[Steve Roberts]

You can check the install CD, but the CC effects don’t come with the Academic version, apparently.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Sorry Chris, you’d lose that bet. I really know nothing about AE’s OpenGL implementation in AE7 or whatever.

Now as for shaking Adobe’s tree, there’s always:
https://www.adobe.com/support/feature.html

S.

[Steve Roberts]

🙂

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

1. can’t answer – using XP.
2a. Future OpenGL? Anyone who knows can’t say. Under NDA.
2b. Higher end card? No advantage as of yet.
3. Processor speed and RAM are everything to AE, though currently AE can’t use more than 2GB of RAM. Actually, a fast drive can also speed up renders by allowing faster read/write of stored footage.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Draw the line with the pen tool, apply effect>render>stroke, then animate the stroke effect’s endpoint.

That’s one way …
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Your question is similar to asking this question in a gardening forum: “I want to buy a car for $5000 to use for my landscaping business. What should I get?” The best answer would be: “get at least a station wagon to carry your plants. Maybe a van or pickup. Beyond that, it really doesn’t matter if you choose a Ford, Chevy or Dodge. If you have other car-specific concerns regarding dealer network, parts availability, fuel economy, you should post in a car forum. Sorry, this is a gardening forum”.

The only AE-relevant advice I can give you relates to keying. For $1000, the best you can do is buy a DV camera, then buy DVmatte pro from DVgarage to key the things you shoot on greenscreen. For the money, DV is your only real format option. Camera make, lenses, features really have nothing to do with AE, and more with videography, which is covered in other forums. Fancy image-effect camera features are irrelevant in my opinion, because you want to shoot a clean plate for compositing in AE.

Not meaning to be anal, but this is a high-traffic forum, and new posts push the old posts off the screen. If we stray off-topic too much, the on-topic AE posts will be crowded off the screen.

Steve 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

Indeed. IMO, AE will not determine your choice of platform. It’s all the other apps, as Chris stated. Well, basically.

I’m splitting a job between the Win and Mac boxes right now, because of a plugin that I only have on the Win side.

Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Congratulations!

Nosey Steve 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … not sure how to do the expression, but did you know that you can:

1. drag your images into a comp
2. make the images 1 frame long
3. Sequence the layers so you end up with a movie of your images
4. in another comp, use that movie as the source for your particles, but set to sample random frames from that movie?

That way, your images will be the particles, and you’ll get a nice particle behaviour.

I know Particle Playground can do that, but haven’t tried it with Particular or the CC plugins.

Hope that helps,
Steve

[Steve Roberts]

Hmm … not sure how to do the expression, but did you know that you can:

1. drag your images into a comp
2. make the images 1 frame long
3. Sequence the layers so you end up with a movie of your images
4. in another comp, use that movie as the source for your particles, but set to sample random frames from that movie?

That way, your images will be the particles, and you’ll get a nice particle behaviour.

I know Particle Playground can do that, but haven’t tried it with Particular or the CC plugins.

Hope that helps,
Steve