[Steve Bentley]

You can also precomp the those layers and then stretch the outer comp as single entity. Depending on what you are doing in that inner precomp you may need to use the “Continuously Rasterize” button (he little sun icon just to the right of the layer name) in the outer comp.

Keep in mind that if those layers are footage, some ways of stretching them don’t render the missing frames (from expanding the time) well and others can do a fairly decent job. Time Stretch and Enable time Remapping can only do so much interpolation whereas the time warp can “invent” the missing frames (within limits). Also older versions of AE don’t have interpolation features in the remapping algorithms. (but the Time Warp effect does)

If those layers are animated elements, AE will interpolate all the keyframes correctly so that all motion and transformations are smooth even though you have increased the time they happen over, even in the outer comp where technically no keyframes exist.

[Steve Bentley]

I wonder if that’s a new “feature”.
I’ve noticed this in the last project I did as well but it wasn’t a big deal for me since I wasn’t versioning. But if you go back a few Revs of AE (I’ve tested all the way back to CS5.5) this doesn’t happen, and the layer in the timeline and in the project panel updates its name when the footage is replaced.

Of course this update won’t happen at all if you have the timeline set to layer name and you have changed the name of the layer for better identification. I’ve been handling the lack up of update in the replaced footage name by changing the name of the layer so that future generations know what I did. But it still should update in the project panel.

I’ve been finding I’ve been saying “should” a lot more since AE 2018. But of course to no effect. Adobe’s work on making icons too small to hit with a mouse is very taxing and at the bleeding edge of science so there is very little money left for fixing these kinds of “inconsequential issues”.

[Steve Bentley]

That might work for the abdomin alone (but probably not the short shorts). The problem is the same as for extrusions with bevels or rads on them. If you make the rads too big they start intersection themselves in the corners. For the cloth, as you start “extruding” inward the geomtry can intesect itself. On an opaque object you might not notice (although it might up the render time) but in a transparent object you may see the kinks, odd index of refraction artifacts and odd lighting issues with ploy’s passing through each other (depending on your trani settings in the the ray section of the render settings.)
However if the shape is a smooth shallow curve like a womans hourglass (mine tends to form the opposite shape) that might have enough play so the inward facing polys are just “projected “smaller than the outer ones but don’t actually intersect.
If you are animating the figure that may be a problem since the bending of shapes with bones tends to create poly intersections even on the best of days

[Steve Bentley]

I’ve got two Win 7 machines that are virtually identical, including the same font installed on each (Metropolis Bold). But on one of the machines neither C4d or Adobe CC will recognize that font as the same one saved in the file from the other machine. So even after all this time there is still voodoo in font land.

[Steve Bentley]

I’m not sure what you mean by a 3D object file. OBJ is a 3d object format. (do you mean 3Ds max?)
Here’s a few things it might be.
OBJ is listed as Wavefront in the export list (and you do have to export and not just save as and rename the extension).
Form only cares about the vertexes so you can try exporting vertexes only in the preference dialogue that comes up when you say export.
The scale of the object may be too small coming from C4D – you can change this in the export prefs.
Form also doesn’t care about textures so you can turn those off in the export as they may be corrupting things somehow (but textures are usually ignored in an OBJ for this kind of use)
Are you using Version 3 of Form? You couldn’t bring in OBJ’s into AE and Form before this version (I think).
All your geometry in C4D must be editable (as in: all polygons – things like extrudes and sweeps and hypernurbs and primitives may not properly export to vertexes – they should but they might not) So hit the C key and make them all editable. If you have deformations you can use mesh/current state to object to collapse the transformations and turn it all in to locked polys.

[Steve Bentley]

To complete the thought – you can use subdivision surfaces (also known as hypernurbs in some circles) but before you nest your object inside a subdivision object, move every other point on that awning up a little. Nest it in the hypernurbs and that will soften the pointy bits. You can then alter the original points while the hypernurbs are still turned on to tweak.
The problem is the subdivision surface object will soften every part of that model so you may end up having to edit all the sharp corners back to being sharp.
What about just making that outer flap its own object and either make it from a closed spline and then extrude it or put it in a loft object to make it geometry or put it in a cloth object if it needs to flap in the wind. You can select the spline points to want to soften and choose chamfer from the Mesh/Spline menu.

[Steve Bentley]

To me that looks like polys or points from the inside are projecting through the outer surface. And they may have different lighting on them because their normals may be facing the opposite way the normals on the surface are (so you are technically seeing the inside while still on the outside.

[Steve Bentley]

What version of C4D and Ae are you using? There was a change from back when you downloaded the plugin for Ae from Maxon (circa CS6 I think) to now where Cineware comes with AE. You can have both the old and new plug ins installed in a newer version of AE, they will produce different results though.

[Steve Bentley]

Is that 16Gb GfX card ram or main computer ram?
Do you have any reversing time in any of the clips that use RSMB? We’ve had some issues when scrubbing backward through the timeline; RSMB will cack and then be cranky for the render with what’s still in cache. But usually going forward its fine.
You didn’t mention what codec your footage (if any) is in. Some codecs have, what amounts to, made up frames that rely on other frames in the sequence to have them resolve properly. Since AE works frame by frame this can upset it occasionally. As Dave mentioned (but not just for mp4s) transcode any codecs of this type in to something that AE can handle properly.

[Steve Bentley]

You didn’t mention whether Mac or PC – you can also right click to do the same on the PC, not sure about the Mac. Its also possible (I’ve seen this happen) with Select being at the bottom of the list, the pop up has overflowed and there is a little of it in a second column to the right – easy to miss if it only has one item in it (the last item of course). This used to happen on smaller screens when precompose used to be the last item.