[Michael Szalapski]

Yeah, that page from which you are quoting links to a page detailing what OS’s the DVA (Digital Video and Audio) apps can be installed on. Most of CC will run on Windows 7, but not the video apps.

To be honest, I quite like Windows 10 now (other than the hassle it is to prevent it from updating itself whenever it bleeding feels like it…)

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[Michael Szalapski]

Out of curiosity, why do you want to avoid the puppet tool?

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[Michael Szalapski]

I still don’t understand the problem you are experiencing. Please explain in as much detail as possible. You don’t open presets; you apply them to layers.

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[Michael Szalapski]

If you’re using a layer emitter, you should be able to have the colors the way you want. See this page: https://www.redgiant.com/user-guide/trapcode-particular/emitter-layer-emitter/

I would make them emit, fly around, and then precomp that and reverse it to have them all come together in your final.

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[Michael Szalapski]

I really don’t understand the problem you’re experiencing. Can you please try to describe it in further detail?

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[Michael Szalapski]

My immediate thought was to use Foam. It’s fantastic and native to AE. Flow maps are a super handy feature!

However, you can do this with Particular. You’d just need to put a spherical field where the text is. The particles will push around it. However, they will not interact with each other like the particles in Foam do.

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[Michael Szalapski]

If you move light layers in time on the timeline, it can cause weirdness. You may need to create all new light layers and match the position, color, brightness, etc. of the existing ones and then delete the old ones.

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[Michael Szalapski]

The upcoming version of After Effects will let you access depth information from native stuff. As long as you extruded it with the Cinema 4D renderer (and not ye olde Ray-Traced renderer), you should be able to get a depth matte out of it. See the blog post announcement for more info (including a video demonstrating it): https://theblog.adobe.com/design-with-more-control-and-performance-improvements-in-after-effects-cc/

In the past few years, new versions of AE have been released during IBC or Adobe MAX. IBC has come and gone last month without a new version (but with some nice demo videos if you feel like checking Adobe’s YouTube).
Adobe MAX starts on Monday, so, the odds are good the new version will be here real, real soon. We’ll know in a few days!

Now, I’m not saying you should immediately dive into a brand new major version for your full workflow, but you can install it alongside your existing version and try out this new feature. ☺

– The Great Szalam
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[Michael Szalapski]

And, if you have Red Giant Universe, they have some lovely glitch transitions in there.

– The Great Szalam
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[Michael Szalapski]

Keep in mind that Cinema 4D Lite comes for free with After Effects! You could make some bells using a lathe object and make them flat black and they may fit in with this shot pretty well.

– 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.