[Rich Seemueller]

That’s actually the problem. It doesn’t give me the option. I said blend modes, but I meant mask modes. It pastes the path and has the numbered masks, but gives no mask modes or actual paths.

Sorry that I wasn’t clear on that before.

[Rich Seemueller]

You can just duplicate the layer and put a simple mask around the green area. If it’s inside another element like on a t-shirt, it shouldn’t require any roto work– just a rectangular mask should be fine. Then set the blend mode of it to add and if it’s above the keyed layer, it should just look normal.

There may be a setting in keylight, but that seems pretty fool proof to me.

[Rich Seemueller]

thanks so much for the tip. is it possible to have multiple obscuration layers? there are several layers i’m wanting this to happen around. if worst comes to worst, i can fudge it and have the path of the emitter dip off screen and start a new one that comes back on the same path with a different layer. if possible i’d like to avoid this though, as the camera is following the particles relatively closely.

thanks again!

[Rich Seemueller]

the wiggle expression is what i always use when doing this effect. i usually set my wiggle amount for more than that, though. i think i usually set it at around 30 or 40, and then make the initial value 30 or 40 less than the max i want. (obviously you want those 2 values to be the same.)

also, i don’t think that the space really matters. (at least it doesn’t in my AE.)

i’m wondering if your rate is high enough and your value is low enough that you’re not really seeing the effect.

just a thought.

[Rich Seemueller]

THAT WAS IT! It was the Matrox. I’ve had it for quite sometime, but apparently haven’t done an HD project with it since. If the project is SD, it will work ok, but with HD it’s too much.

Thanks so much!

Long live the cow!

Rich

[Rich Seemueller]

Thanks for the reply Dave.

I tried the first 3 before but to no avail. I went ahead and tried them again for giggles, and……still no dice.

The last 2 were new suggestions. I’d already had Open GL disabled, but not the multiprocessing. I tried enabling that, but it still doesn’t seem to work.

I’ve done plenty of promos and things in HD and not had a problem, but for some reason, this project is giving me fits.

Thanks again for the suggestions. Let me know if you have any others.

Rich

[Rich Seemueller]

I’m having the same issue and am also trying h.264. (I’m also having the gamma issues but have deemed that problem hopeless.)

I too have tried the WMV and it works fine so it’s clearly an issue with the quicktime codec somehow. I’m not using any firewire or external hardware so it can’t be that.

Any other thoughts?

Rich Seemueller

[Rich Seemueller]

Thanks to everyone for your posts. I’ve definitely found that this is one topic that’s just not really covered. I’ve done so many books, tutorials, etc, and they all cover a lot of the same things– effects, color, etc. But project maintenance and organization is something that just doesn’t seem to be dealt with a whole lot. I understand why, the creative aspects are much more interesting and fun, but these things are obviously necessary once you get to the point I have.

Once again, thanks so much for the responses. If anyone has any other links, tips, please continue the thread. It sounds like I’m not the only one with this confusion. 🙂

Rich Seemueller

[Rich Seemueller]

I’ve created an element in Illustrator which I’m trying to animate 2 mask points with random motion. I was just going to use a wiggle expression, but I need to keep it to only 2 of the points.

[Rich Seemueller]

I figured out my issue was with the new Quicktime. Something with it would not allow AE to import movs anymore. Obviously I can’t work under those conditions, so I went to apple.com and reverted back to a previous version. Once I did that, I’ve had no more problems. You can get the files here. On the right hand side of the page.

Hope this helps!

Rich Seemueller