[Rhett Robinson]

I did produce a 40 second clip for someone locally, a 3D lights/shadows piece displaying their logo and services as a loop.

The machine only has a consumer level card (ATI 9800 DV), and even with a lot of tweaking, although it looked pretty good, I wasn’t happy. I didn’t have time for the event, I later went back and did it again using the normal advanced 3D renderer after tweaking it a bit. Although it took a little longer to render, I was much happier.

I have wondered about the results using some of the high-priced cards; if anyone even has a glimmer of experience on that, I’d love to hear it. At this time, I think any of my money would be better spent on faster processor, more RAM, or adding another network machine (yes, I actually like network rendering, since I’m in control of all of the machines)

[Rhett Robinson]

Type it in Photoshop with antialiasing turned off (you’ll have to experiment with resolution, but I would start with 72 DPI at the final size of scale set to 100), then make sure and render that layer in Photoshop so that it’s a normal raster layer and not editable type, and bring it in.

[Rhett Robinson]

Okay, so you don’t have to keyframe, I said you could. Otherwise a very simple (even I can do it) kind of mod to Dan’s expression script will take you a long way as a “dynamic” choice.

What kind of interaction are you hoping to achieve? If the pendulum is supposed to *stop* at the top, then restart, that’s a different issue…

[Rhett Robinson]

Okay, so that doesn’t make sense.

I would suggest you make something simple, like a circle in Illustrator, and try that. The “continuous rasterization” will always smooth it, regardless of scale, etc., but can be a little processor intensive on renders;not enough to worry about if it solves the problems for you.

Without seeing your AI file, I’d have to guess that it’s not just a simple vector path, as you said that when you scale it up in AI, it looks worse. Do you have any filters or trasparency in your AI8 file?

The only other thing I can think of is your composition’s renderer (in composition settings), but I really doubt that.

[Rhett Robinson]

freq = 1.0; //oscillations per second 
amplitude = 50; 
decay = 0; //no decay

amplitude*Math.sin(freq*time*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*time)

Depending on how you want it to “react”, it may not be all that difficult. I’ve snagged this bit of Dan’s code from his site at

https://www.motionscript.com/mastering-expressions/simulation-basics-3.html

which you should check out. I’m still a real novice at expressions (I’ve got a day job), but I’ve learned a lot here.

I’ve usually just linked the variables to slider control effects on a null object, but a little bit of simple math applied instead (such as changing the amplitude based on the y position of a “leader layer”) shouldn’t be that tough.

I would suggest that you get your pendulum layer in place and attach the code, then pickwhip the required change in the code to the the desired leader property, then change the code a little to divide/multiply/subtract/add etc. the resulting number until you get what you want.

One of the reasons that I’ve usually used an expression control effect is that you can keyframe them, which may get what you want without it truly being controlled by your “leader”.

[Rhett Robinson]

Looks like time remapping and easy ease to me. If you haven’t played with time remapping before, have fun with that for a while!

[Rhett Robinson]

I’m not sure what you mean, 150 DPI… is that your raster effects preview setting in AI? As it sounds like you know a line or 2 later, that your characters are now paths, everything in this file (for best effects) should be vector. Raster images in your .AI file can easily cause this problem.

The quick solution is to check the “continuous rasterization” box in AE (it’s by the “shy” layers and the “best quality” switch”)for that layer in your timeline. If you already have a complex animation, that’s your easiest option. After testing (a lot), I frequently simply enlarge the .AI file, and get away with that.

[Rhett Robinson]

I think that’s the “setup” (I downloaded again to be sure)… just right click on the .inf.

It’s in the “readme” .

“This is Huffyuv v2.1.1, by Ben Rudiak-Gould. (If the archive you
downloaded has an older version number, it’s because you followed an
outdated link.)

This software is Copyright 2000 Ben Rudiak-Gould. For information,
distribution conditions, and full source code please visit the Huffyuv
home page at https://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html .

To install Huffyuv, right click on huffyuv.inf and select “Install.”
”

if you didn’t get the right thing (only 3 files), here is the genius who invented this and others (avisynth, in WIDE use)

https://neuron2.net/www.math.berkeley.edu/benrg/index.html

Good luck!

[Rhett Robinson]

Hi Richie,
I use the HuffYUV Codec quite a bit, and have pretty darn good success with it (no, I don’t render it out in something else first). It’s good enough I frequently use it to pre-render my complicated bits. Just make sure & pick RGB+Alpha when you render (I’m not sure if that’s where the hangup is). There are a few other AVI compatible ones, but that’s what I use… If you *can* use QuickTime, you can use a PNG option… compresses really nicely, with alpha.

My best advice? See what is in use (Their site refers to the Indeo codec several times, but also QuickTime),and use that.

Good luck

[Rhett Robinson]

I’ll have to agree with Dave in many respects, AE will frequently let you import MP3 files, they’ll preview fine, and then render *very* poorly. You might get away with it if they are rendered very specifically (like no “joint stereo” or “variable bit rate” or any of the things that make MP3 compression work best). Why it won’t import now? Most likely you’re having some codec issue (you’ll run into that again when some client gives you a video file they made… use one of the tools like GSpot or some other method to find out what can make it work). The best routine is to always convert that MP3 back into a more solid, less compressed container like AIFF or WAV, or if possible, start with that. Just like applying JPEG compression (or virtually any other type), it achieves compression by throwing away information that usually isn’t noticeable after the first round.

Why did they include it? It either wasn’t thoroughly tested (it worked on the author’s machine), or it passed on the test machine.

The Classroom in a Book for Illustrator 9 I learned from skipped several steps (seemingly). After hacking on it quite a while, I sought other help & moved beyond. The bad part? I didn’t get to learn the lesson quickly and smoothly. The better part? I’ve discovered that when you have to learn something on your own, it sticks… and that’s why you get paid. You are going through this not just as a person that knows what the app *should* do, you are graduating to a “professional problem solver”.