[Todd Kopriva]

Yes, After Effects comes with CC Light Rays.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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[Todd Kopriva]

The Record Options control only appears when the Puppet Pin tool is active. It appears in the area labeled N in the screenshot on this page—the area for the tool-specific options.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

Just a thought: Depending on what exactly you’re trying to accomplish, you may want to use text animators and set the Based On property to Words.

Here’s an example that shows how to restrict animation to one word in a phrase.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

There are instructions for moving and resetting anchor points on this page, including a link to a script for moving the anchor points of selected layers without moving the layers in the composition frame.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> I did but I guess my question which was the best way to do it to film the smoke or to create it digitally.

In general, I think that the easiest way to is get a clip of real smoke (either by filming it yourself or getting a clip from a stock footage source) and composite that onto your footage using the techniques in the pages that I linked to. Sometimes you may want to use a Distort effect on the smoke layer to make it fit your needs.

Sometimes the answer is to simulate the smoke digitally with a particle effect. But I recommend doing that only when you’ve determined that the other methods (which are easier to make look realistic) won’t work for you. Too many people leap straight into trying to simulate smoke digitally and then are frustrated that it takes work to make it look realistic.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

You might also want to try the Change To Color effect.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

There’s no keyboard shortcut for extending or trimming the durations of multiple brush strokes. You can select multiple brush strokes in the Timeline panel and drag the end of the duration bar for one of them to extend all of them by the same amount.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

I don’t know of a way to change the default mask mode.

Here’s a link to the feature-request form.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

> Any suggestions as to other things to try or look up?

Nothing comes to mind.

FWIW, I use DPX files a lot in After Effects, and we added support for even more varieties in the After Effects CS4 (9.0.2) update. I just couldn’t open yours.

If I were in your position, I’d ask the people who scanned your film and exported the DPX files whether they knew of any settings or characterstics of the DPX files that could be causing your problems.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.

[Todd Kopriva]

I just got an error when I tried to import that file into After Effects CS4. And Photoshop CS4.

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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
———————————————————————————————————
If a page of After Effects Help answers your question, please consider rating it. If you have a tip, technique, or link to share—or if there is something that you’d like to see added or improved—please leave a comment.