[Steve Bentley]

Where are the eyeballs in C4D? I find that models coming from Daz often make the eyeballs part of the mesh hierarchy and C4D seems to work better (for us at least) when the eyeballs are part of the bone hierarchy.

Unless that’s for the new “Ravenous Werewolf” movie and then I wouldn’t change a thing.

[Steve Bentley]

If you make a pointed hourglass shape and don’t fill it, and use the offset effect to move it up the screen endlessly (you have to position the end points perfectly in the right spot so the path is seamless when it’s offset).
Pre comp that.
Then use CC cylinder to map multiple copies of that on a tube that you will look down the barrel at. Use a camera and not just the default view so that you get a real 3D view and so you can adjust the focal length – the longer the mm of the focal length the “flatter” the depth of the tube will appear.

Or you could just place copies of your precomp in 3D and angle them toward camera. They will be flat planes but with a little optical compensation effect and a lens distortion effect that might bow them out a bit.

You could also try doing a radial repeat in the hourglass precomp (the repeater is on the shape layer) so you get a sunburst look. then in the outer comp map that to either CC cynlinder or CC sphere, or use flowMotion or pinch, or many of the distortion effects to bend the outer edge toward camera or suck the middle to infinity.

[Steve Bentley]

Thanks CM.
You’re right, it could be legacy stuff in the nooks and crannies. We have to keep old versions of AE (and associated plug ins and scripts) live for legacy projects that continue to change. It was easier than rebuilding the pipeline every time AE or a plug-in changed. Particular had a lot to do with that as the conversion it does from old to new Revs creates very different looks in subtle things like smoke and clouds and high density aux systems.

But even on new installs on new machines, with just one Rev of AE, I’ve never been a fan of how fast the vertical scrolling is in the time line – to be fair we often have hundreds of layers in the outer most comp, but I can spin the mouse wheel and go have coffee waiting for the layers to settle down (ok, its not that bad but certainly not digitally proportional).

[Steve Bentley]

Smacks forehead.

The machine I was doing this on is the only one WITHOUT proEXR. No wonder it looked different. There’s enough new “looks” in AE that I chocked the different dialogue up to a new Adobe layout (that, and rushing to push a render out – we’ve skipped a few versions along the way so the changes to the UI seem more severe – ya, that’s my story!)

I’m off to dress down IT for not installing that.

Thanks for the insight – deep as usual.

[Steve Bentley]

What I don’t think was mentioned is that since AE 2017 you can have access to each node on the mask path. You can control each node with an assigned null and you can talk to those controlling nulls with expressions and sliders.
The reverse is true too – you can control nulls with the nodes on a moving mask path.
This feature is in the WIndows menu – “create nulls from path” – a dialogue will open with options.

You can also use Mask Avenger script if you don’t have >AE2017.

[Steve Bentley]

Those are called “Newton Rings” if that helps your search for a solution.

Can you make a gray scale element of the “bands” and do your colorama operation on that in a precomp and then bring that precomp into the main comp and use a Color or Hue blend function (one of the Overlay through VividLight modes might work too)

You could also make a repeating grad of that little rainbow pattern (think: “stripes”, with space in between clusters of colors) and use the flomotion effect to warp space. You can have multiple nodes at the same time and stack multiple copies of the effect. Then comp that on top of your original footage either with an alpha (that you could warp with the same set up) or with a blend function.

[Steve Bentley]

How are you animating the mouth shapes to begin with? You mention time remapping – do the mouth shapes just jump from one to another or is there actual “morphing” or tweening going on? Depending on the answer, you can place nulls inside the element (the lips precomp?) that are being animated and put an expression on a null in the outer most comp that will move exactly along with the null attached to the lips. Even if the art is in 3D space or there are time warps or the precomp is scaled or rotated, this can be compensated for in about 6 lines of an expression.
Let us know a few more details and we can steer you in the right direction.

[Steve Bentley]

You got it in one Andrew.
I figured since I can write a Z depth buffer in integer in 32 I could also do the same in 16. (actually there wasn’t a lot of figuring on my end, or going back to the tech notes, it was just me trying to save space). We’ve got these huge frame sizes, long sequences, and so many elements, that I’ve been trying to find ways to keep the folders from bursting by keeping the individual file sizes down. (and by “down” I mean under 160 mb a frame). I was hoping EXR’s RLE flavour would do the trick but not so much.

I also assumed AE was writing a 32 bit file out from a 16bit project when all I could choose was Float, and not the “half float” that I would expect for 16 bit. (wouldn’t that be more accurate in the list?) The usual warning of “output will have more depth than the project” reinforced that thought.

I haven’t played with the PXR flavour so I might try that, as our elements fit into that category nicely.

Thanks for the clarity.

[Steve Bentley]

Yes, if you add nulls to the lips at each spot you want a tentacle, that will move around as the lips move around (but anchored to the lips) you can use something like DUIK (free) to give you that gravity induced swinging tentacle thing. Once you set up the bones in each tentacle they should just look after themselves as the mouth moves.
While you could manage this in older versions of DUIK (15.52 and before) it would be much easier in the new version as it has a bunch of tools for things like tentacles and pony tails. I believe the new version needs AE 15.00 or later (2018)

[Steve Bentley]

This could be so many things.
A layer that was turned off so you didn’t see it in AI may come into AE and be turned on, especially if its a background that spans the whole comp.

It could be a compound mask or clipping mask not being interpreted correctly thereby showing you the AI mask instead of whats inside the mask.

It could be a counter inside a letter not being “see through” and instead become a solid. So if you had a large “O”‘ acting like a window, all you might see is a solid the color of the “O” and that might cover everything behind it.

It could be just the way you have layered your AI project, or the version of AI file vs the version of AE file. I find if you bring a newer Ai file into an older AE file, often groups are broken up into their sub components and each of one those becomes a layer (similar to opening a new AI file in a old version of AI.

Without seeing the original illustrator file it’s hard to say.

No all that being said, the title of the post is what I responded to above, but if you are copying the paths to shapelayers then it might be something else. Check that paths are closed or open as they were in illustrator. I’ve seen lots of paths come in closed where they were open in illustrator.