[Steve Bentley]

So that works but I can’t make he radius value “stick” in the control section. I tried changing it in the prefs but that one’s really for something else. Each time I choose a new point on my path the radius value zero’s out but not really. If I don’t enter a value there, when I hit the “round” button a huge value gets input and the path flys beyond screen. (AI 2018 PC)
I can get-by entering my preferred value each time, but weren’t computers supposed to get rid of repetitive tasks?
Is there a trick?

[Steve Bentley]

Perfect K thanks. I didn’t have my Controls panel open so I didn’t see the corners tool “turn on ” when I selected the corner.

[Steve Bentley]

So the first question is, is there anything to reflect? it looks like you have only a plane in the scene and that’s it and I can see that plane in the reflection. So that’s working. Remember lights don’t actually show up to the camera. They can put a highlight on the object but it has to be a special kind of light to show up in a reflection.
Try putting some other objects in the scene and see what you get, or better yet,add a sphere that’s much bigger than your objects so it acts like a giant room around everything. Put a texture on the sphere and make sure to put the image for the texture on the sphere in the luminence channel and turn off the color channel so that it shows even if there are no lights.
Try something like this

[Steve Bentley]

I’m worried that you think you can learn how to do this from a screen shot. This process is lengthy and complicated.
There are lots of video tutorials on line for how to work with mocha, but these assume a good knowledge of After Effects too. You can search for them – try “Mocha, tracking, rotoscoping, face replacement” as your search words. I know you aren’t replacing your faces but face replacement, which we do so much of these days in films, uses the same techniques to isolate those areas and perform changes to them.

And please don’t use videos like this one to work with. The amount of noise and artifacts in the image make hard work for the computers and software that are trying to reduce some of the tedious frame by frame work this kind of thing used to entail.
The cleaner the source footage the easier it is for both you and the software.
Good luck.

[Steve Bentley]

I don’t think this is an effect, I think its really bad compression, and then recompression, coming from a different format (PAL? to NTSC?) and a different time base (25 fps to 30) and a really high keyframe distance, too large a sampling block and probably blown up from a smaller already compressed bit of footage, and even maybe a really bad kinescope transfer.
The compression is freaking out around the faces due to the detail needed and the constantly changing expressions.

But that doesn’t help you achieve this.

My recommendation would be to use Mocha (comes with AE now) to track and rotoscope the faces and then apply blurs or smears to the face element. Or compress the hell out of the footage you have.

[Steve Bentley]

When you duplicate a layer in the time line it’s still the same nested comp no matter where it is in the time line. Best way is to duplicate it in the time line, then right click and go to source in the project, duplicate the source there and then replace the second one in the time line with the duplicate from the project window. You can do this by highlighting the layer in the time line and option (mac) alt (PC) dragging the one from the project window on top of the second layer in the time line. It will replace it with the new one, with all parameters of the layer that live in the current time line intact. So if you altered the transparency of layer 1 but not layer 2 replacing layer 1 this way keeps the transparency animation intact even though the source is now technically different.
Now you can dive into that new duplicate comp and make changes and it will only effect the second version in the time line.

[Steve Bentley]

Are you sure you haven’t pickwhipped the justification parameter and linked it to something? That element follows the new text around like it linked to the justified left position.

[Steve Bentley]

Just in case it helps others with the same issue and they are using expressions:
Many “effects” and expressions use the index parameter. This is the number of the layer in the stack of layers. If you add another layer all other layers below have their index incremented by one. So any calculations using the index number will change for those layers below. This happens too when you reorder layers.

[Steve Bentley]

2017 has that feature, you can feed text through expressions to change over time

[Steve Bentley]

For older versions of AE you can use the numbers effect (under text effect) or the time code effect to have numbers change randomly or based on time etc.