[Michael Szalapski]

Ben is right; levels is a great way to do it.

You can also try Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse. (It’s a plugin that comes with AE and may require a separate install.)

It has levels, hue/saturation, and tons of other color correction tools as well as software-based vectorscopes and a other analytic tools.

It’s listed under Effect>Synthetic Aperture>SA Color Finesse 2 on AE CS4

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Perhaps the old video card was causing some sort of conflict or other issue with his computer’s processor, preventing it from being used to it’s fullest for AE, and he would have experienced a similar bump in performance if he had merely removed it.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I found it Bogie, I found it! (I think)
I believe he’s referring to a tutorial at VideoCopilot.net.

I can’t view the tutorial for myself due to
1: it being a video tutorial and I have work to do
and
2: This military network security wall I work behind makes most internet video not play (including this one)

So I can’t be sure if that’s what he’s referring to, and therefore I cannot assist him at the moment either.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

I like your question about school vs. experience.

Let me give you an example based on real life. (me)

I spent several years reading the manual to learn how the thing worked.
And following tutorials to see how to make it work. Both are very important. You must understand how the tool works and its features(manual), then be shown how to use it (tutorials). BOTH IMPORTANT.

Too many people rely on tutorials and in so doing hobble themselves to only being able to do things one way. You absolutely must learn the basic, dry manual stuff too.

Anyway, I spent a couple years of doing this along with tons of non-paying projects. Some for my youth work (I was volunteering as a full-time youth worker in England) some for the youth work projects of others. Lots and lots of experience.

Then I came back to the States and finished my sophomore through senior years of college. Did I learn anything about After Effects, compositing or motion graphics at school that I hadn’t learned already? Maybe one or two little things, but importantly I got more experience on different projects that were nothing like what I would have chosen to do. University also gave me more insight into the “why” of the way things are done in the industry as well as some useful history lessons.

The combination of my skills (based on my experience) and my diploma (from schooling) landed me an amazing job right out of college working in my industry during the worst part of the economic crisis.
(It may also be due in part to my work ethic and ability to interview too… [and before any of you goofy smart alecs start making fun of my work ethic, I’m on the COW during work today because it’s a down time for us and I’m using this as professional development; we have a big project kicking off tomorrow with a very close deadline so I probably won’t be on here at all tomorrow. So there 😛 Also, if my boss is reading this, hello sir. Glad I’m developing myself?])

Basically, I have a job that pays me very well and has great benefits because of my skills that I learned and earned with years of work on my own and my time in school.

My point is, work as hard as you can and do as many different types of projects as you can.

Learn the bare bones of AE first, all the nitty-gritty boring crap.
Then play with some fun tutes and do awesome-looking stuff that will wow your friends and family.
Then, eventually, you’ll find that you’re able to do things without needing a tutorial or a preset to get you started on it.

A diploma may help you land certain jobs, but there are many where the demo reel is much more important.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

It (usually) saves time and the issue happens so rarely, that I suspect we shan’t stop using the dynamic link functionality. I was just wondering if this was a known issue and if there was any way to try to ensure it doesn’t do this. We’ve done dozens of projects like project 2 and this is the first time we’ve seen this type of issue happen.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Dave’s right, the setup is about the most basic AE stuff in the world.

The only thing that might be tricky is the camera animation if you’re not familiar with it. This tutorial here on the COW might give you some pointers on better 3d camera animation.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

This thread from yesterday might help. Todd’s post in that thread has a link you might find useful too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

AE has a built in 3d fog plug-in but it works with a 3d depth matte rendered out from your 3d program. It looks good, but it’s not going to work with just your AE comp (unfortunately).

You could paint a depth matte, but that’s probably more work than you’d want to do.

Buena Depth Cue does have a fog plug-in that works with your AE layers. I haven’t used it myself, but I’ve heard it’s decent.

You can use multiple layers of turbulent noise, fractal noise, or Photoshop-created layers to simulate fog.

And there are several ways you could use Particular to fake it as well.

Try a search for fog on Adobe’s community help, you’re likely to come up with something useful.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Get a font that fits the bill of what you want then make several blocks of text and find some animation presets (or create your own animation) that adds some movement or changing of characters. As for graphics, just create some that look like what you want in Photoshop and animate their opacity.

A mosaic effect with Colorama or some other color correction plugin to pictures you already have may give you the look you want too.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Michael Szalapski]

Not a problem. Let us know how it goes. (Maybe even show us the final product.)

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.