[Mike Clasby]

Click on Andrew Kramer’s head on the main AE page, then scroll down to “Fun with Ink“. I think I’d start there.

The streaky Trail almost looks similar to the Particular light streaks in his tut Creating Light Streaks:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/kramer_andrew/nano/index.html

He used masks to create custom particles if I remember right.

He has an updated version, Creating Light Streaks, New that gives you an alpha background, here:

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

Maybe someone else has more ideas.

[Mike Clasby]

Stretch layer to fit Composition window
Ctrl + Alt + F
Command + Option + F

Stretch layer to fit horizontally, preserving frame aspect ratio
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + H
Command + Option + Shift + H

Stretch layer to fit vertically, preserving frame aspect ratio
Ctrl + Alt + Shift + G
Command + Option + Shift + G

[Mike Clasby]

Alt + Page Up nudges layer 1 frame earlier (left).
Alt + Shift + Page Up nudges layer 10 frames earlier.

Alt + Page Down nudges layer 1 frame later (right).
Alt + Shift + Page Down nudges layer 10 frames later.

[Mike Clasby]

The points you were tracking probably jumped outside that little squares, so you need to adjust then manually.

For a step by step on adjusting a track that goes bad (Tracks gone bad! the movie) see the 3rd part of Aharon’s series on turning video into cartoons, there he tracks an eye onto the character. It’s only a 1 point track but the same principal. He shows you how to adjust them manually, frame by frame. Hope it help.

Aharon’s tut, what you want is in Part 3, and starts at the 5 minute mark:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_page_wrapper.cgi?forumid=2&page=https://www.creativecow.net/articles/rabinowitz_aharon/cartoon_look/index.html

Here are all of the other tracking tuts I know of in case you have other issues:

Track It
https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100362&xml=ae65tttrack

Keep motion in perspective
https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=100241&xml=aft65cornerpin

Using the new Motion Tracker
https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=487&xml=aft6ttmotiontracker

Tracking obscured objects in video
https://studio.adobe.com/us/tips/tip.jsp?p=1&id=399&xml=aft6tracking

[Mike Clasby]

Try CC Cylinder. Do two instances of CC Cylinder (one Inside, one Outside) if you want the curved text to circle another layer.

To make it unroll from curved to flat I’d try duplication the text layer, no CC Cylinder therfore flat, and matching the movement with a mask where it turns from curved to flat text.

[Mike Clasby]

You might look at Zaxwerks Warp Filters, the easiest way to bend AE layers convincingly:

https://www.zaxwerks.com/3dwarps/index.shtml

[Mike Clasby]

Yep, not text Toll back then, try Effect>Text then Basic Text, Numbers or Path Text. They’re not bad, really.

[Mike Clasby]

Oh, yeah, to set the marker you have to have the layer selected when you hit *.

Pop ups.

1) Dan has a Jack-In-the-Box, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/jack-in-the-box.html

2) If you want text (or whatever) to appear from nowhere with a little bounce at the end, try this:
First set a keyframe (stopwatch) for Scale to zero, then go down 3 frames (Page Down three times) and set the Scale to 100%. Also hit that * key to set a marker, then add this expression to the Scale property:

n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}

if (n == 0){
value;
}else{
max_dev=40; // max deviation in pixels
spd=35; //speed of oscillation
decay=5; //how fast it slows down
t = time – marker.key(n).time;
s = max_dev*Math.sin(spd*(t))/Math.exp(decay*t);
value + [s,s];
}

The marker you set will trigger a bounce after it hits 100% (keyframed). Change the max_dev, spd, and decay to taste.

This is a combo of two Dan expressions.

3) Dan also has a Squash and Stretch that might be what you want, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/squash-and-stretch.html

[Mike Clasby]

Wherever you are on the timeline in AE, if you press the * (asterisk) on the numeric keypad, you will get a Marker (a layer marker actually, there are also comp markers but I don’t use them), that looks like a little triangle. That marker will trigger the expression for decaying rotation. If you double click the Marker you can type in info and it will appear on the layer, very handy for leaving yourself notes in a project. There are other keyboard short cuts, check Help.

Markers are also used to tell you where things happen, like if you wanted to drop a markers with the beat of music, RAM preview ( 0, numeric pad) and hit * at each beat of the music. When you are done you have markers at the beat.

Dan has a nifty new CS3 tut for markers to trigger animations, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/marker-sync.html

Markers are used for other things too, very handy little critters.

[Mike Clasby]

Bravo. Brilliant, and so much easier than my round-about Rube Goldberg solution. Maybe I need to get better aquainted with text.