[Paul Grogan]

Render speeds are ok considering the amount of 3d, layers and effects, motion blue, camera depth etc. I was just concerned by the % ram use, but if you say that is ok, then we’re all good.

The follow-up question is if I run Premiere Pro at the same time, AE only ever uses 25%. CC seems to give most of the RAM to premiere pro, and I cant find any way of switching that focus so it uses more on AE. Basically now I close everything else down when using AE which can be a bit of a pain.

i7 processor 64-bit PC. 32Gb Ram.

[Paul Grogan]

As a follow-up, in case this helps. I’ve just set another scene going, and it was straight to 81%. That isn’t to say the problem is fixed – it does this every time, and it’s been doing it for months.

If I load up Premiere Pro and do a bit in that, then even if I close it again, the next time I render in AE, it starts back at 26%

[Paul Grogan]

Thanks Dave. I figured that I would need to switch to CC in order to get it working, and since I wanted to do it, I know there would be a monthly cost.

But, if there is a way of doing it with CS6, which I’ve already got, that’s good. Will check out Blender.

[Paul Grogan]

I did look at Element 3d, but… I’m an amateur. This is a hobby only really and I don’t really want to do anything fancy. just simply create a 3d object and rotate it.

Is this possible with CC and C4D. I’m struggling with the video tutorials now, and it seems that once the scene is in AE I cant really do anything with it – all the rotations and animations I need to do in C4D, but I just cant see how I’m going to get this to work, since the rest of my movie is created in AE, but then I need to go somewhere else to do something. I’m just not sure how I’m supposed to get them linked together so it looks correct.

[Paul Grogan]

Apologies for not being clear. I’ll try and explain.

I have 2 images, one of the front of a playing card, the other of a back.

I want to see the back of the card on screen, and rotate that object around the Y axis. As it rotates, it reveals the back of the card. That’s it really.

There is another way of doing it by having both layers visible, but the second image about 1px behind it on the Z. Link the rotation of both images, and then when it gets half way around, you see the other image on the ‘front’ of the card.

If you try this yourself with the card wipe transition, setting rows and columns to 1 and Y axis, you’ll see that it works really well, but as it rotates, you lose the top and bottom of the card as they are cropped off by the original boundaries of the size of the layer.

Same thing with the shatter effect, if you just try to shatter the card and get it to explode all over the screen, you have to precompose it – otherwise it just shatters within the size of its original layer.

Hope that makes more sense.

[Paul Grogan]

Thanks George. However, I don’t really want to pay for using a script for something which is a built in function of AE.

If I can explain a bit more as I was trying to make an object explode with the shatter effect, and I had the same issue. Basically, I had a layer, with an image. Shatter worked ok, but the shatter effect was constrained within the boundaries of the original layer.

The only way I could see around this was to precompose the layer, and make the new composition a lot bigger than the actual image. Then back in my main comp, apply the shatter effect to the pre-composed layers, and voila! – The shatter effect of the image now throws pieces all over the screen.

Did the same thing with the card flip, and it worked ok too.

So – the steps

1. Load image 1
2. Load image 2 and hide
3. Precompose image 1
4. Apply card wipe to precomp layer, setting image 2 as the back.

The problem with this however, is that although side 1 of the card looks good, the layer is bigger than the card, when it rotates to the other side, AE fills the entire layer with the back image, which is now a lot bigger.

So I guess I need to precompose the back of the card too.