[Robert Headrick]

THANK YOU. I was just in that same boat today. Never really noticed an issue before (maybe it’s happened, but if it has it’s not been noticeable enough for me to dig around for a solution), but it showed up big time today, with noticeable and unacceptable soft text in just one portion of a larger animation. Dug through comps and precomps, triple-checked that “continuously rasterize” was turned on where applicable, looked for stray effects etc and found NO reason why the text shouldn’t be perfectly crisp. So I started down the Google rabbithole, and it led me here, and this was exactly the fix I needed.

So to reiterate: if your 3D text is not showing up crisp, check the position values and round up or down to full integers.

[Robert Headrick]

Logging back into my account for the first time in forever to say that even in 2017, this ancient thread is still saving peoples’ butts! Was almost at the point of freaking out when a client sent me some old files to repurpose for a quick-turn edit and the project “didn’t exist.”

[Robert Headrick]

Oh man… as usual Todd, you’re on top of it. I had read that page, but apparently I only gave it cursory attention. I was in the process of exhaustively pointing out that I’d followed every single restriction listed on that page, and gradually started uncovering various things that weren’t quite right!

It seems like what’s been killing my file is something related to this paragraph:

The exported SWF file includes each unchanged item in the After Effects composition once, and then references it for each use. If a layer is used in multiple frames, each use refers to the same object, even if the layer’s transform properties (such as Position) are animated. However, if the content of the layer changes—for example, if a mask on the layer is animated or if the source footage item for the layer is video—a new object is created for each frame in which the layer is visible. If multiple layers in the composition share the same source footage item, the source is added once and is then referenced for every additional layer that shares the source. If the source is an Illustrator file, a SWF movie clip is created and referenced.

I don’t fully grasp exactly why, but for whatever reason the export was failing whenever it encountered a place where I had duplicated an Illustrator layer. When I read the text here it seems to me that it shouldn’t have a problem (it doesn’t say it can’t support duplicated layers, just that they’ll all be referencing the same flash object), but from my testing it’s very clear that it can’t do it. I tried a test where I duplicated a layer one time and added a mask to the second layer (based on my interpretation of the above to mean that this would force it to create a new object), but that didn’t work either.

I’m also confused by something, but since it’s not actually holding anything up it’s not nearly as big of an issue. In the unsupported features report it calls out “clipping path” on almost all, but not quite all, of my Illustrator layers. I’m not sure what that means because I didn’t use a clipping mask in the Illustrator file (not sure what the difference between mask and path is in this situation), and although it lists it under unsupported features, the layers in question still show up in the completed SWF file. Weird.

Any thoughts on that last point? Any way you can clarify the multiple objects issue so I understand why it’s not working? If I understand why it’s failing, then there’s a chance I can find a way around it. As it stands, I think I have a better grasp on what I can and can’t do, and I think I can at least rebuild most, if not all, of my animation in a way that satisfies the stringent requirements.

Thanks for your time! Always appreciate your commitment to the AE community.

[Robert Headrick]

Thanks Dan! Your first point is exactly what I was looking for, and your second point is even better. 🙂

[Robert Headrick]

I tried this out a few minutes ago and wasn’t successful. I’m probably just misunderstanding something in the organization.

Below are three screenshots. Screenshot 1 shows my main comp and the Time Remap expression that is driving the walk cycle animation. Screenshot 2 shows my Walk Cycle PreComp and the original expression that I was using to drive the hand positions. Screenshot 3 shows my attempt at implementing your expression to offset the start time value.

Both implementations, the original and the altered, produce the same results (i.e. I can manually change the hand position but I can’t keyframe it to change over time).

Screenshot 1:

Screenshot 2:

Screenshot 3:

[Robert Headrick]

I knew if anybody could tell me what was going on, it would be Dan Ebberts. 🙂 Thank you! I don’t have the project in front of me any more tonight but I’ll try this out first thing in the morning. Looks like it’ll do the trick.

[Robert Headrick]

Success! Thank you! I had to also change the way the expression that was in there was being written (it also referenced the Scale Width property using its name). The script was working, but then the expression was throwing an error saying that property didn’t exist. Now that the script and the expression that it creates both use the index value instead, everything works beautifully! Thanks! Now the perfectionist in me is going to want to go back and rewrite all of the property references using the same method. Even though it works with just these two properties being changed, I know I’m going to want the whole script to be written consistently.

Thank you for your help!

[Robert Headrick]

When you say to use matchName or propertyIndex instead of name, can you indicate the specific syntax that would let me do that? Specifically, I’d like it to work without having to show an alert to the user.

Also, I’m curious as to whether it would make sense to simply leave the script as-is, even knowing that when run in the script editor, it throws errors. I just tested running the entire script without the helper alert, but running it through AE as a script file, rather than through the Script Editor interface. In that context, I get all the correct results with no visible errors. I feel like it’s bad programming form, but maybe it’s okay in this instance?

[Robert Headrick]

Did anyone manage to find a workaround until the update happens? I’m dealing with this right now. We have projects with multiple interviews that need to be synced up using PluralEyes, and it creates a new .XML file for each sequence. Basically every time I sync up a new person, the synced sequence it creates references new master clips in the project panel that can’t be deleted, even though they’re duplicates of the original, unsynced clips. I could make my project cleaner and leaner by syncing everything in one massive sequence, but that’s inconvenient and still creates some duplication.

[Robert Headrick]

Not sure what you’ve tried yet, and maybe I’m misunderstanding what you’re attempting to do. But if you just set the work area of your comp to surround only a small section of the video (hit “b” to set the beginning, and “n” to set the end of your work area), then when you send it to the render queue and render, the resulting file will just be that section (Command-M to send to render queue).