[Richard Herd]

[Walter Soyka] “With good-looking 3D type easy to do, it will be done everywhere.”

The issue is how the heck are they gonna match a brand among web, print, video. The only easy to do 3D type is in video? And here I’m assuming the flat aesthetic has some utility because it loads quickly on a smart phone.

[Richard Herd]

For me the issue is a graphic design challenge. You have a very strict visual hierarchy, and that’s because that particular communication content is very precise. With that in mind, I would thumbnail-sketch different layouts–different ways to present the graphic design. I think of it like this:

— Headline
— Subheadline
— Hero Image
— Detail Images
— Copy/text
— Background image

Google search “graphic design” and you’ll see a huge amount of inspiring stuff.

[Richard Herd]

For me the issue is a graphic design challenge. You have a very strict visual hierarchy, and that’s because that particular communication content is very precise. With that in mind, I would thumbnail-sketch different layouts–different ways to present the graphic design. I think of it like this:

— Headline
— Subheadline
— Hero Image
— Detail Images
— Copy/text
— Background image

Google search “graphic design” and you’ll see a huge amount of inspiring stuff.

[Richard Herd]

For me, the issue is how “sticky” does your motion track need to be. For example, a shooter delivered to me hand held footage of a room full of people watching a giant television screen. My job was to replace the TV screen with custom content. So the motion tracking had to be very sticky. For that, I used Mocha, which is very easy to use plug in inside of After Effects. Seriously it is very easy. On another job I had to censor the picture with pixelation (much like you mention with faces), and for that I just keyframed quickly.

So yes the automated way is called Animation > track in mocha AE. There are many tutorials on how to use Mocha and it is so easy you can be up and running in a few minutes.

[Richard Herd]

[Lily Baker] “I’m just trying to create a spotlight on a black solid, but not seeing the light”

There’s you’re problem. If you light black, it is black. And it will look like nothing.

[Richard Herd]

Audition is easy, but it’s hidden!

You will run into lip sync issues also, although the sound will be excellent quality, the talking-head will be talking faster than their audio track. Adjust the audio first, then reimport it back into Premiere, and then use the “X” tool in Premiere to try and match.

[Richard Herd]

This is the kind of thing that always happens: People will say “Hey replace this or that. It won’t take you long.” Total BS! In the old video do the title cards fade in and out? Because matching that to the new one will take some detailed work on your part.

And then someone needs to decide: Do the letters animate in or don’t they? If they do, you need After Effects (and it’s not exactly straightforward how to animate text, but there are prebuilt effects to drag and drop). If they don’t, you can do it in Premiere.

Regardless, try to proceed as follows: Import your video into premiere. Then right click and create a new sequence from selected. Then, use the cut tool, to cut out the titles, so they are blank. Then lock that layer. Make your new titles on the layer 2, and overlap the lower clips by 6 frames. Then use the opacity key frame on the titles to fade in.

[Richard Herd]

I don’t understand what you’re trying to do.

[Richard Herd]

Try Effect > Simulation > Foam

In the Rendering drop down, change Bubble Texture Layer to the ice cube layer.

[Richard Herd]

That animation uses precomps.

The line on the map is simply a stroke effect — very intuitive to do.

After you’ve made your various precomps and added them to the MAIN comp, they will all behave as a group. To get them to multiplane, I have a cool camera trick. I can’t even remember where I learned it, but I’ve been using it for years. Here it is:

Make a camera (obviously), and then make 2 null layers. Make those null layers 3D. Note the Z position of the camera. Then pickwhip the camera’s point of interest and position to one of the nulls, and call that null “camera truck”. Then parent the camera to other layer, and call that layer “camera rotator.”

On the camera truck layer change the z position to your note above. Now, you can keyframe the camera truck to move the camera, and you can key frame the rotation to make the camera swivel around the object.

So!!!

What this means is you need to make several precomps of the various title objects and place the stroke effect on the picture. Then place the precomps of the title objects in the MAIN comp, which is where the camera will be.