[Todd Kopriva]

> You refer to help page collapse transformation. Where can I find these?

Follow the link in my previous message.

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

[Todd Kopriva]

Did you precompose the layer with its masks? Often, when an effect seems to be ignoring the masks on an input layer, this is the solution. Precompose, and use the precomposition layer the matte layer.

I’m not in front of After Effects right now. If this doesn’t work, I’ll see if I can help out when I can play along in After Effects.

BTW, the After Effects documentation is deliberately sparse on a lot of the details in Timewarp, since the folks at the Foundry have already documented it (as Kronos). That’s why one of the first paragraphs of the “Timewarp effect” section points to the Kronos documentation. Of course, if this isn’t adequate, I’d like to know so that I can fix any deficiencies or defects.

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

[Todd Kopriva]

As Michael said, making areas transparent based on the colors of the pixels in those areas is called ‘keying’.

For basic information about keying, see “Keying overview and tips” in After Effects Help.

Unfortunately, unless you’ve shot your footage with keying in mind, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to do good keying work. You may end up defining transparent areas in a much more tedious fashion: rotoscoping. In this context, rotoscoping is the drawing of masks around foreground objects and animating those masks—sometimes manually, frame by frame—to separate the foreground from the background. (Often, even footage that was shot well for keying requires a little fine rotoscoping work to clean up some pieces or some rough rotoscoping beforehand to draw garbage mattes. It’s hard to avoid rotoscoping.)

For basic information about rotoscoping, see “Rotoscoping introduction and resources” in After Effects Help.

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

[Todd Kopriva]

What happens when you preview just the audio?

If previewing only the audio works fine, then maybe the issue is that your audio is being played during RAM preview at the speed necessary to stay in synch with the video frames; sometimes RAM preview can’t play back at real time. You can see the RAM preview frame rate in the Info panel.

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

[Todd Kopriva]

Here’s a link to the feature-request form:
https://www.adobe.com/go/wish

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

[Todd Kopriva]

(Oops. Double-posted by mistake.)

[Todd Kopriva]

Are you looking for a plug-in that does more than what Cinema 4D does natively with its export of an After Effects composition?

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

[Todd Kopriva]

> I have made a animation in AE with photograph in high resolution. If I use this photograph in a small size composition and I nest this compositon in a second High res composition the photograph resolution stays low. This whereas the used source material is of high quality. How is this? The eventual rendering nevertheless use of the imported source material?

It seems that you need to learn about collapsing transformations.

from “Render order and collapsing transformations”
“Collapsing transformations can, for example, preserve resolution when a layer is scaled down by half in a nested composition, and the nested composition is scaled up by a factor of two in the containing composition. In this case, rather than performing both transformations and losing image data in the process, one transformation can be performed—doing nothing, because the individual transformations cancel each other.”

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

[Todd Kopriva]

You can link one mask path to another using an expression.

If the mask that you want to use as the master is on layer 1, then just make a dummy mask on layer 2, add an expression to the dummy mask’s Mask Path property, and then use the expression pick whip for that expression to link it to the Mask Path property of the master mask. (I.e., drag the pick whip from the dummy mask’s Mask Path property to the master mask’s Mask Path property.)

Then you can invert the “copy”, change its mask mode, or otherwise customize properties of the mask.

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

[Todd Kopriva]

> BTW, does anyone know a keyboard command that will walk back up-stream through comps I was in? I realize that an interface is needed because the flowchart may split into multiple paths, but I’m just looking for that “double click down into a comp” and “some-keyboard-shortcut” back up to where I just was.

I think that you’re looking for Shift+Esc.

“Opening and navigating nested compositions”

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