Adobe After Effects - I got issues...

[mojo2185]

Adobe After Effects 6.0
First off, i'm following some tutorials.
The first tutorials uses the shatter effect to create an explosion. I've got it working for the most part, but I can't render the thing correctly. I have one image layer to "shatter", and have 3 shatter effects on that one layer. One shatter layer is a minor shatter, the next is a heavier shatter, and the last is just the layer of the shatter (the hole in the wall). I can render it fine in wireframe mode, and it comes out looking great, except it's in wireframe mode. When i try setting it to display the actual textures, the textures disappear, and only a few tiny (and I mean TINY) pieces are visible. This ONLY happens when I have 3 shatter levels. Does someone know how I can fix this?

Second tutorial is a matrix code text effect. At one point, the tutorial tells you to add 3 motion blur effects on one layer. After doing this, and setting the settings just like the guy says, the thing looks nowhere like his does (granted he's probably done this alot, but i'm talkin' mine was way off). I'd like to point out, this seems consistent with my first problem... adding multiple instances of an effect seems to cause me problems. Could this be due to a version mismatch, maybe he's using an older version in the tutorial? Rendering is causing me huge problems in this project as well. Anytime I try rendering, i get a black screen when i try playback. The only time I was actually able to view the render was when i attempted to play it in Adobe Premiere, which did work. I even tried scaling back the project, taking it to its basic steps, before effects were added... same thing, no video, just a black screen on playback.

One idea about the second project's render problem is that the video size is 200x3600. This is for a single "stream of matrix code." Could the video size be causing the problem?

I'm going crazy over these things, if someone could help me out, i'd really appreciate it!

Thanks, and sorry for long post.

[freestyler]

Where are these tutorials you're talking about?

[mojo2185]

Matrix Code Effect - pretty sweet, thats why i want to get it to work
http://www.daugwurks.com/cg_haus/tutorials/ae/matrixcode/
Viewing my exported file at the end of Step2 is where I can't view the output.

Explosion
http://www.creativemac.com/2002/04_apr/tutorials/aeexplosion.htm

[racer-x]

All I can say is After Effects is no picnic to learn. I thought Premiere was hard to learn, but After Effects is harder.

My first projects took multiple tries to get right. But in the end, they came out absolutely stuning. Just keep pluging away until you get it.

Besides if tgpo can master After Effects, than anybody can.

Good Luck!

[mojo2185]

As far as multiple effects go, It might be because he used a different version. I got rid of the multiple instances of an effect, and just adjusted the single effect, and it looked pretty good. I'm still curious why the explosion effect doesn't turn out right, that one needs multiple instances of the shatter effect.

As far as learning After Effects, yeah it is pretty difficult. Once you figure out what the compositions are and how they work, and get a general feel for how the program is set up, it's not too bad. But yeah, i still got a ton to learn.

[tgpo]

Once you learn it, it's very fun to play with and use.

[BubbaJones]

Just get ParticleIllusion, it's so much better, half the price and a lot easier to use!