, animate stroke only as far as your original path would have taken it (End at 72% instead of 100%)
Also, I tend to do stroke animations this way, if it helps at all:
Create the path on a Shape layer. (First vertex as necessary).
Add mask, use expression to tie mask path to shape path.
Add stroke, set to reveal original. Animate as desired.Kyle Hamrick
Editor/Motion Graphics Artist