[Walter Soyka]

After Effects loves fast SSDs for its cache. In Ae’s preferences, make sure “Enable Disk Cache” is on, choose a folder on your fast SSD for the cache, and set its size as high as you are comfortable.

As you work and preview, Ae will store rendered layers and frames in the disk cache, and then it will read back those stored layers and frames for any operation where reading is faster than re-rendering.

In Preferences > Previews, there’s a “Cache Frames When Idle” setting. If Ae is open and you’re not actively working in it (like, you stop to think, or make coffee, or check email), it can automatically cache frames in your active timeline.

If you’re using a lot of disk-intensive footage in your projects, you could store that on your fast SSD so Ae doesn’t bottleneck on storage on a slower disk.

That said, lots of operations in Ae can be CPU-, GPU-, or RAM-bound, and a fast SSD won’t help you with those.

What are your other system specs?

[Walter Soyka]

You might try holding down the Shift key while opening your project. This will open the project without opening (and therefore attempting to render) any comps in timeline or viewer panels.

From there, you can open comps with Caps Lock engaged to prevent the viewer from rendering.

Maybe then, you can narrow down which comp and which specific layer is causing the crash, then try removing or modifying the effect to see if you can work around the crash, or get more information that you can share with BorisFX support.

[Walter Soyka]

I think a physical simulation is the best approach for a problem like this.

Try Newton maybe?
https://aescripts.com/newton/

aescripts.com

Newton 4

Unleash realistic physics in After Effects with Newton4, transforming 2D layers into authentic simulations of real-world objects. The trial version is fully functional but export is restricted to 25 frames.Newton is discounted 50% for students and faculty. More info here.

[Walter Soyka]

Yes, exporting to MP4 via After Effects is a new (again) feature in a recent release. It’s pretty great, and we use it often!

I can really only think of two reasons why you might prefer using Media Encoder for your MP4s:

1. You have to deliver a very specific format, or your material and format would benefit from multi-pass encoding. This can help improve quality in VBR encodings.

2. You want a master output, in case you need to re-encode with different settings for a different deliverable. If your render is time-intensive, it’d be way faster to render and keep a ProRes master and encode from that than to have to render multiple MP4s with different settings.

[Walter Soyka]

You’ve already identified the major pieces of this animation: setting the opacity (and maybe the blend mode), and animating the position.

You can use shape layers to create the triangles. Add a shape layer, then add a “Polystar Path” and a “Fill.” Set the Polystar Path type to “Polygon” instead of “Star,” use 3 points, and finally, add a Round Corners.

The nuance really comes in the animation curve. You’ll want to dig into the graph editor to get the feel of the motion right. Here’s an article to get you started:
https://www.schoolofmotion.com/blog/intro-to-the-graph-editor-in-after-effects

Also, you could use the Offset effect instead of animating the position of a shape directly to get the wrap-around effect.

schoolofmotion.com

Tutorial: Intro to the Graph Editor in After Effects

The graph editor is essential for creating smooth, organic animations in After Effects.

[Walter Soyka]

A lot of the old conventional wisdom around how to use the cache was etched in our minds when all our drives were spinning rust. It doesn’t apply anymore.

With After Effects in particular, the cache works best when the cache works fast.

Put your cache on your fastest drive, irrespective of where the OS, program, and project file. For example, if you have your OS on a very fast NVMe drive, and your project is on a SATA SSD, use the NVMe.

[Walter Soyka]

And for me, when I’m hiring, these are some things I’m looking for. This is a ranked list, with my highest hiring priorities at the top:

1. Attitude (why work with someone you can’t get along with?)
2. Ability to collaborate (with clients, with other agencies, with other team members)
3. Ability to communicate (we can’t sell ideas we can’t explain)
4. Working clean (neat project files only!)
5. Ability to take direction and iterate (the difference between v1 and v2 is more important than the difference between a blank comp and v1)
6. Thoughtful creativity (generating clever ideas, grounded in intention and efficacy)
7. Time management (raw speed is important, but accuracy in estimating and scheduling your own work is more important)
8. Technical skill (pushing the right buttons)

[Walter Soyka]

How might you build this in Ae from scratch?

How might you animate this?

How might you adapt this to other layouts?

How might you use this in conjunction with other elements in a design?

[Walter Soyka]

I think your problem is that your text uses Unicode encodings, but something somewhere between pbpaste, stdin, and ExtendScript is treating the string as ASCII.

The best workaround I can think of is to explicitly tell pbpaste to use a Unicode encoding, dump it to a file, and explicitly read the file back in with a Unicode encoding.

Sample code:

// create a temporary file
var tempFile = new File("~/TempUnicodeText-" + Date.now());
// pbpaste uses the LANG environment variable to determine its encoding
// we'll explicitly set it for a UTF-8 encoding, then dump the clipboard to a file
system.callSystem("export LANG=en_US.UTF-8 && pbpaste > " + tempFile.fsName);
// let's explictly decode our new file with UTF-8, read in the contents,
// and then delete the temporary file
tempFile.encoding = "UTF8";
tempFile.open();
var pasteText = tempFile.read();
tempFile.close();
tempFile.remove();
// now pasteText holds our Unicode-encoded string, 
// and we can do whatever we want with it
alert(pasteText);

[Walter Soyka]

If you are required to deliver interlaced video, you will get better results if you render interlaced video from After Effects.

After you add your comp to the render queue, click its render settings (“Best Settings,” by default) and change the “Field render” option from “Off” to “Upper field first” to match your delivery requirements.