[Stuart Elith]

Yeah, that’s what i was getting at at the end of my post, about maybe doing it in a more streamlined way… i’m not really sure.

I am interpreting your question as being : Can you put the text you want to use in something other than a text layer (in other words, having all the text in one box or something, and just borrowing what you need). Is that what you are asking?

I think this could be done using scripting… you could probably end up with something where you select the script, enter in what you want and choose where it goes. But that is beyond my skills, and seems like it would take more time than it saves. In my mind, having a bunch of text layers which drive the precomps is efficient enough, you can just put them at the bottom of your timeline, out of the way.

So short answer is, probably possible, not by me though!

[Stuart Elith]

Hey Dennis,

You can certainly access stuff in other comps, but (as far as I know) you need to reference that comp by name, so if you are doing something where you will always be changing all the names, it may be more hassle than it’s worth (though it still may be worthwhile).

So lets say you have a comp, “Container”, and in there is a precomp and some text layers with the text you want to use.

Inside your precomp you have the text fields, and you need to twirl down to teh Source Text attribute, and add this (i like to do it by pickwhip, you need to undock the container comp so you can see both comps at once and pick the attribute….)

comp(“Container”).layer(“Text One”).text.sourceText

So it’s pretty straightforward, and clearly you can change the names of your layers and comps as needed.

I haven’t tried taking it any further and generating the text more dynamically or whatever, but it may be possible, not sure.

[Stuart Elith]

I agree with this suggestion, that the naming of the default AE forum is making it seem like the obvious choice for all kinds of questions that may be better suited to the Basics forum.

Another thought I had is this : I don’t visit the basics forum, so i don’t know if it is well supported… if people find that the answers aren’t always provided there, they will be less inclined to use it. So I am thinking for myself as much as anyone, maybe we should be making time to go there and help out the beginners who are doing the right thing in posting there…

[Stuart Elith]

Bill, that is a great little feature you have pointed out!
I would say I know AE fairly well (though, as we all know, there’s always something else to learn) and this is one of those little options that I just never paid attention to… i can see it being very useful in the future.

Actually investigating the palettes and menus we use everyday can reveal the most interesting treasures!

[Stuart Elith]

Probably won’t work, but there’s a chance that you may be able to fudge this… if there aren’t really any elements that reveal the camera move, then there’s nothing to tell viewers that whatever you do isn’t right. Well, there still will be, but it may be less noticeable.

You could try just estimating a general motion for the tracking, and add your own buoyancy for the boat, and may be able to get a decent result, at least.

You may be able to ascertain in a short time whether this is worth pursuing, just by giving it a go.
I would definitely push for a reshoot or other option recommended by previous posters, however.

[Stuart Elith]

I don’t have a tutorial for you, but this should be very achievable in Particular. I have done something vaguely similar.

It will be to do with either wind, turbulence or spin for the particles. If you, at the point where you want them to freak out, quickly keyframe one of those values to a high number, it will affect existing particles and therefore spray them around. Might depend on the existing settings such as velocity, not sure, but with some tweaking it’s definitely possible. I am not sure if all of those attributes will affect existing particles but I think they might. At least one of them does… I had a thing with a stream of particles which i had essentially “frozen” with no velocity or movement, then made them burst out at a point.

[Stuart Elith]

The first reply to this question explains what I was saying :
https://mograph.net/board/lofiversion/index.php?t7363.html

The last reply goes into the whole thing of “units” a bit, though i haven’t tried what he suggested.

[Stuart Elith]

are you using an old version of AE?
The tracker window, at least in the newer versions, has 4 buttons :

Analyse backwards 1 frame, analyse backwards, analyse forwards, analyse forwards 1 frame.

Whenever you press one of the middle two, it will turn into a stop button so you can stop it part way through.

[Stuart Elith]

I haven’t used boujou extensively but i believe there are issues with the coordinate systems, since Maya uses a 0 to 1 system and AE doesn’t.

I remember doing it once and when i imported the track to AE, i had to scale it down to about 1% to make it fit. I don’t know if there’s a step you can take to automate this, and i don’t think it’s always going to be the same amount of scaling… but try that, perhaps?

[Stuart Elith]

you just press the stop button in the tracking window ::)

seriously, that’s all there is to it…