[Walter Soyka]

I understand why you might want to structure the workflow this way, but unfortunately there’s no built-in way to get Ae to write out a 3D layer as a transformed 2D Photoshop smart object.

I guess you could write a pair of scripts for this — one for Ae to extract the 3D points in 2D space, and then a second in Photoshop to apply them to a smart object’s transform.

[Walter Soyka]

Personally, I would prioritize more RAM over faster RAM. I’d rather have longer previews and more ability to run multiple applications at the same time than a marginally faster render.

That said, there’s a third option! Buy 64 GB of DDR5 RAM now, but spring for denser modules so you don’t fill your slots. Then, down the road a little after you’ve made some money back on the machine, you can add another 64 GB if it turns out you’re feeling a little constricted on RAM.

[Walter Soyka]

Very difficult to diagnose from just the video. Can you post the project file (no footage necessary)?

[Walter Soyka]

A couple approaches:

1. Use a renaming tool in Ae to find “_v01” and replace with “_v02”. I still use Chris Green’s Project_Item_Renamer script for this, but there are also several on aescripts.com.

2. Duplicate the comp before you make your changes (Ae will then automatically rename MYGREATCOMP_v01 to MYGREATCOMP_v02 instead of MYGREATCOMP_v01_1). Personally I think this is better version control anyway, because your filenames will match your comp names.

[Walter Soyka]

What you’re seeing is a compression artifact — and I think it’s specifically caused by chroma subsampling. Unfortunately, that makes this fringing unavoidable with nearly all video delivery formats.

You’ll find that rendering to ProRes 4444 will not show this artifact, but by the time the video reaches your viewers, it will inevitably be compressed to another format and exhibit this exact behavior.

[Walter Soyka]

Under View > View Options, change “Camera Wireframes” from the default setting (“When Selected”) to “On.”

[Walter Soyka]

I think the main cause of vanishing polygons in E3D is an inverted normal. You’ll have to turn on a view of normals in your 3D application and invert the normals on the errant polys before bringing the OBJ back into Element.

[Walter Soyka]

Fun challenge. I wrote a quick script to help. The script will let you rename all the comps in a selection, or if no selection is made, all the comps in the project.

When you run the script, it will create a dialog box with the names of all the comps it has found pre-loaded in the edit text box. When you click the “Rename” button, it will rename the comps with whatever the contents of the edit text box are.

The workflow I’d suggest is this:

1. Run the script.
2. Select all and copy the Simplified Chinese comp names out of the dialog box.
3. Paste them into a Google Sheets spreadsheet, starting at cell A1.
4. In cell B1, enter this formula: =googletranslate(A1, “zh”, “en”)
5. Select from cell B1 down to the last cell that has a name in the A column, and Fill Down (Ctrl+D on a PC, Cmd+R on a Mac)
6. Select and copy all the translated names
7. Paste them back into the script’s dialog box.
8. Click “Rename”

The script is attached.

keen-RenameCompsFromList.zip 1 KB Zip - Click to view

• Copy Download Link

[Walter Soyka]

I would create a light and parent it to a 3D null at the center of your scene. Animate the rotation of the null to spin the sun around the sky, and animate the color of the light / shadow properties from morning to noon to night.

Rather than saving it as a preset, I’d consider saving this setup as a project rather than a preset; then just import it into each project, as many times as you need.

[Walter Soyka]

I love my HP Z-series workstations. We have several of them, they’re beautifully engineered, and the service and support options are top-notch. On the downside, they are pretty pricey.

https://www.hp.com/us-en/workstations/desktop-workstation-pc.html

You might consider talking with Puget Systems. I have one of those as my daily driver. A sales engineer will work with you to understand your requirements and recommend and build a machine for your specific needs. They have done some incredible R&D around After Effects performance and benchmarking, and they have some specific recommendations for Blender, too.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/

Lastly, if you don’t already have shared storage, you probably want one. Bob Zelin (who’s very active here on the COW) recommended and remotely configured a QNAP system for us.

https://www.bobzelin.com/Home