[Peter Van der zee]

Check the effect settings, Sphere has a radius; if you leave it small and zoom in you loose quality, you can make the sphere any size you want, but you’ll have to put it in a huge precomp. That will give you the resolution you want in your comp.

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

Don’t understand, scaling doesn’t work with collapsed transformation on?
1.Are you working with 3d swiched on? If so 3d should be on in the pre-comp too.
2.Aspect-ratio can also be changed in the interpret footage dialog

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

copy-paste is the fastest method, because in 6.5 you’ll have to do the mask manualy.
make a square mask, add extra maskpoints in the corners, delete the original corner mask-points, convert the others to bezier and shape it to your needs. (a grid will help a lot)

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

Sometimes simply duplicating the keyed layer gets you back some detail…

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

Sounds like RAM is filling up, have you read about the “secret” preferences elswhere on the forum? look for the prefs with shiftkey held down and you’ll find a way to purge every x frames during render.

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

Try edit-purge-all once in a while

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[Peter Van der zee]

Try CC Light Sweep, or play with a masked white solid in add-mode

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

with the collapse transformation switched on, your footage will render original quality.
(the little sun-like thing)

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[Peter Van der zee]

Check out Eran Sterns fresh tutorial on smoking letters!
here on the cow, it’s about what you’re looking for…

vanderzee.tv

[Peter Van der zee]

What effect did you apply to the text-layer?
If the effect messes up 3d, try precomping
That is, put the text and the effect in a 2d comp and that comp 3d in your comp.
normaly fixes the problems..

vanderzee.tv