[Tim Bentley]

Thanks for your reply – I need it to be continuously asterised, so my options are a bit limited (the 200px height fills an HD1080 frame). I had exported an .eps version as a backup to replace the AI file with if it misbehaved, but the .eps file hadn’t retained the same size (it came in at 13115 x 143 pixels – probably because it doesn’t include the artboard) and was slightly smaller – either way, it was messy and I’d prefer to keep the file AI, and editable in AI (I don’t like illustrator as it always behaves the opposite way I expect it to, although illustrator probably feels the same about me). I’m actually going to give it one more go – some nice music and it might actually be kind of soothing. If it doesn’t work I’ll write another post asking if there’s an illustrator plugin which lets you punch its face in.

I’m starting to think it might be a stupid mistake on my part…

[Tim Bentley]

Thanks – in fact I’d already done almost exactly that – the puppet tool wasn’t behaving behave exactly how I’d thought, but I’ve got it sorted 🙂

[Tim Bentley]

For the effect you’re after, you need ‘Reveal original image’ as paint style, and make sure the correct mask (or ‘all masks’) is selected under ‘Path’ – by default it’ll just use the first path. Check the path(s) are where you think they by hitting ‘m’ with the layer selected in the comp.
If it’s neither of those you might need to post a screenshot.

[Tim Bentley]

If your work is of a comparable quality, £600-800 seems like a really, really low estimate. Personally I would quote more than that just for the initial character animation.

It’s kind of beside the point, but once you’ve paid your taxes, even with 4-5 projects like this per month you’d still be earning below the national average wage. For a skilled profession, that seems ridiculous.

I made this mistake so many times when I started out – don’t be afraid to aim high in terms of quotes. Be prepared to defend your work and your right to be paid fairly. Remember they’d pay many thousands more by going to a prod house. This guy has some useful ideas:

https://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/inspiration/5-things-that-tell-me-youre-not-a-professional/

[Tim Bentley]

What a great tutorial! Lots of information but very clearly presented – excellent job 🙂

[Tim Bentley]

This probably means your light isn’t pointing at the layers in question, although you haven’t really given us enough information to know. What kind of light is it? If it’s a spot light, you need to point it directly at the surface of a 3D layer – you can set the light’s point of interest by twirling down the light’s ‘transform’ options. Copy one of your layers’ position properties and paste them into the light’s point of interest and see what happens. If nothing, post back with some more information (light type, intensity, screenshots).

If you don’t want everything to go black when you create the first light, make it a low-ish ambient light, which will evenly light the whole scene. Then you can pick out areas with spot / point / parallel lights.

Also, you’ll find lighting a lot simpler if you follow some basic tutorials first, or at least read the help page:

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e29a.html

I’m not sure there’s actually a problem here – to be honest, everything going black in the scene is exactly what should happen, unless the new light is ambient or happens to be pointing at something in the scene.

[Tim Bentley]

Are you sure you’ve got ‘Continuous Rasterize’ checked? Might sound obvious but it’s the most likely suspect 🙂

https://timbentley.info/films.html

[Tim Bentley]

Ah, that makes more sense. If you mean that you want the exported motion path to contain all the information inherited from its parent as it translates to the layer’s values (relative to the world space, not the parent), you’ll need an expression – something like this:

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/227/10093

I still don’t know what baking into means, but maybe it’s an American expression 🙂

[Tim Bentley]

It could be that you have ‘Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously’ checked in the memory preferences – this can save time when doing a final render, but it can be a pain when used for RAM previews.

[Tim Bentley]

Can you clarify which layers you might need to delete and why? Could you attach a screenshot? I don’t think this is what you’re asking, but you can still adjust a layer’s properties independently once it’s been parented.