[Mike Clasby]

Serge has a nice tut here that could get you going:

Beam & Dust

https://www.nyc-visual.com/movies.html

[Mike Clasby]

Looking forward to Maltaannon’s tut. The snake was very nice.

In the meantime, Andrew has a Speed Change Tut, here:

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

Andrew sets Time Remap keyframes, then slides two together where you want them to speedup. Also grab the ones to the right to keep the following keyframes at the same relative time.

If you keyframes one cycle of Time Remap (so to speak), so enable Time Remapping, set three keyframes, one at the inpoint, then at 1 sec and a third at 2 sec, then if you drag the third keyframe to the left, leaving it next to the middle keyframe, it will speedup there. Then Delete the Time Remapping keyframe at the end of the comp (so now you only have those three keyframes at the beginning) and add this loop expression to Time Remap:

loop_out(“offset”,0)

It adds the values cumulatively so you’ll continues on in time, but they’ll be a speedup every 1 sec.

I think your better off keyframing the remap-speedup as Andrew does in his tut, so it will match the footage better, but that expression will give you a periodic speedup.

This methods really messes with the sound, you get a speedup-hiss…

[Mike Clasby]

From the Master:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/wiggle-1-dimension.html

So for just the Z:

w = wiggle(2,50);
[value[0],value[1],w[2]]

[Mike Clasby]

Distort>Displacement Map is your friend, Click on Aharon’s head, and scroll down to his three tuts covering Displacement Maps. The tuts take awhile to watch, but there are lots of ins and outs with the Displacement Map Effect and he covers them in detail.

You should be able to use a photo/video of the doors as the “Displacement Map Layer”. It can be enhanced with something as simple a Levels, pulling in the Input Black and Input White Points to give it more contrast, enhancing the displacement.

“Also, when the doors are raised, the letters should separate with each garage panel.”

You’ll need separate layer for the separating letters, one layer for each panel. Once they have the corrugated look you like, precomp them make the precomp 3D, move the anchor point to where the door swivels, the keyframe the X rotation as the doors rise. At least that seems like it should work.

Aharon’s Displacement Map tuts are the key to getting the look you want.

[Mike Clasby]

You can Import Premiere Projects into AE (so do your edit in Premiere then Import for Effects work in AE), even copy and Paste, I think, see this:

https://livedocs.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/8.0/help.html?content=WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7f44.html

For details, check the Help Files for either AE or Premiere.

[Mike Clasby]

The video tut plays fine on IE, nice tut by the way.

[Mike Clasby]

“I need to create a path around the outline of a text (as in the entire perimeter of the letter).”

Select the text layer, then Layer>Create Outlines gives you a mask(s) (1 for C, 2 for D, 3 for B) for each letter.

Hey, Darby, thanks for the Auto-Trace idea, I got a nice jagged look when Auto-Tracing Courier at Tolerance 5 and Threshold 5, kinda-of like creating my own Font.

[Mike Clasby]

Effects? Do you mean plugins, .aex files? Where on the cow can you download plugins, oh boy, oh boy! Me wants.

Are you dropping them in the folder when AE CS3 is shutdown? If it’s running you won’t see the effects until you restart AE.

Do you mean Presets, .ffx files. If so drop them into the presets folder. Then access them by, Animation>Apply Animation Preset.

[Mike Clasby]

ok, somebody will have a more sophisticated solution, but to keep that expression value (Position) you can always split the layer (Edit>Split Layer) then on that upper layer set a Position keyframe (or whatever property the expression is on), then disable the expression (click the equal sign next to the stopwatch). You should be good to go.

[Mike Clasby]

You can also add a little Bevel Alpha to round the edges.