[Max Haller]

Haven’t had this myself, but maybe an adaptive resolution issue? Just saying that because when you changed preview res to quarter res you say it worked. So possibly could be related to something messing up the preview window.

Have you checked if it’s acting correctly once you render a test?

[Max Haller]

Also for the bounce try pasting this Keyframe Overshoot expression into the x rotation keyframes. Just hold alt and click on the stop watch next to x rotation to bring up the expression edit box and paste this whole thing into it. It’s a common expression to create the bouncing at the end.

It might a look a little intimidating at first, but just adjust the values for Freq and Decay to get the look you want and you can ignore what the rest of the code means.

Also just a general tip when you’re trying to recreate effects you can click the gear icon on the playback bar and change the playback speed to .25x and you can see what’s happening easier.

(Source https://www.motionscript.com/articles/bounce-and-overshoot.html#kf-overshoot)

Copy and paste all this:

freq = 3;
decay = 5;

n = 0;
if (numKeys > 0){
n = nearestKey(time).index;
if (key(n).time > time) n–;
}
if (n > 0){
t = time – key(n).time;
amp = velocityAtTime(key(n).time – .001);
w = freq*Math.PI*2;
value + amp*(Math.sin(t*w)/Math.exp(decay*t)/w);
}else
value

[Max Haller]

I think the glow looks like that because after effects needs a layer underneath for the glow to blend with, see how the glow operation is set to “add”. With a transparent background there is no layer for the glow to add it’s color to.

If you’re going to render this to be used in NLE like avid make sure you render it with a straight alpha channel too or the edge on the glow will be ruined. For situations like this i set the comp background color to whatever color makes sense before rendering with alpha. That seems to give us the best results later on when the editors cut it in.

Also keep in mind if you have the star shape layer set to add in after effects, the rendered video won’t have that same blending once it’s cut in.

Although i just reread your post and see you’re just going to be nesting this comp somewhere else in AE but I already typed all this so maybe someone else will find it useful lol.

[Max Haller]

I overclocked my r7 1700 from 3ghz to 3.8 across 8 cores and have no issues with after effects. It provides the speed bonus you would expect just monitor your temps if you want to try it and you should be fine. I’ve never heard of any horror stories honestly. Im not sure if you’d see more of a benefit specifically with AE as far as OC’ing one core a bit higher than OC’ing all the cores. If the OC is stable is see no reason why you would run into any problems.

[Max Haller]

Try rendering out a lossless video file and transcoding it to h.246 in media encoder.

Also im not sure but it might be a color space issue. it looks like it made the darks a little lighter and the brights a little dimmer. Maybe like a broadcast safe color range would do.

[Max Haller]

yeah I agree with Kalleheikki. Theres lots of a good sources online, try those as well as video copilot, workbench, and theres a lot of youtube channels too. Mt Mograph, Ignace Aleya, MotionMile and ECAbrams are all pretty good! many others too, but off the top of my head thats what i got for ya

[Max Haller]

If it’s only a problem with that one comp try to figure out whats different between that comp and the ones that are working. It sounds like you tried everything that would rule out problems with the cache. I’m confused why the rendered file would be incompatible too.

Try deleting a layer or effects and previewing and if that works then at least you’ve isolated the problem. Try opening the comp in a new project or in a new comp too

[Max Haller]

You could try using an alpha matte above the card.

Draw a shape that ends on the portal where you want the blur to be.
Blur the edges of this alpha matte layer.

Put the alpha matte above the card layer, and set the trkmatte of the card layer to “Alpha Inverted” of this alpha matte layer we just made.

This will make the credit card show up wherever that alpha matte layer is NOT.

Use the blur on the edge of the alpha matte layer to blur the one side of the card where it touches the portal.

It should look like this:

The red area is what the alpha matte should look like

[Max Haller]

I think you can just open the first project, save as > name it something like Project Draco Reduced> select the Draco Comp and go to file > dependencies> reduce project. That will remove everything except the elements that are used in the selected comp. Now save the reduced project again and open Project Zelda and simply drag Project Draco Reduced project into the Project Zelda. Very important you save a copy first as you will lose everything besides the draco comp in this new reduced project.

[Max Haller]

It sounds like you’ve done some pretty extensive trouble shooting already so ill just throw some ideas out that are long shots.
Try downloading the drivers from the manufacturers websites instead, those all in one driver programs can mess things up sometimes. Have you tried disabling your integrated video card sometimes that can cause errors. Googling how to do it on your mother board should tell you how. Check that and update your gpu driver from nvidia directly if possible. Maybe look into turning off OpenGL, I remember that being an issue for something related to the preview window once.

How new is it exactly? Has it been working and recently started crashing? Is it only AE thats having issues. If you just got the computer recently try running some benchmarks/ stress tests and see if anything else crashes.

Good luck man that sounds like a nightmare