[Xavier Bonet]

So nobody has ever had this happen? Can I be the only one?
After months of trying to fix it, I still can’t. Always have to work around the issue. I’m starting to feel like even though the dynamic link between After Effects and Premiere Pro used to prove very practical and saved me a lot of time, increasingly I’m finding that I have to waste time on stuff like this. So perhaps I should just export from AE and use FCPro… Unfortunately, PPro is always a very buggy piece of software.

[Xavier Bonet]

Hey, Dave, I appreciate you taking the time to help and everything but I must say your comment:

[Dave LaRonde] “Learn your arithmetic.”

Is uncalled for and rather rude, insulting, not to mention a bit violent.

I don’t think it’s an issue of knowing my arithmetic, I think my arithmetic is rather OK. Not having noticed my timecode began at 0:00:05:01 rather than 0:00:00:00 is what has happened, and is clearly an oversight of mine for which I take full responsibility. The fact is I didn’t think to check the timecode because it never occurred to me I might have created a new composition that somehow had 0:00:05:01 set as its starting timecode. But as I say in my answer to Cassius (who, by the way, helped me see what was going on without thinking it imperative to take a shot at me): the fact remains that AE was exporting my comp weirdly: it was exporting the timeline as is, with it starting at 121 and ending at 322 (arithmetic… 05:01 × 24 = 121; 13:10 × 24 = 322… √ learned) but the actual animation (which in AE started at 121 and ended at 322, as per the timecode) was starting at 0 and ending at 202… I think you can see the issue here: it was this that was confusing me: I was only seeing half my animation when I played it on C4D (yes, not noticing it was starting on 121 and not 0, so maybe it’s not an issue of learning my arithmetic but rather an issue of needing better glasses, getting tested for dyslexia or simply going to bed earlier and not working until 4am to meet a deadline…)

Anyway, I don’t mean to be preachy, but my point is that when one comes looking for help to a forum it’s because one has exhausted every other possibility. Often, one’s conundrum is nothing but a simple fix to someone else or to a group of people. I believe that’s the reason forums where created. We’re allowed oversights, I believe, without being berated for them. Even seasoned pros sometimes make mistakes and need a little help. Snide remarks are never constructive and when I read them in forums I question whether those people writing them understand the essence of a collective mind… but when I see them from moderators or, a “cow leader”, well, it’s just disappointing, to say the least…

[Xavier Bonet]

Oh! You’re right! I never thought to check the start timecode! Specially because it’s so weird it starts at 05:01, that has never happened to me before… I wonder why it has this time…

Anyway, setting it back to 0:00:00:00 solved it. Before, when it was exporting to C4D, it was was doing something weird in that it had the C4D timeline start at 121, which is 5:01, I know, but the animation actually started at 0:00, which meant I was missing about half my animation (121 frames). It was late and I didn’t notice the starting frame was 121.

So there’s the timecode oversight but what I find a bit strange is that AE exports to C4D exactly what it has setup as its timecode but completely ignores where the animations begins. Because even with the timecode starting at 05:01, I shouldn’t have had any problem because in C4D the animation should’ve started at 121 and ended at 323… instead, it started at frame 0, and ended at 202. Which is weird, right? Am I missing something? I mean, still there’s been a weird thing happening in the export.

[Xavier Bonet]

Thanks! ????

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Dave, thanks for your reply. Here’s a copy exported for CC13, in case you have a version form then on:
12899_sequencecc13.aep.zip
To answer your question, though: Yes, the work area extends all the way through. I’ve checked and rechecked everything and everything seems to be correct but it only exports to frame 201. (And there’s nothing in that frame that might be freaking out the software; everything’s pretty straightforward.)

[Xavier Bonet]

Great! Thanks a million!

I see what you’ve done here: the key is RAMPing the text lines in the animator instead of having them set to “Square”. It’s a rather complex and manual process that needs keying several different values but I expected as much.

