[Walter Soyka]

If you’re looking for the Add blend mode, you have to enable the MODES column.

If you’re looking for Add for shape layers (to add paths/strokes/fills/etc. to your comp), you have to create and select a shape layer first.

[Walter Soyka]

Essential Properties in Ae should work pretty much the same as Essential Graphics in Premiere; you can change the source text in an instance of the templated comp in Ae just like in Premiere. Can you maybe post a screenshot of your UI so I can help you figure out what’s up?

[Walter Soyka]

You can also extrude shape layers directly in After Effects, without having to move into C4D Lite.

Import your Illustrator logo, then right-click it and choose Create > Shapes from Vector Layer. Make the new shape layer a 3D layer by clicking its 3D switch in the timeline/switches panel.

Open your comp settings (Ctrl+K on a PC, Cmd+K on a Mac), and in the 3D Renderer tab, choose CINEMA 4D.

Now you can twirl open the shape layer, and under Geometry, you can set the extrusion depth, bevel type, etc.

[Walter Soyka]

This code looks to be just about as compact as it can be, and it runs nearly instantaneously on my system, even with a lot more layers selected.

[Walter Soyka]

Nothing changes, but Ae and Premiere composite differently by default — so things like partially transparent drop shadows will appear differently. You’ll have to change a setting in one app to match the other if you want consistency in cases like this.

If you switch “Composite in linear light” in your Premiere sequence settings to OFF, then your MOGRT should match in Premiere exactly. (And cross-dissolves to black/transparency will get smoother.)

Alternately, you could work in linear in Ae by setting a project color space (Rec. 709 should your default unless you know you need something specific) and linearizing in the project settings, under the color tab.

[Walter Soyka]

If you wish to remap one range of values to another, you can use one of the After Effects interpolation methods, like linear(). For example:

var audioAmplitude = thisComp.layer("Audio Amplitude").effect("Both Channels")("Slider");

linear(audioAmplitude, MIN_INPUT, MAX_INPUT, MIN_OUTPUT, MAX_OUTPUT);

In that code, replace MIN_INPUT and MAX_INPUT with the bottom and top of the range that you want to map from the Audio Amplitude, and replace MIN_OUTPUT and MAX_OUTPUT with the bottom and top of the range you wish to generate.

[Walter Soyka]

That perspective distortion is caused by your camera settings. Try a longer lens, positioned further away, to reduce the effect of perspective.

[Walter Soyka]

The line “delta = frame – inFrame;” looks like the old code — it should work if you copy and paste mine.

I also had some trouble copying and pasting your code directly. I was thinking that maybe some of the characters were being replaced by typographical equivalents by the COW since it wasn’t wrapped in a preformatted/code block. If you manually retype that line the way it looks, then delete the original line, it should work.

[Walter Soyka]

That’s some old code you’ve got there! It’ll run, but I’ve modernized it a bit below.

The key thing that you want to change are the references to 100 (and 110). That’s what’s setting the opacity to maximum. I’ve changed that out to “value” here instead, which will allow you to set the property itself right in the timeline panel to what you want its default maximum opacity to be.

var blinks = 5; // The number of times to blink while fading in. you can change this and it will recompute for you
var blinkFrames = blinks*2;
var inFrame = timeToFrames(thisLayer.inPoint);
var outFrame = timeToFrames(thisLayer.outPoint);
var currentFrame = timeToFrames(time);
if (currentFrame < (inFrame + blinkFrames)) {
	var deltaFrame = currentFrame - inFrame;
	if (deltaFrame % 2 == 0) { 
		0; 
	} else { 
		linear(deltaFrame,0,blinkFrames,10,value); 
	}
} else if (currentFrame < (outFrame - blinkFrames)) { 
	value; 
} else {
	var deltaFrame = currentFrame - (outFrame - blinkFrames);
	if (deltaFrame % 2 != 0) {
		0;
	} else {
		linear(deltaFrame,0,blinkFrames,value,0);
	}
}

[Walter Soyka]

I’ve been using Shuttle Encoder a bit lately — it’s a great frontend for the open-source ffmpeg tool:

https://www.shutterencoder.com/en/