[Steve Bentley]

I did not actually try more than two iterations. I will shortly. I can’t see any reason why it won’t work but then that’s where most of the really great inventions come from, so I’ll give it a whirl.

In the mean time, and without knowing exactly what it’s supposed to look like, may I suggest approaching it from another direction?

What if you used just one arrow and placed it at its orbit distance from the logo (along one of the cardinal directions will make it easier later on). Then make a few nulls that sit at the center of the logo. Nest the nulls and then make the arrow a child of the inner most null. So Grandparent, parent, child. This way you have full control over the spin and position of the arrow without the dreaded gimbal-lock (or Heisenberg uncertainty principle for that matter). Use the Grandparent null to control say, the y spin, and only the y spin, use the parent null to control the overall z spin and the use the arrow itself to control its distance from the logo as it orbits, and also the angle of its travel direction. This way you can animate the arrow’s orbit at any point along the timeline so that it can change directions, get further out, even make the orbit become elliptical by changing the timing of the distance vs the grandparent y spin. Does that help?
Make sure to use “object” coordinates and not “world” so that all rotations and distances are in reference to the parent of the object you’re dealing with. With this system, for example, the value of the distance the arrow is from the parent null will stay the same unless you change it, even when it’s orbiting. But if you look at the arrow’s world coordinates, they change wildly as the arrow orbits – too hard to track and get a handle on this way, so keep the coordinates in object mode.
One last thing – this system won’t auto rotate the arrow so that it always points in the direction of travel. You can make an expresso that does this of course, but it’s probably easier just to animate it when needed as the key frames for this will line up exactly with the keyframes of the other rotation controlling nulls.

I’ll let you know what I find with the multiple splines being married together.

[Steve Bentley]

Ok got it.
What you have to watch for is the “select only visible” element in the bounding box grabber attribute or you wont actually be grabbing both points when you apply the join segment tool. This has to be off.
I got it to work fine with this in mind.

[Steve Bentley]

That sounds right Jason,
Let me try exactly what you are doing.
What version are you running and what platform?
There might be a better way to do a step and repeat 50 times anyway. Do you have a sketch of what you are trying to build?

SB

[Steve Bentley]

Of course a little application of modifier keys is the answer to any problem (that and chocolate!).
The Ctrl key lets me move the the layer while the mask is visible – so I’m betting this is a 5.5 thing and there is a Mac equiv. However, if you want to scale the layer and the mask is visible the mask handle takes precedent over the layer’s handle. Is there a way around this? Before the mask handle only took precedent if the mask was selected in the timeline.

[Steve Bentley]

Hey Dan
Are all the layers 3D or is it a mix?
Do you have motion blur turned on for some and not others?

[Steve Bentley]

We’ll its as crammed as that box can be (4gb) – not a lot to be sure for Adobe memory hogs, but I’m pretty good about running only one big app at a time.
Have tried multi proc on and off and open GL on and off, disk cache on and off.
I will check for updates – with it being a new download from Adobe that lulled me into thinking it would be fresh. But you’re right.
Thanks

[Steve Bentley]

Hey Sascha,
We’re finding the same thing. We’re also finding that even when you don’t remove that second monitor the workspaces aren’t remembering every palettes properly (preset ones included).
The whole point of the MBP is that you can work on the run with one screen and then set up properly with a second monitor, hit your “twin” workspace and have (in our case) the timeline fill that second monitor. But what a pain when you go back to a single screen and hit your “single” preset and you can’t get that timeline to show up anywhere (or anywhere where you can grab the top of it) on the main screen.
We’ve also been mourning the loss of the green maximize button on the timeline palette. I guess they figured that if they made the minimize and close buttons small enough we wouldn’t notice.
Let me know if you find the answer to the workspaces as it’s been bugging us for way too long now.

[Steve Bentley]

Hey Chris,
Go back and look at your original request about CS4 to CS3 and follow the thread. I have posted instructions on how to convert the file. (yes it can be done) I figure since your still looking for a demo CS3 app you still have an issue.
Cheers

[Steve Bentley]

Actually you can – well at least on the Mac so perhaps this will work on the PC.
Make a CS3 file, save it. Open the CS3 file in a text editor (like notepad) and spread the view out so you don’t get any uneccesary line returns that aren’t built into the file.
Copy the first chunk of code out of it. It always has a similar look to the code below with a space before the rest of the file. (area in blue is what you copy)



That little circle is the dead giveaway of the end of the header.
Then open your CS4 project that you want to convert in a text editor and highlight the same chunk even though many of the characters will not match.
Paste your code from the CS3 file so that it replaces this code in the CS4 file. Now save the file as a new text doc but if prompted don’t add an extension. Once saved rename it so that the extension is .aep.
Now in CS3 import the new file (don’t “open” it) and in the import dialogue set the type to “project” if it doesn’t do so on it’s own.
Hit ok and you’re there.
Not all things will translate but I’ve had some heavy projects with lots of plug ins and everything was perfect. Only weird plug ins, or massively out of date ones that have had complete rebuilds between versions seem not to work.
Good luck.

[Steve Bentley]

We’re doing this exact thing right now.
While it does sound like the export was incorrect at some stage (1707 is the giveaway), as long as the AE file is running at 1.33 PAR the render out of it should be fine. However on re-import back in to FCP, even into the same sequence it came from, the PAR may have been “forgotten” coming out of AE depending on what codec and settings for render you used. If this is the case, simply go into the motion tab for the newly imported clip in FCP and hit the reset (red x) for the distort tab. This will set the PAR back to what it should be so that it looks right in the timeline, and when exported to a final movie. It isn’t technically right but it does undo the damage that occurred coming out of AE.

If instead you are bringing the clip back into a new sequence in FCP and have the new sequence matched to the clips attributes, the image will also be squished – change the PAR in the sequence settings to those of DVCPROHD and then hit the reset on the clips distort tab.

Be careful also of gamma and colour shifts. Depending on codec chosen and whether or not you remain in YUV, or end up in RGB colour space (the animation codec is RGB and it’s what AE works in natively) you can may see a shift. There are ways around this but that’s another forum.

Have you considered exporting out as a pointed movie? Uncheck the “Render as self contained movie” check box in FCP. This way AE will work with the original files and their native colour space and not a re-compressed version. And the initial exported movie from FCP will be microscopic so it saves drive space.