[Mike Clasby]

Methinks AE’s Simulate>Foam is just what the Doctor ordered, it’s a powerful particle (bubbles) generator, with setting like:

View: Rendered
Producer:
Producer Point: Move to where you want the bubble produced
Production Rate: Drop to .085 or so (if you have a hard time getting small numbers with the slider, Right-Click the blue numbers, then click “Edit Value” and change the max to 0.5, then the slide will be set to a better range to choose small numbers)
Producer Y size (and X size): default .03, but zero make it one point

Bubbles:
Size: 1 or 2 to taste

Physics:
Initial Speed: 2 or so
Initial Direction: 90

The default Transparent bubbles are quite nice, love the wobble (also controllable) but there are many choices under Rendering>Bubble Texture if you want a different looking bubble. You can also control the Flow with a flow map, but bubbles being blow probably don’t need that.

Enjoy.

[Mike Clasby]

Thanks for sharing the Seminar.

[Mike Clasby]

This expression on the Position of a 3D layer works on AE6.5 (I’m stuck down there too, glad you’re moving up):

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

And just change the 1 at the end to however many pixels you want the layers spaced apart. Just dup (Ctrl D) the layers as many times as you want. Keep the layers together, camera and Null/ other layers below (preferably) or above, if something else is in between there will be a gap.

If you want to add a slider on a Null, the expression will look like this:

position+[0,0,(index-1)*thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”)]

That’s without naming the slider anything special.

If you wanted to change the x or y similarly, sub in the “,(index-1)*1” (or slider expression, then you definately need to name the sliders) for the first or second “0” in the first expression.

[Mike Clasby]

Thanks.

[Mike Clasby]

Good to know.

[Mike Clasby]

Ask over at the Expression forum, Dan gave an answer for this once and if I remember it’s not straight forward, depends on the font and more.

https://forums.creativecow.net/viewforum/227

[Mike Clasby]

You can definitely create a sphere that surrounds all with this:

https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=160&highlight=sphere

Unfortunately the link to the project file is down, but all the expressions are there. Also you have to loose the circular masks and put stars where the solids are. If you really want to try this I could upload it somewhere.

[Mike Clasby]

If you have the dress color different from everything else on the set, you should be able to isolate it with a matte with either of these tuts from Andrew:

Blemish Removal

https://library.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/blemish_removal.php

You could follow that with Simple Choker to expand the matte.

Methinks you should be able to make a matte for a specific color with the method in this tut too, but I’m not clever enough, still working on it:

42. Advanced Sky Replacement July 16, 2007, here:

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/advsky/index.htm

[Mike Clasby]

Andrew has a nice tut ” 41. The Blue Planet: Earth July 08, 2007 UPDATED!”, here:

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

In “Watch Tutorial Part 02” there is a method to make the layers 3D and have the Sphere react to the camera appropriately. He uses Dan Ebbert’s lookAt expressions and Auto Orient. Pretty slick and it should do what you want. Methinks.

[Mike Clasby]

Conoa Sphere lets you get inside the Sphere (easily).

I can’t seem to get CC Sphere to do a Starfield as it magnifies the stars when you crank up the Radius.

If you don’t need a real starfield, meaning the same stars we see, here’s another possibility using Fractal Noise. Dan uses Fractal Noise to build a clouds that extends beyond the camera (always). Here is a quote from Dan’s tut “Building the World’s Greatest Cameraman” (mislabeled “Building the World”):

“To avoid having to build an enormous 3D background layer that would fill the comp window no matter which way the camera points, I decided to just use a 2D solid with Fractal Noise applied, because Fractal Noise has an offset parameter that essentially makes it extend infinitely in any direction. The trick is to tie the offset to the