[Rhett Robinson]

Dave’s right, it’s all about keyframing, and he described a relatively easy technique, by creating markers. I did a couple of karaoke type songs like this before, and I found it fastest to go through and put a keyframe with the ball above the word when it should hit, then went back and put in the “bounce”, by adding a bezier keyframe for the upswing. I also made the keyframes with the ball above the word into easy-ease keyframes… that made more pleasing motion to me… but don’t forget to make the timing work as he described, by keeping the ball bouncing above a word when it’s necessary to fill the tempo.

You might be able to put markers by using one of the audio effects to see where it “hits”.

I started slow, the first song took more than an hour and a half… the 3rd took about 20 minutes.

Good luck!

[Rhett Robinson]

Dave’s right, it’s all about keyframing, and he described a relatively easy technique, by creating markers. I did a couple of karaoke type songs like this before, and I found it fastest to go through and put a keyframe with the ball above the word when it should hit, then went back and put in the “bounce”, by adding a bezier keyframe for the upswing. I also made the keyframes with the ball above the word into easy-ease keyframes… that made more pleasing motion to me… but don’t forget to make the timing work as he described, by keeping the ball bouncing above a word when it’s necessary to fill the tempo.

You might be able to put markers by using one of the audio effects to see where it “hits”.

I started slow, the first song took more than an hour and a half… the 3rd took about 20 minutes.

Good luck!

[Rhett Robinson]

Okay, so I’m really an Illustrator guy… that’s my primary task here in the print world.

You can grab your sub layers and drag them above the primary layer they are in, and they will become primary layers as well. If you’re having trouble, create a new primary layer above the one you’re trying to pull elements out of, and drag the sub layer between, and delete the extra layers. Watch for locked layers/hidden layers when you import as a composition… AE will honor those, which actually is really cool.

This works really well when you have a number of elements on a single layer you want to split out. Use the “release to layers – Sequence” after you’ve grouped things the way you want, and you’ll have the sub layers easily divided for use.

[Rhett Robinson]

There’s one more thing to consider, and coming from the printing production side of things, I’ve seen the abuse. In our field, it’s “Don’t hate the white space!”, meaning if you have too much activity at the very outside of your area of view (the “golden section” of people’s primary focus), it’s really not a good plan. There are certainly artisic exceptions, but in general, there are places where you want focused attention, and you can fill in the rest with less important background material – necessary, but not to the point of detracting from the primary focus points. Although you can put your advertiser’s phone number all the way at the bottom of the screen, I bet it would make everyone happier if the audience didn’t have to look for it, but was reasonably inset from the edge. That said, hopefully the world realizes that “centered” is not the best…

[Rhett Robinson]

This is always a big battle, which ends up with a personal taste/money decision. I was an Apple guy, then Macintosh, since the beginning. At work, I have 2 extremely fast Macintosh G5 dual processor machines – they’re great. At home, I’ve finally gone mostly PC for my production work, although I still have 2 Macs when needed (G3, baby!) . If you’ve always used a PC, I’d say stick with it, if you like it. You’ve got software and knowledge built up that will work for you. At home, I have 2 ultrafast PC boxes that I built for a fraction of the cost that a comparable Mac would cost me, and a small army of PC drones (9, and a few that “sort of” work) to do network renders for me.

Anyway, I love the interface on a Mac, but really, the line isn’t so clearly drawn any more as far as what’s better. Since I can build my own PC boxes easily, and I scrounge parts, that’s been a huge cost savings to me.

Anyway, I don’t think the speed gained by using a different platform will be so great as to make up for the individual running it. I can do more work in less time on my beige G3 than my coworker can on the dual G5, because I’ve learned how to work within the limitations of a machine, instead of always hitting the limits.

[Rhett Robinson]

If all that is needed is a simple extrude/fly around, you can get away with using the shatter effect, using settings that don’t cause it to explode to the ground by turning off gravity, etc. Zaxwerks really is superior, and nice for a lot of reasons (including loading 3D models into AE), but for simple stuff, I’ve definitely gotten away with shatter. Another plus is that it will multi-machine render without difficulty.

[Rhett Robinson]

Wow – Thanks!

I had actually done something similar with butterflies in the past, but the addition of wiggle, moving a second flock back in z space, and the time offset (I actually made 30 separate butterflies when I did my previous project) were very, very tasty tips. I added a tiny bit of rotation, and although the birds are flat, it really wowed me!

I also have to tell you, I’ve watched the “Super tight junk mattes” tutorial a number of times, and had a lot of success, as well as using it to help create the outline-flash appearace that you see sometimes.

I always have to play the “street slang” portion 3 or 4 times, it never fails to make me laugh out loud!

Thanks again for yet another fantastic, easy to understand tutorial that gives me a great base to build on in the future!

Rhett

[Rhett Robinson]

I would suggest the write on effect, myself. There are several tutorials on this here You would draw over what you need, and set it to “reveal original Image” (I usually do the paths in Illustrator and copy/paste to the position keyframes). Choose the effect for each new stroke you have to add (so there could be a number of instances to make it look right), then to control the time it takes to complete the stroke, grab the keyframes for that instance (all of them), then option/alt drag to make the time scale proportionally.

I think there is a video tutorial, and you’ll get it figured out in a snap.

Good luck!

[Rhett Robinson]

I learned Maya using their free PLE (personal learning edition), but I will have to say that I think the best bang for the buck, especially if you are a freelance solo guy, C4D seems like the best choice. I would guess that all of the major packages have a trial or disabled version for checking them out.

I have played with blender, and have seen some amazing things folks have done, but I haven’t spent the time required to make it perform. It does seem like a great option as well, so I would download it and one of the tutorials (I prefer video tutorials myself), and see if it will meet your needs. I’ll have to say that it will probably be a while before you produce the “wow” kind of work, although you can create awesomely creative abstract 3D stuff really, really soon.

[Rhett Robinson]

“No card can speed up rendering”

I’m not sure that I understand this… I use a fairly recent ATI card, and although it’s already on my fastest machine, it still seem to speed up rendering, especially if I use the openGL capabilities for 3D stuff. Am I missing something? Admittedly, I sometimes have not been happy with the openGL results, and re-rendered the project, but it seems to dramatically speed up previews as well as rendering. It’s on the Adobe approved list of cards, but I didn’t have to pay a fortune, about 200 bucks since I got it on sale.