Steve Roberts
Forum Replies Created
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Sorry. My bad.
How’s this? -
It looks as if Andrew was working in AE7 for that tutorial, not CS3 or CS4 … judging by the buttons available at the top of the timeline. AE7 uses “mask shape”. Maybe you have more than one version of AE on your computer, and opened CS4 by mistake?
As for your CTI (current-time indicator) can you scrub it back and forth? Do you have Live Update selected (the first button at the top of the timeline in AE7)?
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If you have a layer (solid or footage) that contains a mask, hitting M will make the Mask Path property visible for any selected layers that have a mask. If no layers are selected, the property will become visible for all layers that have a mask. The Mask Path property allows you to set a keyframe for the shape of that mask by hitting the stopwatch next to the words “Mask Path”.
Shapes are very different. Shape layers are created by using the pen tool when no other layers are selected. But I’m a bit confused … the M key doesn’t seem to have anything to do with shape layers.
Now I don’t like the new Help as much as the old help, but searching for “shape” and “shortcuts” led to the conclusion that shape layers don’t use the “M” key. So I’m not sure what “shape” you mean”. Could it be that some of us oldtimers used the word “shape” instead of “mask path” in our advice?
Or that you really want to keyframe a “mask path”?
Or maybe you could say exactly what you want to keyframe? A shape layer? A mask on a footage or solid layer?
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Or … if all the layers are 3D, you could reduce the focal length of your 3D camera.
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The best way is to get a copy of the Fieldskit plugin. Next best is to interpret the footage (file>interpret footage>main) and separate fields, I’m assuming lower field first. They won’t be perfect, since the information has to be interpolated between fields, but it should be fine.
You just wrote that the field dominance of the imported, interlaced footage is “none”. That means “progressive”. So I’m a little confused. Unless you mean those are the comp specs, not the footage specs.
Technically the term is “field order”, Apple be damned. Field dominance is something different, not applicable in most situations.
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To make the ball move to the back wall, hit the 3D switch for the ball and the wall, and make a new camera (always good practice). Move the wall back in the Z-direction, and you might have to scale it up to fill the frame. Then animate the ball’s position in Z-space so it moves toward the wall, and so on.
You hide masks by clicking the button to the left of the timecode at the bottom of the comp window, at least in CS4, anyway.
If you haven’t guessed, AE is a complicated program, not meant for quick dive-in work. 🙂 I recommend the AE Classroom in a Book for a new guy.
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RAM seems good. It might be a little slow, but if you hide unneeded layers and effects while you work, it should work. Here are the AE 7 system requirements.
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Apply Shine to the text layer, not to an adjustment layer.
Only use adjustment layers if you want an effect to be applied to all layers in a comp — not when you want to apply it to one layer.
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As long as the four corners are four distinct points, it should go fine. There might be some jitter at the most oblique angle. Maybe. Hard to know without seeing the footage. For more info, try posting in the Imagineer Systems COW forum.
So rendering only the screen (with new footage) in MAX and compositing it is out of the question?