[Todd Kopriva]

Dave is right that using the text layer as a track matte is probably your best bet. But you can also create masks from text if you really need to.

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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]

You could create a mask the size of the layer and then feather the mask.

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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]

One way is to draw a mask on an adjustment layer and then apply the glow to the adjustment layer.

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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]

Have you installed the After Effects CS4 9.0.2 update?

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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]

There’s nothing fancy to it. Moire patterns emerge from the intersection of large numbers of thin lines. You can create an animated Moire pattern yourself by creating any two sets of thin curves or lines, overlapping them, and then animating the position of one of them.

(Of course, the Moire pattern artifacts that we all know and hate come from the intersections of the lines in, say, a tie and the many thin scanlines that make up a television image.)

I think that you’ll find that using the Repeater or otherwise creating overlapping shape layers is an easy and fun way to experiment with this yourself.

I just made two copies of a star with several hundred points each and a thin (one-pixel) stroke, so I basically ended up with two disks made up of radiating lines. Then I animated one to move past the other.

Here’s a screen-grab of the result:

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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]

To arrange layers so that one starts where the previous one ends, use the Sequence Layers keyframe assistant.

To save a set of properties, effects, et cetera, consider saving an animation preset.

If you really are applying the same effect to all of the layers, and they’re all sequenced, then you may find that adding an adjustment layer at the top of the layer stack in the composition works for you.

Finally, regarding rendering and exporting each “clip”: Jeff Almasol provides a Render Layers script that may be what you need.

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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]

I did a Community Help search for ‘illustrator layers’, and the first search result seems to answer your question.

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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]

Here’s a list of supported OpenGL cards.

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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]

“Adobe need to pull their finger out and sort it?”

You sure know how to charm someone into answering your question.

There are some instructions for how to use the ETLAT (edit this, look at that) features of After Effects CS4 in the “Viewers” section of After Effects Help.

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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]

Here’s a post about some ways to create a result similar to what I see in your examples—separating the color components of an image and offsetting each channel’s position.

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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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