[Steve Bentley]

The expressions always go on the attribute you want to alter. So selecting the rotation parameter of the layer and then under the Animation menu selecting “add expression” will place the default expression on that attribute – the default just refers to what the layer is already doing. You can then select the line of code and erase it and type your own or pickwhip to have AE generate the code for you.

But you might have a simpler time of it. What about just making the null a child of the pendulum and moving the null to the end? The null will be moved by the rotation on the pendulum you animate, but the null will move out where the arc is transcribed.

[Steve Bentley]

I’ve had hit an miss results with this tag from day one. So much so no I don’t use it anymore and instead use nodes in expresso to accomplish the same thing. So you may be seeing what amounts to an ongoing bug.
But you would think if it was working it would work when you load the project again.
Check the priority in the attributes of the tag. Some expression firing early in the animation might be upsetting it when the project loads from scratch.

[Steve Bentley]

It seems the forum is not posting in the correct order. Just FYI.
I’m not sure what you mean by “will resetting my ram lose my data”. Changing your ram and disk cache will not cause any damage to your project nor will zapping the PRam.

If a drive is 750 GB it has about 680 Gb of usable space. So should always ensure that at least 68gb remains free at all times (10 percent). The system writes files and swaps data to move files around (like one of those squares puzzles were you have to move a square out of the way to make room for the one you want to move) so the system needs the free space to keep the drive healthy. Lack of space can also cause fragmenting and that just slows everything down not to mention more wear and tear on the drive.

But I’ll bet its a bug with the new version. So many issues reported over this new update.
Can you uninstall and install version 2018 15.03? That’s the one I’m on and with the exception of frequent cache clearing needed it’s been very stable. It should be able to load the newer versions project since it’s the same dot upgrade.
It could also be that the format your source file is in is no longer supported by AE. The jury is still out on whether this is just due the pain we all will have to endure to get rid of the old bit depth files system (kind of like the old 32 to new 64 bit architecture we all went through – remember your Power PC?) or if its an adobe/apple conflict.

[Steve Bentley]

Can you hide the footage by putting it all in aother folder so AE won’t try and load it when it fires up? It may be a corrupt source file and AE gets stuck when it loads it in.

[Steve Bentley]

Keep in mind too that after you “get rid” of the water mark and start processing the footage with other effects or color corrections, the edges from your water mark removal will start to show again.
But given that you are probably going to be working from the footage on the web, the noise from the compression is so harsh that it will be an exercise in frustration to try and remove that watermark.

[Steve Bentley]

You could do all what was in the video with no plug ins whatsoever – but it might be easier with a cloner script (available at aescripts.com – there a bunch of them) That way you don’t have to make every animated shield – make one and then arrange their clones in a grid for each legion.

Mir or Form (trapcode) might be helpful in making a 3D landscape to play on but again not vital (or even part of that video as it has no ground plane)

Just keep in mind that while you can do a huge amount of 3D animation inside AE, its never truly 3D (we call it 2.5D) So many effects need to be cheated. Element 3D gets the closest to a true 3D environment for AE, and would work very well here (it even has a built in cloner!) but its not needed to get the example you posted to work.

[Steve Bentley]

Yes, and yes with difficulty.
The 3D aspect of the plane and the army elements are relatively easy – every layer can be turned into 3D but that layer is simply a plane or a plane with a mask that you can use a camera in AE to move around. So you could make a 3D battlefield and populate it with an army that stands up on that plane.

To get the curved elements like the shields you can either use something like Element 3D which brings 3D object functionality to AE or cheat by using CC cylinder or sphere to add a curve to the flat 3D objects.

The other issue is that the 3D layers in AE are flat so as you move your camera about (say, on the spears) unless the spears are also rotating, at some point you are going to see their edges and they will disappear (a plane has no Z dimension – Imagine arcing the camera down from an overhead shot on the battlefield. When you get to the ground level the plane of the battlefield will be edge-on and virtually invisible.)
You can use expressions to keep these elements facing camera so it gives the illusion that they have volume.

The last issue is the infinite world – because the battlefield will be a rectangle and a plane, the back edge will be visible at some point at low angles because it can’t go on forever. You can use soft masks back there and some haze to let aerial perspective to its thing and wash out the seam between ground and sky – its how the world works anyway. You can thank water vapour in the air for that. Or do what they did in your example and not have a a ground plane, but I find the static BG fights with the illusion.

[Steve Bentley]

But for Jan’s suggestion to work you do have to have “resample image” checked in the PS image size dialogue. Changing DPI doesn’ t necessarily change the number of pixels.
You can do all of this inside AE simply by turning the draft/best switch to draft for that layer. Just make sure that if you subcomp the layer you want to keep aliased, that the precomp layer also has the draft setting. (depending on your prefs this switch can ripple down through precomped layers)

[Steve Bentley]

What version of AE are you running? Back in AE5.5 days (which many are still running) we had issues with the app not being really killed when you exit. So when you try and fire up another instance the old one competes with the new (this was less of an issue on PC because the architecture allowed multiple instances -but wasn’t wise and caused issues).
So try restarting the machine as that will kill anything running for sure. And if that doesn’t work try zapping the pRam (its been a while but command/option/P/R I think) when the machine is restarting and let it chime about three times (you should hear the chime volume change when it’s taken)

Check your drive space on the external and where the disk cache is being sent. You need to keep about 10 percent of the total volume free (after AE allocates what it needs – see prefs for this) to allow for maintenance and library files so the drive works without crankyness.

[Steve Bentley]

Actually Cole, PS does terrific anti aliasing. But it all depends on how you have your scaling preferences set. There are half a dozen options that let you scale with, say, “nearest neighbor” that will do what you suggest, and the image will be more pixelated when its blown up. But there are also options (in fact the default) that use a bicubic algorithm to smoothly (read: anitaliased) scale the content to make it as smooth as possible even though the scale is increasing. It doesn’t generate detail per se but handles edges in an intelligent way. There are also choices for scaling down, which tends to lose detail, so some of the other choices help to over come that.

I think we’ve missed the boat with the OP due to the date, but I was more concerned that if you think that PS’s normal state is not to antialias then you have your settings opposite from what the rest of us usually run at and you are missing some great features in the app.
The other clue was that you suggested copying the picture to another file – this would be no different than simply changing the image size of the original file and choosing the kind of scaling algorithm (nearest neighbor bicubic etc). Scaling is scaling whether its in a new comp or the original.
Check you scaling settings in the prefs.