[Michael Szalapski]

Could you be a bit more specific in what, exactly, it is you’re trying to achieve?

[Michael Szalapski]

It’s generally considered not a good idea to mix RAM sticks, but you don’t have to listen to that if you don’t want to. You can always pull them out and test it to see which is better.

64 is a great amount. I wouldn’t recommend less than 32. It wouldn’t hurt to have more down the road, but you won’t likely see a speed increase going from 64 to 128 (unless AE’s architecture changes significantly).

[Michael Szalapski]

Wow. The amount of new features is going to be mind blowing.

Okay, first of all, you now have effects that reference other layers can now reference those layers WITH their effects. So, for example, if you want to use Fractal Noise on a solid to drive a Displacement Map effect, you don’t need to precomp that solid with the Fractal Noise; you can just use it in the same comp. Makes it much faster to try out different looks.

Second, essential properties. A HUGE game changer. Hard to explain, but it could save you DAYS of work. You can pick some properties to “promote” to essential properties that you can control outside the composition when you nest it. For example, you can have a dozen copies of a precomp of a lower third with complex animation, and all with different names and titles, but when the client changes their mind about colors, shapes, fonts, etc., you only have to change it once since it’s just one composition. And, even better, you can export a comp with essential properties as a Motion Graphics Template (or mogrt) and hand it off to someone working in Premiere Pro and they can make as many duplicates as they want in their Premiere Pro timeline and change the parameters in Premiere!

Roto Brush – so handy! For a lot of shots, you don’t have to manually roto anymore!

3d Camera Tracker

Content Aware Fill for Video

Variable Width Feather for masks – that is, you can have feathering of nothing to 300 pixels and back again at any number of arbitrary points along your mask.

Maxon Cinema 4D Lite is now included for free with AE.

Key Cleaner and Advanced Spill Suppressor effects

You can mask effects now (see my video on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfWhpwPXh1A)

Copy With Property Links (and Relative Property Links) commands

Face Tracker

Scopes!

Lumetri Color

Advanced Puppet Tool engine

Depth passes for your 3d comps – that is, you can get a depth pass of your AE layers!

ProRes is native on Windows now.

A new expression engine and way better expression editing experience.

TAPERED STROKES!

And tons more. Like…there has been so much new stuff added to AE since CS5.5, it’s mind-blowing.

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[Michael Szalapski]

Alternatively, you can delink the scale properties and make the x scale be -100.

[Michael Szalapski]

What do you mean by “too wispy”? You can make particles in Form be very hard edged. Just change the particle type.

Follow any disintegration tutorial, mess with the parameters to get it to move the way you want, and then reverse it.

[Michael Szalapski]

Both of the things you’re describing would probably be done easier in compositing. That is, in your post app of choice – After Effects, Fusion, Nuke, etc.

[Michael Szalapski]

What happens when you try to open the project files in the latest version?

The latest version, by the way, is called CC 2020 by some people (which is inaccurate; it should be 2020 without the CC). Actual version number is 17.5.1

[Michael Szalapski]

What sort of explosions are you looking to create? A fuel truck explosion is very different from a planet blowing up which is very different from an artillery shell hitting the ground in the desert, etc.

[Michael Szalapski]

Glad to help!

[Michael Szalapski]

Yeah, you need to specifically select just the path you want to copy and specifically select the path property you want to paste it into.