[Mike Clasby]

1) CC Ball Action for the bank of lights. Decrease the default Grid Size and Ball Size as needed. CC Ball Action = Instant Jumbotron.

2) For brighter brights see Andrew’s tut here, for 32 bit comps and the way he crushes all but the whites in a duplicate layer:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=33

[Mike Clasby]

Aharon’s tut on Horror Text on a Wall uses a Displacement Map to do what you want (3 1/2 minutes in), here:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/horror_text2.php

It’s just a matter of getting the right grayscale displacement map for the distortion you want, but this is definitely doable.

Aharon has a three part series on Displacement Mapping, just click his head, main page, and scroll down.

[Mike Clasby]

1) I’m assuming you did the masks and Write on to the text layer.

It’s because the Write-on defaults to comp size layer, I think. The text layer, or whatever layer you reveal needs to be the same size as the comp, otherwise you get an offset difference. At least I think that’s what’s going on.

Right after you create the text, precompose it (Layer>precompose, open comp) and you’ll see the precomp is the same size as the comp) now, on that precomp text layer, if you do your Mask, copy Mask Shape and Paste into Brush Position, it’ll work.

Jayse uses Write-On here, but the layers are the same size:

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/hansen_jaysen/growing.php

2) I just use Render>Stroke (set to Reveal Original Image). It does the same thing, but doesn’t have the offset problem, and you don’t need to precomp the text layer, so just do the masks and Stroke to the text layer, it will work as you expect.

Andrew does Stroke here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials.html?id=25

[Mike Clasby]

I think xmult does the same thing, so until you get the UnMult link to work, try this:

https://www.fandev.com/xmult.html

[Mike Clasby]

So the Null’s riding with the football, parented to it?

1) It seems like you should be able to offset the null from the football to whatever you want the radius of the circle to be, then move the Null’s anchor point back onto the football (with the Pan behind tool). Do this in a second view set to Left or Right so you get a sideon. Then if you rotate the Null”s X rotation you should have what you want.

2) If the Null’s position starts out the same as the football’s rotation (they’re in the same spot to start), here’s a Dan Ebberts expression for orbital rotation, modified for 3D, same as an X rotation of the Null (methinks). Put this on position:

r = 75//radius (in pixels)
f = 1//orbits per second

angle = time*Math.PI*2*f;
value + [[0],Math.sin(angle)*r, -Math.cos(angle)*r]

If the rotation is wrong, like my test was setup in a different axis, then change the last line to this:

value + [Math.sin(angle)*r, -Math.cos(angle)*r, [2]]

or this:

value + [Math.sin(angle)*r, [1], -Math.cos(angle)*r]

That just changes the axis it rotates around, one of them should work for you.

[Mike Clasby]

The only thing I would add to Aharon’s excellent rundown of those three methods, is that for the first, many layers stacked in 3D land, is to add this expression to position, instead of offsetting each layer manually:

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

Add the expression, by 1) Copy the expression, 2) Alt0click the Position Stopwatch, and then 3) Paste.

You can also mass add an expression to several layers at once, by selecting the expression in one layer, Edit>Copy expression only, then selecting as many other layers as you like, and then Paste.

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. You can even change the *1 to something like *0.1 at the end of the expression and each layer will be stacked 1/10 off a pixel apart, allowing you to get to within 89 and 91 degrees of end-on (90 degrees Y rotation of the text) before the effect falls apart. But it takes 100 layers 1/10 apart to get a final 10 pixel thick text stack, which renders surprisingly fast if you machine isn’t ancient.

It also holds up better if the middle layers are a solid color with no stroke, just stroke the two outside layers.

You can even bevel the front and back with Perspective>Bevel Alpha (quite nice, really).

It’s nice to see all those methods on a video tut, it’s so much easier to follow that way.

[Mike Clasby]

Great tut but you need CS3, another reason to update.

[Mike Clasby]

Sounds like you have that first parameter of Shatter, “View” set to Wireframe and Forces, the default. It’s needs to be “Rendered” to see the results.

I think it was setup that way because when it first came out most PC’s didn’t have the umphfffa! to crank out the rendered view quickly. Not a big problem now a days.

[Mike Clasby]

You can do this with expressions. There are two scripts and both can apply expressions to mask vertices, but the expressions are converted to keyframes. First you need to download this Script (better than the other one for expressions), maskPointsExpression.jsx:

https://www.nabscripts.com/Downloads/downloads_en_2.php?id=6

Download, then copy/move the jsx file “maskPointsExpression.jsx” to AE’s Script Folder, then open AE.

1) Add a new solid.

2) With the Pen Tool, draw a two-point mask, anywhere (OK, keep it on the screen).

3) Add Stroke. Choose the “On Transparent” dropdown at the bottom. Check all masks for now, change to the mask created later.

4) File>Run Script>Choose “MaskPointsExpressions.jsx” and you get the dialog Panel for the script.

Click the radio button, “Position Expression.
Select the mask and click the “calculate” button. It should say 2.
Selection, check the custom box.
You can click the “display num” to see which is vertex 1 and which is 2, It adds two temporary layers above. Selecting the 1 or 2 for choosing which one gets which expression.
I’m assuming the text is Above, so I typed 1 in the box under custom, then selected that vertex, 1, on the screen (you get a little box around it). Paste in the expression for My Text (last post) in the box right under the radio button “Position Expression’ (that should still be checked).

xO = 100; // x offset change as needed
yO = 100; // y offset change as needed
aPoint = thisComp.layer(“My Text”).position;
aPoint + [xO,yO]

Try to get close with the xO and yO because it will calculate keyframes that must be recalculated if you change the offset.

Now, type 2 in the box under “Custom”, select vertex 2, and Paste the expression for “My Video Layer” into that Position box again:

xO = 100; // x offset
yO = 100; // y offset
aPoint = thisComp.layer(“My Video Layer”).motionTracker(“Tracker 1”)(“Track Point 1”).attachPoint;
aPoint + [xO,yO]

Select the mask again, and hit the “OK”.

The Script will calculate a new mask named “Animated mask” right under your original one.

In Stroke choose the new mask.

That should do it.

I

[Mike Clasby]

That first expression should have been:

xO = 100; // x offset
yO = 100; // y offset
aPoint = thisComp.layer(“My Video Layer”).motionTracker(“Tracker 1”)(“Track Point 1”).attachPoint;
aPoint + [xO,yO]

I had my footage name in for “My Video Layer”, line 3.