[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … I’d just bite the bullet like this, assuming you have one animation that works, and you don’t need to see the backsides of the cards:

1. Have 52 cards made up … PSDs, TIFs, whatever, and import them.
2. Save your animation’s keyframes as a preset.
3. Drag all cards into the comp.
4. Apply the preset to all of them. You should be able to do it all at once.
5. Sequence the layers in the comp.

I haven’t treid it, but it should work.

[Steve Roberts]

Well, you’ll be able to make longer RAM previews, you’ll be able to keep other apps open (don’t forget OS overhead) and you’ll be less likely to crash during a render.

Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

I right-clicked and downloaded the linked file.

[Steve Roberts]

Yow! 1 GB is nothing these days — you need at least 2-4, or 1 per core. If you’re on Windows, open Task Manager, and if you’re on Mac, open Activity Monitor to check your RAM usage.

Now if you want to render while you still have only 1GB of RAM, try the secret prefs. Access Preferences>General, and hold down the shift key until you see the big Prefs dialog. Hold down the shift key longer than you think, if necessary. Click general to see the drop-down, and you’ll see “secret” at the bottom of the list. Try purging every 5 frames during Make Movie there.

[Steve Roberts]

Quicktime movie, Animation codec. Use Composition>Make Movie and choose “lossless” as the preset.

[Steve Roberts]

You need to find out what’s special about that frame, or that number of frames rendered.

Hide layers, especially those with effects until it works.
Disable effects (the “fx” switch) until it works.
Disable audio layers until it works.
Check your OS utility that tells you how much RAM you’re using.
Disable Open GL.

.. then get back to us. 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

… and a Wacom (pronounced “WAH-kum” if anyone’s interested) certainly makes mask drawing faster, in my opinion.

[Steve Roberts]

The big ink blob looks like an animated mask on a solid with bevel alpha applied.

[Steve Roberts]

Did you try posting in the Trapcode forum?

[Steve Roberts]

Without a plugin such as Zaxwerks 3D Warps, you can’t fold a layer. Even 3D Warps doesn’t do it sharply, in my experience.

So you need 3 layers: one for each (shorter) wall.

If you have a continuous movie (or something) on the long wall precomp, you can mask it to make a shorter wall, dupe the precomp twice, then move the mask on each of the dupes to show a different part of the wall. Then you position the walls where you want, lining them up.

BTW, sometimes 3D layers that meet at a corner look best in Alpha Add mode.