[Steve Roberts]

https://www.creativemac.com/HTM/News/09_00/mayaae.htm

[Steve Roberts]

If I recall, Maya’s Paint Effects isn’t sold as an AE plugin any more.

It’s a good idea, Kevin. If the trunk were on a separate layer from the leaves, that would be nifty as well, maybe with a shatter map included to blow the leaves off, make them fall …?

[Steve Roberts]

[Grant Swanson] “OpenGL works just fine if the card on the computer can support it, which not all AE-supported cards can do very well…”

Now there’s a statement. If that’s the case, Adobe better tighten up their testing. But maybe they don’t want to make a list with only two cards in it …? 🙂

I’ll add that caveat to any OpenGL statements I make in the future. Thanks, Grant!

[Steve Roberts]

So they didn’t add markers to the background? Tsk.

If it’s just a track forward, you might be okay if the footage only has distant elements in it, since on such a short track, you shouldn’t notice a perspective change in distant elements. Maybe a slight scaling up of the background footage as you track in …?

Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

Let’s say you wanted to make a grayscale hat red. You could try drawing a rough animated mask around the hat, then keying the hat’s grays out, then using that over a tinted (CCtoner?) layer of the same thing (unmasked). This way you have a hole in a B&W layer showing a portion of a tinted layer.

If, however, the grays of the hat blend with the grays of a jacket, head, or background, you need to rotoscope, that is, animate a mask that you drew with the pen tool, because keying might not separate the hat.

But, if you’re looking for other solutions, consider these links (I can’t vouch for them):

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=57879
https://www.digitalfilmtools.com/powerstroke-ae/

Anybody else?

[Steve Roberts]

Assuming the Work Area is set to the duration you want, look at Windows Task Manager and see how much RAM is being used. If you’re maxing out, you’re stuck. Either reduce the resolution and magnification (and use shift+Ram preview to preview every other frame) or live with shorter preview durations.

Alternately, if you’re using big stills in your comp, make proxies of those stills to use while you’re working. There was a recent COW post on proxies …

[Steve Roberts]

You can make chapter markers in AE. Here’s an article.

However, for interactivity, you’ll have to embed the rendered movie in some kind of player that can work with chapter markers in the MOV you rendered from AE. That’s up to you …:-)

[Steve Roberts]

Hmph. Odd. The number of JPEGS is not an issue, though. I’ve handled longer sequences, but then again … they were TGAs. To be safe, consider rendering TGAs next time. I don’t know why, but …?

Is there any chance you could import the files from the server, render to a TGA sequence on the local HD, then make an AVI out of that?

… or just render the AVI using the files from the server? It’s not like you need real-time access, as you would in an NLE …?

[Steve Roberts]

https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html

[Steve Roberts]

You need to make the map an image (render it and import it) or precompose the map layer, or make the map in a separate comp, then drag that into the main comp.