[Todd Kopriva]

Even though you have a small amount of time, I strongly recommend that you use at least a day of your two weeks to learn the basics. Doing so will make the rest of the time more efficient, including giving you a common vocabulary with people (like us) so that you can ask specific questions.

Animating a few 2D layers in 3D space and compositing in some stock footage of smoke is easy once you know the basics.

Start here to learn After Effects:
https://adobe.ly/AE_basics

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

The Warp Stabilizer VFX effect can do this, the way that the coconut is locked into position in this video:
https://tv.adobe.com/watch/creative-cloud-for-video/adobe-after-effects-cc-warp-stabilizer-vfx/

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

I’m curious about why you’d be buying the Camera Tracker plug-in rather than upgrading to After Effects CS6 for less money and using the 3D Camera Tracker built into After Effects CS6.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

You’ll get better response on the Premiere Pro forum with a question like this.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

Yes, the After Effects 12.1 command to clear the disk cache doesn’t touch the After Effects 12.0 disk cache. It should, though, and we’re going to fix this for After Effects 12.2.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

https://helpx.adobe.com/en/after-effects/using/selecting-arranging-layers.html#separate_dimensions_of_position_to_animate_components_individually

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

There are some expression examples here that show how to use markers to trigger actions:
https://helpx.adobe.com/en/after-effects/using/expression-examples.html#expression_example_animate_scale_at_each_layer_marker

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

When I’ve needed to do this for simple vector graphics, I’ve used the text animation features and had characters follow a path. Because you can get symbol / wingding fonts with a lot of different graphics elements, this turns the text features into a more general vector graphics animation feature.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

Why not use Adobe Media Encoder?

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————

[Todd Kopriva]

I agree with Walter’s suggestion to render and export to an image sequence to see if that still causes the problem. Even if it does, you’ll have most of your frames rendered.

———————————————————————————————————
Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
After Effects quality engineering
After Effects team blog
———————————————————————————————————