[Ridley Walker]

Here is a CS5 version:

6748_stopwigglecs5.aep.zip

In the Composition named “Wiggle with Slider” , there are Expression sliders wired into the wiggle expression for the position of the layer.

For information on expressions go to motionscript.com, Dan Ebberts’ site which is a terrific source of information for beginners. You may also want to learn the basics of JavaScript, look to CodeAcademy for free tutorials.

[Ridley Walker]

[James Osbun] “Anybody shed light on this?? “

In my experience, multi-core renders only benefit certain types of renders. Some renders are computationally expensive others are more disk-bound and are bound by data transfer speeds, ie reads and writes from the source drives to the render drive.

From the description you provide about 20k images and JPEGs it would seem that the graphics buffer might fill trying to load 20,000 pixels and composite that with another 20,000 pixels. Since JPEGs are compressed they still need to be de-compressed to be read and composited.

My guess is that your test Comp is disk bound and not processor bound – which might explain why After Effects is only using 1 processor, this particular render won’t benefit from more, its not computation that’s slowing it down.

What’s happening with RAM during this render?

[Ridley Walker]

Since wiggle takes a minimum of 2 parameters which represent frequency and amount, you can use an expression slider to keyframe either of these values to 0 thereby stopping the wiggle eg: wiggle(5,10) then wiggle(0,10)

An expression can also reference Composition time in seconds and start or stop the wiggle that way.

Additionally you can use markers to trigger expressions:

if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
pos = [value[0],value[1]];
if (n == 2) {
pos;
}else{
wiggle(2,40);
}
}

Here are 2 methods in this sample file:

6740_stopwiggle.aep.zip

[Ridley Walker]

Command+Option (Control+Alt) and select About After Effects.

[Ridley Walker]

[Jarrod Dowalter] “On an unrelated note, what is the best 3D modeling, animation, and effects program to work in with AE in your post workflow (i.e. going back and forth between the two)? Any experience or advice is much appreciative. Thanks!”

I can’t answer your first question, but After Effects CC is bundled with Cinema 4D one of the top 3D modelling and animation applications, linked by the Cineware plug-in in After Effects. After Effects and C4D have a good working relationship which goes back several versions.

Maya is also good but doesn’t offer the same round-trip workflow with After Effects that C4D does.

[Ridley Walker]

Is the “Show Planar Surface” button visible in the toolbar?

[Ridley Walker]

Like Illustrator, After Effects refers to font outlines as Strokes. The options are Fill Over Stroke, Stroke Over Fill, All Fills Over All Strokes, All Strokes Over All Fills.

[Ridley Walker]

Not trying to steal your thunder John, just trying to help out Ihab.

[Ridley Walker]

1) Several masks on an adjustment layer, use Transform > Distort on adjustment layer and animate x position.

2) Make lines from checkerboard. Use as displacement map. Animate horizontal displacement.

[Ridley Walker]

Three things I would try:

1) Reset the preference file to default settings by holding down Shift+Option+Command as you launch After Effects.

2) Permissions repair using Disk Utility.

3) Making sure you have the latest After Effects updates installed.