[Mike Clasby]

Both of these really suck:

1)
Polar Coordinates (Type Conversion> Rect to Polar), animate Interpolation.

Sometimes you need a mask on this because you can get a little tile effect going on.

I like to chase this with Distort>Twirl.

and Animate scale 100% to a smaller amount.

Or

2) CC Flo Motion, a little tricky but can give a great look.

You can even put the two Knots in the same place and animate their Amounts evenly.

I often chase this with twirl, but then as a kid I did like to spin around until I was dizzy.

[Mike Clasby]

Select the layer.

“E” reveals effects.

“UU” reveals anything changed in the layer; Effects, Masks, Animators, transformation (like position, scale).

The Animators should tell you what properties are being animated, usually it’s not effects.

[Mike Clasby]

This post by Chris Smith on how he uses Nulls with camera movements:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=2&postid=878237

Here is an AE project file (aep) for a nifty camera move Australian commercial by John Dickinson, very cool:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/872881?

[Mike Clasby]

Work-around…

Not an expression fix, but can you just duplicate the layer and mask off the right half (if that’s where the zeroes stack up) and then move the dup to fill in the hole on the right. I’d be surprised if anyone noticed.

If they do, change the seed in the second block, methinks that should work.

A link to Dan’s expression would be good, he has a quite a few out there.

[Mike Clasby]

Or if you want fancy:

https://www.nyc-visual.com/3D_Book_M.html

Click “Project” for an aep file.

[Mike Clasby]

I’d try this:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/elastic.html

Must tweak the elasticity to taste, and read warnings.

[Mike Clasby]

What do you mean, “but every couple of frames the image disappears and then reappears”?

Is it going off screen? Too much wiggle.

If not, if it just vanishes for an instant, is the layer long enough for the comp? Sometimes they get slid left of right a few frames and then when you ram preview you see the gaps.

[Mike Clasby]

Just to make sure we’re on the same wave-length, I’m assuming you have a 10 sec clip with the last 10 frames of animation and you want those last 10 frames to loop forever. Try this, a little split layer, time remap, add and remove time remap keyframes, add loop expression:

1) Import your 10 sec clip into the main comp.

2) Go to the point in time on that 10 sec clip where the animation begins, where you want the looping to start.

3) Edit>Split layer.

4) Select the new upper layer (it should have that 10 sec of animation you want to loop), then, Layer>Enable Time Remapping.

5) This will give you two keyframes, one at the end of the clip, one at the beginning, actually the beginning if it were still connected to the original or whole clip before you split it. So if you haven’t moved anywhere on the time line, set a third time remapping keyframe where the split is (click the “Add or Remove Keyframe at Current Time” box, just below the layer’s eyeball). If you’ve moved on the timeline, selecting the layer and “i” should put you in the spot of the split, so you can set that third keyframe.

6) Now, select that first Time remapping keyframe, the one to the far left, where the original/whole clip began (we’re still on the top, split layer), and delete it. You should have two time remap keyframes left, one at the split, one ant the outpoint of the layer.

7) Add you loop expression (copy the expression, Alt-Click the Time Remapping Stopwatch, Paste, Click Outside the box):

loopOut()

8) Now, drag the right hand edge of the top/split layer to the right, as far as you want it to loop. The loop expression will loop all keyframes, the only two left, forever, well as long as your comp anyway.

[Mike Clasby]

Or, it you’re animating individual letters you can select the text layer, then, Layer>Create Outlines, and a new solid layer will be created with masks of all the letters and you can copy past those to any other layer, just change the mask mode to Add or whatever works.

[Mike Clasby]

How about filming going through a real door/tunnel (one you like the look of), then taking a still or freeze frame of the door/tunnel, create what’s beneath the door/tunnel (the wall) in Photoshop, cloning probably). So your characters paints-on the door/tunnel, a reveal really, with masks or write-on or Stroke or Scribble. Then the actors chasing would have to act like they hit a wall, or use your green screen footage there. The still for the door tunnel could be dulled with levels to make it appear flatter, or you could use that angle change they do in the cartoon.

I hope that makes sense, basically its 1) use a real tunnel, 2) fake the wall, instead of vise-versa. It seems like it would be more convincing.