[Ryan Hill]

I think the Cycore FX Manual is a PDF file seperate from the AE help file. It will be a better source of info on the Cycore plugins.

[Ryan Hill]

I don’t think keying out the blacks will be satisfactory. I would suggest changing the lensflare’s blend mode to lighten or add.

You can change the colour of the lensflare a lot of ways. The way I’d probably do it is to apply a levels filter, and reduce the amount of red and blue.

[Ryan Hill]

You could try applying this to each paper layer:
https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=8

There’s also shatter. Put all the papers on one large layer and apply a custom shatter map so each paper is its own shattered piece. There’s an example somewhere on Creative Cow where someone used that to make falling leaves.

Some of the particle plugins might also be up to the task, but I can’t think which has got 3D tumble for particles.

All these solutions treat the papers as rigid. If you want the papers to bend and curve as they fall, you will need 3D software.

[Ryan Hill]

Parent the text layer to the circle layer. (If the Parent column isn’t visible, right click on the layer.)

Then, to make the text appear, you can animate the opacity of the text layer so it changes from 0% to 100% right when the circle is parallel to the camera.

[Ryan Hill]

The effects I listed come installed with AE.

Keylight and Primatte I think have to be purchased seperately.

[Ryan Hill]

Green screening or blue screening is the act of shooting something in front of a solid coloured background and then replacing that background afterwards.

After Effects ships with several effects that can be used for keying. (Keying is a more general term that encompases both green and blue screening plus other ways of replacing the background.) These are effects that are listed under Keying as I said. They make certain parts of the layer transparent, letting the lower layers show through. Right below Keying on the effects menu is Matte, which has Simple Choker. This gives you another way to tweak how much of the image is transparent.

You should probably use Chroma Key first. It is the easiest to understand, though not the most powerful.

[Ryan Hill]

Go to your effects, and look for the section titled Keying. Also there is an effect below that called simple choker which you could find useful. Also learn how to use Track Matte.

Matte painting is a specific type of compositing. I think it means when the upper layer is fabricated rather than recorded.

[Ryan Hill]

The free way to do it is to duplicate the layer many times and position each one by hand, or write a .jsx script that will automatically duplicate and position them for you.

[Ryan Hill]

And just to be clear, this will of course not look as good as the LOTR way of doing it.

[Ryan Hill]

Yes. I know the Matrix and the LOTR DVDs both had features on how some of the effects were done. It tends to be a broad overview, rather than at a level of detail that you could duplicate the effect, but I did have a few moments of “Now that’s a really good idea!” when watching both of them.