[Matthew Woods]

If you are used to mac, don’t be tempted by the PC side. On my recommendation, our studio invested in a fancy Pro-Max One about a year ago because of no new mac pros and we have had no end of trouble with it. Its nice and fast when it works, but it has had a number of problems, has been much harder to maintain, and has been a general pain in my ass. Some of this might have been a fault of the hardware, not the software but I really hate windows. I consider it a failed experiment and will go back to macs next time. I really hope rumors are true and Apple comes out with a new mac pro this spring.

-Matt

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

This is something that After Effects has always been very good at. I never appreciated it until I used Premiere. A word of warning, don’t count on re-linking being so easy in a Premiere project. Premiere loses its track of its footage with the slightest change in directory structure, and it is a giant hassle to relink a Premiere project unless you keep all of your footage in one folder (with no subfolders). I really wish the After Effects team would share their media management code with the Premiere team.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

I like to apply the scatter effect with “Randomize Every Frame” checked to my vignette layers. I find it works best at helping reduce banding.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

[Paul Roper] “Don’t get me wrong – the 3D capabilities in AE are fantastic for the occasional bit of extruded text and such things, but any thoughts of major projects with dozens of refracting elements with depth of field and motion blur should be laid to rest!”

Unless you are using Video Copilot’s Element 3D. I have to say it is the best AE plugin I have ever bought. It renders 3d objects like lightning over open GL, and they look great. I can do 3d rendering and compositing right in one AE timeline, and much faster than using raytracing. I haven’t done a graphics card comparison, but I suspect it benefits a lot from a good graphics card.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

It looks to me like the some of the normals on the inside surface of the letters are reversed. I don’t know why this happened if it was generated in AE, but I do know that there is an “advanced” option in the Element materials to texture both sides of a surface. I needed to turn this on, when I brought some models that contained 2 dimensional planes into Element. You could try toggling that on.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

You are most likely correct. Most LCD monitors, especially cheap ones don’t support very many shades of grey. I actually like looking at my video on a cheap monitor sometimes so that I can be aware of this, and fix it so that no one else sees it. One technique I use to get a feathered edge that will look good on any display is to use AE’s “ramp” effect on a solid, then set that to a luma matte for the layer I want to feather. The nice thing about the ramp effect is that it has a “scatter” feature which you can crank up a bit to dither the gradient, and hide the banding. Its a less controllable than a mask, but it should make your banding disappear. Actually a “scatter” option would be a great feature request for the built in masks. I have never thought about requesting that.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

A way I have done this that isn’t mentioned is to use per character 3d text on a path. You can make a text string like this: -o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o- for your chain, kern it so it overlaps and scale the characters width wise so it looks more like a chain. Apply an elliptical path to it, then link the text to the path. Make the layer a 3d layer and rotate it along the x axis 90º till it is perpendicular to the camera. Then enable per character 3d and add per character rotation of -90º along the axis. You can animate the path to make the chain undulate, or move it along the path by animating the “First Margin”. Because each character is treated like a mini layer in AE, it will respond perfectly to lights and other layers. You might even be able to make a string with just oooooooooo and write an expression that flips every other o 90º along x so you have something that is even more chain like.

-Matt

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

Wow. Thanks for the link. I just re-organized a layer heavy project I’m working on and it works great! The only thing its missing is the ability to group layers that aren’t next to each other. Maybe if it had an option to hide based on colors or something? Minor quibble though. This tool is working great for me. They need a Paypal donation link.

-Matt

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

I did some tests so I’m answering my own question in case someone else needs it. The settings from the following built-in color correction effects will transfer from Premiere to After Effects:

Effects marked with a * are hardware accelerated in premiere

Under the Adjust category:

Auto Color
Auto Contrast
Auto Levels
*Levels
Shadow Highlight

Under the Color Correction category:

*Brightness & Contrast
Broadcast Colors
Color Balance
Color Balance (HLS)
Change Color
Change to Color
Leave Color
*Tint

If you use Colorista, in Premiere, it will apply the Colorista effect to the footage in your After Effects project, but it will be missing most of the settings. When I called Red Giant support, they said that they didn’t support the effects settings transferring between the two programs.

All other color correction tools I tried do not transfer.

-Matt

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com

[Matthew Woods]

There is no such thing a “transparent” when it comes to projection. The “transparency” of a movie is only useful if you are layering it with something else digitally, like other video or over a web page. The best you can get with projection is what we call “video black”. Unfortunately, with projectors its impossible to get full black (complete absence of projected light). Projectors work by putting an LCD in front of a powerful lamp, and even with the lcd on full black, a little light leaks through. Some projectors have a darker video black than others, and if the surface you are projecting on is dark, this video black, can almost disappear, but if its bright you will definitely see a rectangle as your projection area. The only way to avoid this, is to physically mask your projector by putting a metal cutout to block some of the light in front of the projector.

Need a quick break from motion graphics?
Try my game Constellation at:
https://www.paperdragongames.com