[Mike Clasby]

Ctrl 2, brings up the Effects and Presets Palette, type in “Lightning” and it will tell you where it is, effects move around depending on the AE version, mine in AE 6.5 is under Render.

[Mike Clasby]

Filip’s works for me on AE 6.5, try this, just keyframe orientation (Y Orientation for yours) then you don’t have to worry about which rotation you’re using:

delay = 20; //number of frames to delay

d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(1).orientation.valueAtTime(time – d)

The top layer controls all below that have this expression.

[Mike Clasby]

Here are three ways for 3D Text in ae:

1) Invigorator. Here’s a link from the “Look Here First” thread (above):

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=881579

2) Quick and Dirty. Not that dirty really, you just don’t want to linger with the camera “side-on” the text, as AE text has no real z depth. For a quickie that looks fine unless you linger side on, just add this expression to a text layer (make it 3D):

position+[0,0,(index-1)*1]

Now duplicate the layer as many times as you want it to be thick (the expression tells the layer to be offset 1 pixel in the z direction for each layer it’s down in the layer stack). If you want to move the letters as a unit, parent all to the first text layer, then rotate/move it, or precompose the text layers.

You can change the color of the front by changing the Color of the text in the Character Palette ( and the back too) You can even bevel the front and back with Perspective>Bevel Alpha (quite nice, really)

Note: You may get a warning for certain plugins to use AE’s Advance 3D Rendering, so go Composition>Comp Settings>Advanced>Render Plug-in: Advanced 3D.

The same principal is used in this tut, without the expression (he uses a 3 pixel separation), but with nice use of precomposing to make changing the text easy, and a control null to animate the text enmass:

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/woodall_traylor/3dtypetut2/index.html

3) Also you can use Shatter:

Make your text, duplicate it, add a Black Solid, arrange as below:

Text
Text
Black Solid

Now Select and precompose the bottom two layers (move all attributes), this precomp will be as a custom Shatter map.

Add Effect>SimulatePattern: Custom
Custom Shatter Map: Precomp
Extrusion Map: This controls how deep the letters are

A tut for a logo extrusion here:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kahlenberg_roland/3d_logo_extrude/index.html
Force 1>
Strength: 0 (this keeps the letters from being blown away)
Physics>Gravity: 0 (keeps the letters from succumbing to gravity)

Textures… You can control the Front, Side and Back Modes with precomped layer (a red solid precomped choose, Side Mode:Layer, Side Layer Red Solid Precomp.

Camera System: Comp Camera

Add a Camera to the Comp, Layer>New Camera (C toggles the Camera Orbit Tool).

For a walk through, click on Roland R. Kahlenberg

[Mike Clasby]

How long is the comp, time-wise?

Long shot… Did you press “N” at frame zero and therefore have a 1 frame work area? A one frame work area will give you that error. Actually a one frame work area anywhere on the timeline will do that.

“Home then “B” and “End” then “N” will gve you the work area over the entire comp for rendering all. Like I said, a long shot.

[Mike Clasby]

Andrew fixes that is a new cool tut, here:

Light Streaks Again?! NEW!

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/nano2/

All his tuts are here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html

[Mike Clasby]

1) Lux is the slick way to go, but here is the only alternative to I know of.

https://www.petertorpey.com/tutorials/volume_light/

Click on the link at the bottom of the page, the second to last sentence is the “Download the script” link. Put the .jsx file into the AE Scripts Folder. An earlier user of this had rendering problems,

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=886154

when he copied the Script Text file with his Safari using “Copy File”, he got “funny little text objects” between each line of the expressions, when he deleted these everything was OK. I just downloaded the .jsx like I said and all was fine.

This is the only soution I know of for the Luxless.

2) Or you can try CC Spotlight, and put the

[Mike Clasby]

Are you setting keyframes, go to where you want the camera move to start and click the Camera Position stopwatch. Then go down the timeline and move the camera, either with the Camera Tools (C when the camera is selected rotates through the three tools) or change the camera position numbers manually. But you have to set those keyframes first, otherwise ther never is a change.

Otherwise, is the camera layer long enough, does it cover the area you want to move the camera?

If none of this works for you, ask the questions again and include Andrew’s name in the title.

Also to get a quick crash course on camera, look at these tuts by Rick Gerard:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly1/index.html

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/gerard_rick/AEWeekly2/index.html

[Mike Clasby]

Animating a Signature by Aharon Rabinowitz

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/animating_signature/index.html

There’s also a part 2, click on his heas, main page, then scrol.

For flowery stuff:

Growing Design Elements in After Effects

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/hansen_jaysen/growing/index.html

[Mike Clasby]

For a quickie, Wave Warp, left edge pinned, crank up the Wave Width, Direction 45 (animate this), tweak all to taste… not as good as Zakworks, but pretty good really.

You might need Grow Bounds above the Wave Warp to stop any clipping.

[Mike Clasby]

OK, I gave you the wrong expression for FlipDown, they should be:

for anchor point:

[anchorPoint[0], anchorPoint[1] + height*0.5, anchorPoint[2]]

for position:

[position[0], position[1] + height*0.5, position[2]]

They said width instead of height, I was using square layers for the test so it worked, but not on non-square layers, like most photos.

Here is a link to a zip, with a project file and two presets, FlipSide and FlipDown.

https://putstuff.putfile.com/79460/3536597

Drop these in your preset folder under AE. Select all the layers and Animation>Apply Animation Preset, then animate the Orientation for the top layer, to get the first flip, Y Orientation for FlipSide and X Orientation for FlipDown. Done.

If you want to change the delay (in the Orientation expression, select the 5 and change it to say 10, then to apply it to all, select that expression “Orientation” next to the = sign, the Edit>Copy Expression Only, then select all the layers you want to change (below) and … Paste. Or you could control it with a slider, see Aharon’s tut’s on Expression Controls 1,2,3. Click on his head on the main AE page and scroll down.

All the layers need to be the same size for this to be right. Well actually Flip Down all need to be the same height, FlipSide all need to be the same width.