[Todd Kopriva]

You should also check out the “Improve performance” 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]

I think that you encountered the issue explained in this section of After Effects Help:

“How render order and collapsed transformations affect 3D layers”

“The positions of certain kinds of layers in the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel prevent groups of 3D layers from being processed together to determine intersections and shadows. A shadow cast by a 3D layer does not affect a 2D layer or any layer that is on the other side of the 2D layer in the layer stacking order. Similarly, a 3D layer does not intersect with a 2D layer or any layer that is on the other side of the 2D layer in the layer stacking order.”

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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]

This question was asked and answered recently on the expressions forum:

https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/227/12993#12993

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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 a section in After Effects Hep dedicated to this:

“Best practices for creating text and vector graphics for video”

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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]

In addition to the way that Eric describes, there are a couple of examples in After Effects Help (courtesy of Dan Ebberts) that show a couple of other ways to approach this, either by triggering on keyframes or markers or triggering on specific times:

“Expression example: Animate scale at each layer marker”

“Expression example: Start or stop a wiggle at a specific time”

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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]

Are you previewing using a different 3D view than the active camera? Rendering for final output is done using the active camera.

There are some other ways in which what is rendered for previews may differ from what is rendered for final output. Check your render settings to see if you’ve got any settings set to something other than Current Settings by mistake.

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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]

OK. I’m not necessarily endorsing any of these. These are just ones that I’ve tried at some time in the past and found to at some time be useful.

find and replace text from files

getting Source Text out of a text file

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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’re looking at a version of the Meyers’ book from three versions ago, whereas the Help section that you’re pointing to is for After Effects CS4. Some things have changed.

If I understand correctly, you want to change a paint stroke after you’ve already drawn it. You’re correct that doing this isn’t immediately obvious; I don’t think that it was an intended part of the feature. But, because people often like to do unintended things, there are workarounds.

The one that I’d use in this case is to copy the paint stroke’s Path property and paste it into a dummy mask’s Mask Path property (or a shape’s Path property). Then, I’d edit the path as I normally would for a mask or shape. When I was done, I’d copy the Mask Path (or shape Path) property and paste back into the paint stroke’s Path property. Then delete the dummy mask or shape.

Animating paint strokes is really more intended for the workflow of painting a new stroke for each of the key frames, rather than tweaking an existing stroke on each key frame.

If you’re interested in drawing in this way, in which you can control the path more directly, I recommend checking out shape layers.

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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 thing that can cause a layered PSD to not be importable as a composition is the color mode of the PSD file not being RGB. See “Preparing and importing Photoshop files”.

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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 an After Effects Community Help search that pulls up a couple of pages that might be useful.

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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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