[Mike Clasby]

That’s crazy. I think I would re-install AE, that’s just me.

[Mike Clasby]

Very weird.

So you’re setting an initial keyframe by clicking the position stopwatch, then going down the timeline and changing the Z value (numerically with the keypad, or by dragging with the cursor), the blue number on the far right of the three, under the position stopwatch?

[Mike Clasby]

Why without plugins? Do you mean without third party plugins, because AE comes with CC Sphere and CC Cylinder, and some versions came with Zaxworks (AE 6.5). Otherwise, if you treally mean without plugins, you’d have to import a 3D Sphere/Cylinder.

[Mike Clasby]

Here is another way, more accurate in some instances:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/auto-focus.html

[Mike Clasby]

Andrew did what you want in his tut “Create a 3D Room with Cool Title” starting at 5 1/2 minutes:

https://www.videocopilot.net/videotutorials/3droom/index.htm

[Mike Clasby]

Here is Dan’s Universal Answer, highly detailed, see notes at bottom to change, i.e. remove milliseconds.

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/up-down-clock.html

[Mike Clasby]

I dunno how fast magic bullet adds to the Render Time, but methinks this oldie but goodie from Rick Gerard is faster, on the draw in a 48 hour shoot out. And if your-a-shootin’-a-shootin’-match, as in Western Shoot ‘Em Up, you need this… Pardner.

Name: Rick Gerard
Date: May 14, 2003 at 3:59:19 am
Subject: Re: Best tips for turning Day to Night…

Here

[Mike Clasby]

You might want to check out Particle Illusion, there was a fully functional 30 day demo, with several flowing water presets:

https://www.wondertouch.com/default.asp

And you can ask questions here:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_view_posts.cgi?forumid=23

[Mike Clasby]

It was a little trickier than I thought it would be, but this works:

Overview: Copy Eraser Shape, paste it into a new mask Shape, copy that into Position.

Details:

On the layer with Eraser, hit “UU” and any properties changed from normal will be revealed. The Eraser movement info is hiding in the Eraser 1> Shape parameter. So select “Shape” and Copy.

Now in the layer you want to follow the eraser path (I used a small solid), draw a 2 point mask (G gives the Pen Tool, 2 clicks for a 2 point mask) make it anywhere on that layer.

“M” reveals the mask, select the “Mask Shape” and Paste (pasting that Eraser Shape into the mask shape).

Select that mask Shape and Copy.

Now “P” reveals the position (still on that layer we want to trace the path), select the Position and Paste.

You should be done, This is assuming that your layer being erased and the layer following the path had the same position to start with. If both are centered in the comp, OK, or just make the new Moving layers psoition the same as the Erased layers position when you start. Also the position path will come in as a 2 second path with roving keyframes so grab either end position keyframes and drag it left or right as needed to make the animation the length of time you want.

[Mike Clasby]

Go over to the main AE page:

https://forums.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_view_posts.cgi?forumid=2

and click on Andrew’s head, Aharon’s head (many, many tuts), all the heads really, lots of great tuts there.

All the Cow AE tuts are here:

https://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html

Also Andrew has newer one’s at his site:

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

My fav for expressions is Dan’s head click and his site for detailed explanations and samples:

https://www.motionscript.com/

Adobe support has dozens of tuts, but have rearranged their site so it’s not easy to find, a search function now.