[Ron Coy]

I’m pretty sure his licensing is royalty free.

But I bet he would like a “thank you” in the credits, if you were making a feature film.

[Ron Coy]

you probably need to do each stroke on a separate layer, so that the strokes stay visible.

but actually, the best way to do this is to create your drawing, break the drawing up in to separate strokes in separate layers in Photoshop, then bring all the layers into After Effects as a comp. Then, apply the write on effect and change the paint style to Reveal original image.

There is a tutorial with this technique here:
https://library.creativecow.net/articles/hansen_jaysen/growing.php

[Ron Coy]

https://www.jellypie.co.uk

this is about the closest I’ve seen so far, but I’m not in the market for a Windows program to do titling and such.

actually, that software may not do actual titling. It does custom backgrounds, and looks like it does 3D text, but I can’t find a feature set.

[Ron Coy]

That’s what I did. Best purchase(s) I’ve made in a LONG time.

[Ron Coy]

upgrade to CS3 is the way to go.

I don’t know if corner pin is exactly what you need or not, but it seems like that’s one way to go. Either way, the upgraded app is DEFINITELY worth it. Especially if you upgrade to Production Premium to get all the updated apps. With licenses to Illustrator and AE already, you should be eligible for the cheaper upgrade to Production Premium.

[Ron Coy]

the answer to your question is a question…

Which editor do YOU feel the most comfortable with, and has the feature set that YOU need?

I mean, if it were me, I’d want to use the editor that is going to get me the most work, and in my case, that’s Final Cut Pro. Everyone I deal with uses it, every place that I’ve tried to get a job with requires it… it’s my bread and butter app, other than After Effects.

On the other hand, lots of people use Premier Pro or Avid as well and some are still for some reason using Media 100, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to know them. Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of budget, so I fudge my way through using other editors if I’m put in a scenario where I have to use them.

I’m really more of a motion graphics guy, so the editor I use isn’t really due to any preference, other than the preference to maximize my income.

[Ron Coy]

there are videos here https://www.trapcode.com/form_training.html that should give you an idea of how to set it up. Especially the “using layer maps” tutorial

also, there used to be a project available to show you how to make text disperse and fade out, but it’s not on the site anymore. It’s called texttosand.aep if you want to look around for it. Someone here posted a link to it in another thread about a month or so ago. I downloaded it at the time, and have it somewhere.

I messed around with that project file and figured out how to get the text to coalesce from particles into words. Basically I removed one of the ramps for opacity (i think) and reversed the direction of the dispersion layer (i think… maybe vice versa), then put that into a comp and time reversed the layer so that the particles would work in reverse. I tried a bunch of different techniques to control the particles, but this is what eventually worked.

hope that helps.

[Ron Coy]

ProAnimator does some cool stuff.

Check this out… there is a tutorial on how to use the animation paths that proanimator generates to control custom layers.

lemme see…

https://aefreemart.com/2007/12/12/zaxwerks-blog-%C2%BB-new-tutorial-getting-creative-with-proanimator-importer/

You need to make sure you set up ProAnimator correctly though. Put the entire ProAnimator folder in the After Effects effects folder and use shortcuts or aliases to get to the program if you run it standalone. That way, your presets and textures and what have you will be available from both within After Effects and when using it standalone.

this is a cool way to use ProAnimator to get some really awesome motion in your animations.

[Ron Coy]

I think this can be done by making each piece a different consecutive shade of grey and using gradient wipe. Each piece will wipe in order of lightness to darkness.

you can try other methods, but nothing seems to be a quick solution.

[Ron Coy]

open GL is pretty much useless in After Effects.

It may not look great in the preview, but try rendering and see if your quality suffers or not.

I’m betting OpenGL won’t help your renders one whit.