[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

A animate garbage mask shout be able to eliminate the area you do not want to affect in color grading – still a bit of roto for 3-4 minutes but it should be easy since the shape of the mask does not have to be exact. Mocha may be able to help you track a shape on the face.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can still try and use displacement with the stock plugin under Distort. It will be a 2d effect though.
You may even get away with creating 3 or 4 stills in PSD (use bevel/emboss and drop shadow to “grow” the shape pressed in) and then adding a motion blur and camera shake in AE, simulating a hard hit from the press.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

This post should be in the expressions forum – better chances to get a quick answer.
https://forums.creativecow.net/adobe_after_effects_expressions

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

You can use Free Form (stock with CS5) to create a 3D displacement. Add a Light and you can animate the depth of the extrusion.
Here’s a tutorial that can help you figuring out Free Form:
https://library.creativecow.net/jelescu_tudor/3D-from-2D-image_AE/1

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

My advice- never keep all shots in one project. If you need to share items and filter settings or camera moves, create a master project and duplicate that for each shot you need it. One project per shot- otherwise you get exactly what you have: a huge file that takes lots of time to load and increased frustration.
Trim down your projects- keep only what you need. If you import another project to copy settings/layers, erase the unused items after you get what you need.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Do you have multiprocessing enabled by chance? If so, turn it off, you do not have enough RAM for AE to use multiple processors.
Also turn OpenGL off if it’s on.
One other thing- Motion Blur- that tends to increase render time heavily, so you may want to turn it off if it’s on.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

This happened to me before when I opened a project that I used twice before and changed parameters and images in it and then try to render again. It took 2hrs instead of 15 min. So it may be a bug in AE- I know this may be a lot of work but it may be that you have to g back to your initial project file and redo the new project from that one.
One more thing: Do you have the latest upgrade for your version of AE?

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Quick thought- render a progressive and an interlaced version to have both when you go to the edit suite and check them.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

Other than making sure that you have the right field dominance selected in Interpret Footage(if you’re not sure check both), the “Preserve Edges” checked, and that you’re looking at the footage at full resolution and not half, my only suggestion would be to ask the client for the clips exported progressive and not interlaced from FCP.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

I’m not sure if this works the same as a path in AE, but you should be able to copy the motion (position/rotation) keyframes from the camera and paste them in the Light layer.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist