[Roland R. kahlenberg]

You have to explain what “bad” looks like. Is it a motion problem or some other issue. Let us know. There is a 3rd party plugin from RevisionFx called ReFlex. You can find it here -> Revisionfx.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backgrounds with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[duffbeer911] “although my balls do drop off at the end 😉 a bit of timeremapping should dodge me around that”

You can get around that by adding keyframes for the Max value. Set the first keyframe to .01 as prescribed earlier. Change it to a Hold Keyframe. Then, at the same time as the last keyframe for the Minimum Value, set the value for Max to a large negative value, eg. -50. This should stop the balls from falling off.

I had a look at your movie and it looks decent but a little cartoony. Things seem to move too much – perhaps that’s what you want. You should be able to achieve a more natural feel to the movements by adjusting the timing of your keyframes – just a thought.

You may also want to create another property map for Scale X to give the balls a squashed look as they hit the Wall. Just create Solid with Ramp applied. This time, the gradient has to be mostly black at the top and the gray areas to only slightly encroach into the Wall area – the bottom should be white.

For the ScaleX property, Set Minimum Value to 1 and Maximum to 2, or slightly larger – to taste. If you’re not sure of how to create muliple property mappers then use the Ephemereal Property Mapper. Check out my COW Tutorial entitled, Fun in Particle Playland. It covers the creation of multiple mappers for either the Persistent Property Mapper or the Ephemereal Property Mapper.

Have Fun!Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Serge has gone through this a few times. Perform an Advanced COW Search for Page Turn and use Serge’s name as the author.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

The CC perspective plugins can’t unfurl themselves. You’ll need Boris Continuum’s set to do this.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Here’s the deal: Use a Solid and apply Render->Ramp with its default value. use this as your Persistent Property Mapper.

For Particle Playground, use the Kinetic Friction property to affect your particles. Set the Maximum value to 0.01 (no keyframes required). For the Minimum value, set an initial keyframe value of 0.01 at about the 2-second mark. At a later point in time, perhaps 10 seconds layer, set a value of 0.1

Becareful though, your balls will die off this way. Sorry, I couldn’t resist.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

There are options for velocity and kinetic friction in the Persistent Property Mapper. Those should help you somewhat. Have you tried to see if Foam will do the same thing for you?

Good Luck
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Check that you have the latest Invigorator installed. There are issues with versions between Invigorator and AE.

HTH
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

For some reason linking to an AEP in the forum here just isn’t happening. Let me have your email and I’ll send the AEP that way.

Cheers
Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable anmated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

This was supposed to be a tutorial for the COW. But since you’re desperate … .

You’ll need a layer to act as the VisualSelector. I’ve used a solid named Royal Blue Solid 1. It can be the ubiquitous karaoke ball or anything that you want. The idea is to keyframe this layer so that it’s x-location is where you want the text to change its property(ies). You can switch it off its visual if you don’t need it. The process in creating such an effect helps if you have an object/layer that guides you as to the location of the effect. What you need to do is to listen to the song and then simply animated the layer so that it is in sync with the lyrics with respect to the text layer’s rendition of the lyrics. A small layer works best – 20×20 or set it to your requirements.

You’ll need to place the script into the prescribed property for each text layer.

Instructions:
Copy and past this script into a Text Layer’s Range Selector’s Start Property. Apply a Text Animator to any property that you want to animate, for example Fill Color or Scale etc. maxNumberKeyframes is crucial. You need at least two keyframes for the VisualSelector layer. There are times when there is a pause to the singing and that is where you may need more keyframes. Just ensure that maxNumberKeyframes tallies with the number of keyframes that you have for each text layer.

I’ve added an Adjustment to the script for finetuning purposes. This comes in handy if the VisualSelector looks to be lagging or ahead of the effect. If you wanted a sphere/bulge effect then simply pickwhip the required parameter onto the VisualSelector’s position property. You will have to offset the value for y-position, for the sphere/bulge effect so that the effects sits directly on the text. For that, use this script on the position for Sphere/Bulge:
//Start of Script
SphereLocation = thisComp.layer(“Royal Blue Solid 1”);
[SphereLocation.position[0],SphereLocation.position[1]+30]
//End of Script

//Start of Script
VisualSelector = thisComp.layer(“Royal Blue Solid 1”);
Start = VisualSelector.position[0];
maxNumberKeyframes = 4; //insert the number of keyframes you have for the text layer;
StartAdjustment = 10;
EndAdjustment = -10;
linear(Start,thisComp.layer(“Royal Blue Solid 1”).position.key(1)[0]+StartAdjustment,thisComp.layer(“Royal Blue Solid 1”).position.key(maxNumberKeyframes)[0]+EndAdjustment,0,100)
//End of Script

HTH

Roland Kahlenberg
broadcastGEMs
customizable animated backdrops with Adobe After Effects project files

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Andrew Kramer] “I bass fish for sport, so we let them go”

Kinda different here – we like to eat what we catch. I wonder what it’ll feel like if you caught the same fish twice. 🙂

Filip’s got his point – thanks Filip, that put some sense into something I was trying to suss out over on this end. I had a feeling that something was wrong with using the Light Transmission for reflection purposes. It’s actually fine as long as the camera doesn’t do an orbital move. Straight on moves and 15-30 degree camera moves are quite alright but anything more and things go wacky.

And as for the recipe, by all means send it over but Yellowtails are hard to come by. They’re only widely available here as Sashimi. But Seabass, ehmmm … those are great for steaming, ala Chinese style. I’ll see if I can

Kathlyn would readily welcome your recipe too. I hear that Ron’s working up quite an appetite for fish these days – over to you Ron … .

Cheers dude! Great tutorial and keep up the great work. Imust say that being here from the early days, we’ve seen lots of folks come and go and each and every one has been a blessed addition to the COW. I just hope that those that visit us here are just as appreciative of the work that’s come on since, day ZERO-ONE.

I knda miss the inputs from Rick Gerard, Mark Simpson, Philip Hodgetts, and David Bogie. Argh!, I reminisce too much. But it’s been great seeing you guys contributing as much as you have.

But I’m still curious to know what you’d do/how you’d feel if you caught the same fish twice.

Cheers!
Roland Kahlenberg