[Ron Coy]

I think you need to mess with the particular settings to get the emitter to output more particles. That’s probably why it looks “thinner” and “dimmer”. If you’re spacing the particles out too much, it’s not going to look bright.

Try upping the opacity of the particles in Particular, and also try upping the Particles per second.

I did a keyframed movement parenting the emitter light to a null, and it looked like it did with the wiggle expression, but the emitter was moving at about the same speed as it was with the wiggle expression.

The other thing is, if you’re using a path as in writing a name, you probably aren’t moving the emitter in Z space, so it’s not going to look as dynamic as the wiggled one. Try moving the emitter forward and back a bit as the path is followed. Maybe just wiggle it in the Z axis as it follows the path.

[Ron Coy]

well, the technique would apply to footage too. Of course, making it work where it goes in one direction is tricky, but you can use a couple of layers of it offset so that the begginning of one offset is in the middle and carries you to a loop point.

In other words, if you start the first one at the beginning and set the end of the second one so that it ends at 25 seconds, and blend between them in the middle, it should fix your time issue without screwing up the timing of the fog. To carry this further, if you start the fog layer at say two seconds in, then overlap the layers so that that two second mark repeats at the twenty five second mark, you have a loop…

hope that helps.

[Ron Coy]

oh, man… I don’t know of a quick solution. Not with paths anyway. You could just use something that affects alpha edges.

I don’t know of any way to make paths from the alpha of the layer, except for a tedious importing of every frame into Photoshop and converting the alpha to a path, which doesn’t even work that well, or using the path tracing stuff in Illustrator, which also wouldn’t work that well, and would be even more tedious, or just Rotoscoping the whole thing, which, again, is tedious, but probably your best bet, with the best results.

you might try looking for an effect to affect the alpha, like Shine

[Ron Coy]

It’s pretty hard to get a random effect like fog to loop worth a damn, but here’s my idea on how to get a loop out of it.

set up the fog layer(s) and render it out, or put it as it’s own comp, whichever you think is better for your purposes. You won’t need to tweak it.

add the fog to your original comp. enable time remapping for the layer.

set the layer to slow down to a stop about mid way through, then reverse the time back to the beginning. This can be done gradually enough as not to be noticeable.

or

put two copies of the fog layer, time reverse one, then fade between them at about halfway, or whenever it would look best to do so.

Unless your fog is blowing in one direction, this should work.

if it is blowing in one direction, then you might have to experiment with the evolution and see if there is a loop point that you can time to your animation.

[Ron Coy]

um… like in relation to After Effects, or just in general?

I don’t think that the art of Typography can be covered in one tutorial. It’s more of a discipline.

Here’s a page of info and articles dealing with the subject, though.
https://www.graphic-design.com/Type/

It’s not specific to After Effects, but type in general.

What are you after?

[Ron Coy]

tan or beige colored underwear or speedo with mosaic effect on it…

you can even put an inverted black triangle in the crotch area for a more convincing effect.

[Ron Coy]

Trapcode Form would do it. There is a tutorial I watched recently that had a similar element using Form.

I am assuming this needs to be animated, and not just a still of a parabola…

on this page: https://www.studiodaily.com/main/training/9159.html

[Ron Coy]

trapcode form creates similar effects.

[Ron Coy]

There is a tutorial for ProAnimator that uses the ProAnimator animation to control layers. I’m not sure if it can be adapted to the camera controls or not.

I’m also not positive, but I think you could use ProAnimator to get real 3D text into your comp.

Here’s a link to the video of the tutorial.

https://zaxwerks.com/movies/media/pa_importer.mov

[Ron Coy]

curves works, but you could also apply an adjustment layer to the background layer and use the hue/saturation filter. If you click colorize and bring the saturation up, you’ll get a pure color, and it’s easy to keyframe that hue slider anywhere you want it. Or you can keyframe the saturation and lightness (i think) sliders as necessary.

many ways to skin a cat. I just prefer the hue/sat filter because I don’t like curves…