[Speedyman]

I hear ya. Athletic and patient talent? What, next you’ll suggest I pay the talent. haha! Well, thanks for the response. This is looking a bit more complicated than I imagined.

BTW, I think the model in the Mercury commercials is Jill Wagner. I don’t know how patient she was during filming, but she does look plenty athletic to me. raaawwrrr!

[Speedyman]

Thank you. Your website is very informative! I had not seen it before. I’ll stay tuned for your tutorial.

[Speedyman]

Wow. It’s very hard for me to understand the issue you are having. Here’s a couple of thoughts.

1) Duplicating a comp does not create duplicates of any of the footage used within them. You must replace the footage within the duplicates manually.

2) Replacing a layer (or footage) within a composition without losing any keyframes, effects, etc. is easy. Just select the new footage in the project window, then ALT-drag it onto the layer you want to change. The layer’s settings, effects and keyframes will not be affected; only the footage itself will be changed.

Hope this helps.

[Speedyman]

Hi Scott
I’m glad my thoughts were of some use.

Now, you really have me intrigued as to what your project looks like. Do you have a screen shot you could let me see? Here’s my email addy: XXspeedman_55XX@XXhotmailXX.com (remove all the X’s; trying to prevent spam).

All the points you bring up seem do-able in AE, if you wouldn’t mind me taking a look at what you have accomplished so far.

Thanks

[Speedyman]

Hi,
I read this thread with interest, as it sounds like a idea I might use sometime. However, I came up with a slightly different solution which only uses three layers, and one null and a camera. I’m not sure if this is exactly what you are trying to achieve, but check out my example here:
https://www.fabiolite.com/_ae/

I put up a short WMV file and the project file so you can see what I did. But here’s a summary:

In After Effects 7…

1) Create a NTSC DV comp; 10 sec. long.
2) Add a 400×300 brown solid named “desk” the calendar will sit on.
3) Create a 150×150 white solid named “text”. This will be the calendar. On this layer, add the following effects, ordered from top to bottom in the effects controls stack:
a) Numbers
b) Grow Bounds
c) CC Page Turn
4) Add a 50mm camera
5) Add a null layer. Parent the camera to it.

Now…

At 0 sec., add keyframe for the null layer’s rotation value.
At 10 sec., add another keyframe and set it for 360 degrees rotation.
Set the camera at a pleasing angle, pointed at the desk. I just pulled mine down about 30-40 degrees.

Back at 0 sec., on the “text” layer, open the Effects Controls. Look In the NUMBERS effect, “Format” section: set TYPE to “Short Date”.

Set the FILL/STROKE as desired. Make sure that COMPOSITE ON ORIGINAL is checked.

Now right-click on “VALUE/OFFSET” property and select “Reveal in timeline”. In the timeline ALT+CLICK the property stopwatch and add the following expression: “4383+time” (w/o the quotes). This will produce a start date of Jan 01, 2007; (you can change this later if you wish) and it will increment this date by one day once every second. Press the ENTER key on your keyboard’s numeric keypad to close the expression box and accept your entry.

Back up in the effects controls, still on the “text” layer, open up the NUMBERS effect, and set the PIXELS property to about 400. This will “grow” the text layer’s dimensions so that CC Page Curl will continue off the layer, instead of just being limited by the layer’s size.

In the CC PAGE CURL effect, set and keyframe the fold positions; I used these values:
frame 0: 171, 161;
frame 29: -133, -109;
frame 30: 171, 161.
Now, in the timeline for these keyframes, add this expression: “loopOut(type = “cycle”, numKeyframes = 0)” (w/o the quotes). This will loop these values for the entire animation. You could have also simply turned down the twirly for FOLD POSITION” property in the timeline, clicked on the little circle with the arrow, and in that pop-up, choose PROPERTY, then LOOP OUT.. This would do the typing for you. Press ENTER on the numeric keypad to finish.

Now duplicate this entire layer by selecting it and pressing CTRL+D. ename it “Stationary text”; this layer will not move from the desk. It will display the date one day later than the page page-turning off the desk calendar. Here’s how to make the changes to enable this:
With the layer selected, press the “u” key to unfold all properties you have already altered. For the NUMBER’s VALUE/OFFSET property, use the pickwhip and select the matching property on the “text” layer. This will type in the property for you; then add “+1” to the end of this new expression. This will use the “text” layer’s date and add one day to it for the “stationary text” layer. Now delete the CC PAGE TURN and GROW BOUNDS effects from this duplicated layer.

That’s about it. Now you can dress it up by using a realistic desk, adding a drop shadow to the “text” layer, coming up with a “stack” of pages for the calendar to make it look thicker. Invigorator would be nice to use for this. You might animate the “stack” to move down through the desk to appear to get smaller as pages are “removed” from the top of it. Use different camera moves, etc.

Let me know if this works for you. I think it would save a lot of rendering overhead by just using two layers and expressions to mimick the effect you’re after.