[Ron Coy]

Ok, basically you have an image that is say, 200 x 200 pixels. If you open it in Photoshop and go to Filter> Other> Offset, then offset it by half of the width and height and make sure undefined areas are set to wrap around, you’ll get the edges to all touch each other.

If you clone, blur, etc. to get the edges to match up without any visible seams, then apply offset again with the same settings, you’ll have fixed the edge matching up problem and have your image back the way it was, but fixed. This is the way we used to do seamless textures before all the fancy plugins and such.

Another tip that nobody seems to know… when creating cloud textures, you can make an image with a white background that is a multiple of 256 x 256 pixels, apply clouds or difference clouds filter, and it will be a seamless texture. You can make this somewhat large and use it as a cloud or fog layer that doesn’t look like it’s tiling and doesn’t have to be super huge to move around rapidly. You can duplicate and set one layer to start when another one ends (time offset) and be able to work with the layers easily without having a gigantic layer that slows everything down and is hard to deal with.

I hope this helps.

[Ron Coy]

here’s a way to do it, I just learned this from a tutorial on http://www.videocopilot.net (the magic glass tutorial)

If you go to your last keyframe, then open up the graph view, you can set your new last keyframe later in the comp and align the angle of the keyframe graph linearly with the previous angle.

of course, an expression would be cool, and reusable, but I don’t know enough to help.

maybe someone can write one… go to https://www.redefinery.com and you can request that he write such a tool, or maybe someone else has a tutorial or a script for you.

I did see some tutorials using expression loops, so I know that exists, but I don’t know about extrapolations.

[Ron Coy]

yeah.. you pretty much have to use a 3D app..

blender is free, quite powerful, and there are TONS of resources online to learn to use it.

[Ron Coy]

if you move your strokes around in 3D space with 3D stroke, they will overlap each other similar to what you have here.

[Ron Coy]

ya know, I thought that seemed off… but I was just considering the workaround, not the limitation of the plugin.

My brain is kinda fried today. Oh, well.

I’ve done massive amounts of particles in Particular for a swarming bees animation recently. I should have snapped to that…

[Ron Coy]

usually, the cables from the camera are output only. Some cameras allow you to capture analog sources to DV, so check your specs on your camera.

If not, you can get a converter for analog to DV conversion. They are about $100 for a low end one, and can get very expensive.

[Ron Coy]

I’ve tried in the past to learn Javascript, to no avail. Maybe now that I have a real reason to, I’ll get a good book on it, and adapt what I learn to use with After Effects.

Wedge that in with all the other stuff to learn about After Effects (it never ends), plus trying to learn at least one decent Mac 3D program, get better at Final Cut Pro, get real work done, and have a life outside of work… yeah.

That, and find a new job.

[Ron Coy]

you can time remap the footage to be as slow as you need it to be to track the object and get the light streaks to look good.. As long as you speed it up by the same factor you slowed it down, it will match up. Just don’t use the video footage (turn off the layer) when you render out your effect. Make sure you use a codec that supports an alpha channel when you render out the footage.

in effect, you’re just making more frames for the effect to happen over, then shortening the length of the effect by speeding it back up.

[Ron Coy]

do a comp at like 4 times the length you need, move the light trail over that time and render out the movie file

then import the movie, time remap it to be shorter like your original comp length.

[Ron Coy]

good to know. I guess it has been a long while since I needed a hold keyframe… typically I don’t use camera moves in AE, but I’m starting to use the camera more. This will help.

thanks.

Lots has changed since AE 4.1 🙂 I pretty much missed AE5 and AE 7.

Went from 3.1 to 4.x to 6.5 to CS3. I still have old behaviors of stuff stuck in my head and old ways of doing things. I’m upgrading my brain this year so I can better use AE.