[Paul Hennell]

Might be other better ways to do this but I’ve used this in the past –

[Add Checkbox expression control]

if (effect("Checkbox Control")("Checkbox") == 1){
wiggle(10,100);
}else{
100
}

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Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

Possibly taking liberties with the idea of ‘easy’ but this video appears to offer a tutorial on the effect.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

I think you might find this script useful.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

I actually made something a little like this recently when fiddling to see what interesting effects I could create solely with AE.

Based on my memory’s of that I’d reckon you could cook up something with –

Fractal noise scaled short and wide for the basic ‘ribbon’
Tritone on fractal for colour.
duplicate and offset fractal solid to add depth – change blend to Add (maybee)
use bezier warp (Or other distort warp effect) to make them move up and down, evolve fractal sightly for more motion.
add adjustment layer with cc glass to smooth it out.

That’s not an exact recipe – you’ll have to mess about with settings and other effects but it’s how I’d start if I was doing it.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

Do you have photoshop or photoshop extended? I have a feeling the export option is only available in the extended version.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

Have you checked in the preferences that “allow scripts to access network” is checked? If it isn’t that might be causing the problem.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

Not sure I completely understand the idea here… You have the white squares… and an invisible rotating red square? Which when it is in front of the white squares you wish to make the white squares red? but when it’s on the background you which to be invisible?

If I’ve got that right you can achieve it by making the white squares comp into a pre-comp then duplicating it and using it as an alpha matte for the red solid. If however you’re trying something different, a video or screen shot might be handy….

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

I have production premium, but (thankfully ;-D ) had none of these problems. No idea of any good solution but a couple of suggestions spring to mind. First have you tried installing on this new computer with the discs? Shouldn’t make a difference, but obviously it did last time (If in the opposite way) and you never know it might work…

Also, if possible (can’t remember if it is), try installing programs one at a time. Do any install?

Failing any further luck I think you’re going to have to try Adobe support……

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

For character animation I’d suggest looking at the puppet tool (If you have CS3 or higher) and making sure your familiar with layers and parenting. Once you have separate layers for import bits (Limbs head etc) and they’re parented to the body its fairly easy to move them around, make them wave etc etc. If you want more instruction/advanced techniques lynda.com has an animating characters course which is pretty good – but fiddling around is enough to get you started.

As for cameras you can probably get away with building a ‘big’ scene in one composition and then scaling/moving that comp about inside another comp rather then using a camera – but if you do want to use cameras Video Copilots basic training tutorials has bits on camera control which are worth watching.

Good luck
– Hennell

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Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk

[Paul Hennell]

Forgive me if I don’t explain this effectively but I remember taking ages working this out when I was doing the tutorial, and it’ll be more useful to try explain it properly then just give the answer.

First of all a quick look at what you’ve done (at least how I remember it). Because the image warp effect layer can’t be moved you have to stabilize the face so it stays in place, before cancelling out that stabilisation in the next comp so it looks the same as it did before. All that ‘pickwhipping business’ was so that the motion of the stabilization was cancelled out, by subtracting the same amount it put on. (By reversing the value with * -1)

With scale added you essentially want to do the same thing – cancel out the footage’s scale by scaleing the comp.
To do this you’d want to scale down the comp when the footage scales up and scale up the comp when the footage scales down. If you try doing it manually (Scale the comp so you see all the footage) you should be able to start working out what expression you need. When the footage is scaled to 80% you need to scale the comp to 120% to make it fit. Likewise when the footage is 130% you need to scale the comp to 70%. In other words both values must equally 200. So to reverse the scale stabilization we use “200 – ‘footages current scale value'” which will give us the value we need to cancel it out, thus reversing it to normal.

(Note however, because scale has two values (X and y) you actually need to write “[200,200] – ‘pickwhip footage scale value here'” else only one value will be reversed which won’t work at all.)

I hope that all made sense, I’m trying to keep it brief but expressions are a lot less confusing when you know what they’re trying to do and how they’re doing what they are. Have fun.

—
Only in after effects do children get to pick and whip their parents.
https://hennell-online.co.uk