I wonder if this might be achieved in a more repeatable manner using expressions… that way one could create a sort of template and not have to change everything manually each time.

Anyway, it’s a great starting point and it solves my issue right now! So I’m very grateful for the response!

[Xavier Bonet]

Oh, great! Thanks a lot, Cassius! I had no idea this preset inserted a video layer into the comp (it’s the first time I use the preset… any preset, in fact; usually I configure Particular from scratch myself but I was in a great hurry today!), and because I have 49 layers in my comp, I completely missed that extra one being created at the bottom! In the end, before I read your response, I ended up making a confetti comp of my own with an animated piece of confetti and then just using the Sprite particle type and selecting my animation as the texture. Sort of what I would’ve had to do anyway, as per your answer. So thanks again!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Jim! Thanks for your response.

I did check if the “Use Cached Data” box was checked. I started turning things on and off to see what was the problem, and I found that I was having problems with the objects that had a bend deformer attached to them and a dynamics tag. So I got rid of that deformer by converting the entire object, bend and on, into an editable object, which solved the issue.

Now, to answer your questions. In both computers (which are using the R19, and which I use always one after the other, to build a project and then to render it, respectively, with no problem at all) I saw the same result: when I opened the project back up, the objects wouldn’t even fall when I scrubbed the timeline, they just hung in the air, like you said. BUT, the interesting thing is that even when I rebaked everything and tried rendering the project from computer 1, instead of closing it and transferring the project (i.e. the baked data was working, everything was OK when I scrubbed), in the final render the objects with the dynamics tags that are giving me the issues didn’t appear… as if they were transparent or turned off to the camera—which is a first for me. So there is that, too.

I was working rather fast because I had to turn in a final render a couple of hours ago, so I’m not sure if I saved my workaround over the initial file with the issue… ???? I hope it’s in one of the 2 computers, so I can upload it and maybe we can get to the bottom of why something like this is happening. Any ideas why it would work in the preview and not in the final render?

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi, Steve! Thanks a lot for your answer. Your idea sounds rather interesting. I’m going to try it out.

Any idea how I can smooth out the collider result, though? I don’t know if you were able to check out the project file I uploaded, but you’ll see the way the “water” behaves is not at all nice.

It’s true that I’m going to be looking at higher render times with the displacement, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it for that detail—I’m already using emitters for fire and smoke, and displacement on a couple of textures, so the project is render-heavy as it is. Still, I’d like to find a practical way of solving this for any future use, and your idea sounds like it could be just that. I’m also thinking of trying the Wind and Formula deformers to see how close I can get to something adequate without running my render too long.

Thanks!

[Xavier Bonet]

Hi! I realise I’m a couple of years late… ???? but, for what it’s worth to anyone having similar issues, I was able to fix a similar situation using a different solve than that explained by the OP: I used the same spline as a rail.

Initially, I was using a Sweep and had a bumpy texture on my final object that would rotate unnaturally with every movement. I pinned the issue down to exactly what the OP has: the thing was banking like crazy, instead of acting as a “solid object”. That’s because it’s the spline that’s being affected by dynamics, and the spline is just that: a spline! a single string with no volume. I think there should be an option included into the Spline Dynamics tag that allows one to specify what the diameter or width, the volume, in any case, of the actual object to be rendered will be, because a spline by itself makes no sense. So the object “surrounding” the spline is just a shell that does what the spline does.

In my case, the splines generated hanging moss-like things, and these had to sway with the wind and movement; instead, they turned as if on a swivel. So what I did was change the Sweep for a Spline Wrap (because Sweep doesn’t have to option for a rail), changed the circle spline for a capsule, duplicated the spline in question, and set it as a rail in for the Spline Wrap! And although the result isn’t 100% what I needed, it’s about 95%, and that’s fine for this particular instance.

In conclusion, it does work, at lest for me, and it does stop the object from rotating on its axis. Still, I repeat I think would be better solved by including a specific command in Spline Dynamics.