[Steve Roberts]

Got a screengrab?

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … maybe this is actually a feature: with Caps Lock on, nothing updates, even the UI. There have been times where a sort of “kill switch” was needed, if I recall.

Todd might be able to confirm this.

Hey Kevin, give me your number. I’ll call you every five minutes to wake you up. 😉

[Steve Roberts]

I found it best to get a text doc from the localization service, allowing me to cut and paste the text into AE. It’s faster that way, and there are no concerns about capitalization and such.

[Steve Roberts]

Apply “trim paths” to the shape layer and animate. Check the Help for more.

[Steve Roberts]

I looked this up a long time ago. Unless things have changed, I found that the script didn’t work very well in case of a crash.

What might be better would be a non-AE script that sends you an e-mail or text when the contents of a folder stop changing over time, for example. This would work well in the case of rendering a set of stills, easily re-rendered into a movie when you return to the office, or it might work in the case of a movie that’s growing in size as it renders, but stops growing when AE crashes, triggering the script.

(we all recommend rendering to stills when a crash is likely)

Where to find these? Depends on your OS. Windows people seem to like these scripts, for sysAdmins and such.

That’s the limits of my usefulness on this, sorry.

[Steve Roberts]

Thanks for the tips, Walter. Good stuff.

[Steve Roberts]

Ah, yes. You’re running into the 3D limitations of AE. You may already know that, regarding 3D in AE:

– AE is made up of flat planes.
– anything that looks like real 3D is a live movie playing on a flat plane (e.g. Invig, CC sphere).
– the only paths that really exist in 3D space are motion paths.
– any other path or mask has to reside on a layer, and thus only has two dimensions.
– The path of a stroke made with Trapcode’s 3D stroke is only controllable within two dimensions: the plane of the layer holding it. The other dimension is not as controllable, since it uses the 3D stroke controls.
– Unless Freeform has changed significantly, it uses a NURBS object to change its shape. This is nice, but still limited.
– going from “around something” to “not around something” can be hard, since effects often do just one thing, and switching requires connecting an effected layer to an unaffected layer. Yick.

You might be able to use Invig for this, but I haven’t used it in so long, I’m no authority. You might also be able to use CC Cylinder (multiple times if necessary) — Google “what the helix”.

However, I found that when it comes to precise positioning and interaction between objects, real 3D (e.g. Maya) is the way to go.

Of course, I could be wrong. Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

Composition>composition settings.

You should check the Help — this is pretty basic.

[Steve Roberts]

Try Lynda.com .

Have you looked into Toon Boom?

I say that because I haven’t heard of anyone using AE for character animation except for one-off projects, but I could be wrong. Flash is also rather popular for that.

[Steve Roberts]

Can you send the project to sDOTrobertsDOTcowATgmailDOTcom? No need to include sources, just the AEP.