AE Effects Notes

Notes/memos regarding Adobe After Effects quirks

TOC

• The effects that even precomped work in the parent composition dimensions
• Eternal bugs
• AE tonemapper
• Gaussian Blur
• UnMult
• Alpha channel
• Camera Raw for any sequence

The effects that even precomped work in the parent composition dimensions

• Bulge
• Grid
• CC Repetile

Eternal bugs

• Repetile creates 1 empty pixel edge when applied to an Adjustment layer
  Workaround:
  A work around is to use a rectangle shape layer set to the same size as the comp. Then toggle the adjustment layer switch to make this shape layer work as your adjustment layer instead. This seems to overcome the bug and the 2 pixel gap isn't present anymore.

AE tonemapper

http://reduxfx.com/SimpleToneMapper_NativeAE.zip

• Hover with the mouse over the highlights and look at the values in After Effects info palette.
• The largest value should be the one used as White Level. From there, it's only a matter of adjusting and refining the value to achieve a good balance of dark and bright tones.
• If your image is gamma corrected, make sure to set the proper gamma value. Otherwise leave it at 1.0 (linear gamma).
• Don't forget to set the project's depth to 32bpc, otherwise banding will ruin the image.

Gaussian Blur

Creates ugly negative values outlines when working in 32 bits. But generally is much better than the Legacy Gaussian, which also lacks Repeat Edge Pixels function. Fucking frustrating!
My attempt to match the Legacy Gaussian with Fast Box Blur (3 iterations)

type: line
labels: [1,2,3,4,5]
series:
  - title: Fast Box
    data: [.12,.42,1.1,1.5,1.9]
tension: 0.2
width: 50%
labelColors: true
fill: true
beginAtZero: true

UnMult

with no 3rd party plugins
Source

A way to get the same result as the Knoll Unmult plug-in using the effects built into After Effects is:

• use the Channel Combiner effect, with Max RGB as the From value and Alpha Only as the To value
• apply the Remove Color Matting effect

Alpha channel

Track mattes and plug-ins such as Set Matte assume that the alpha channel type is straight.

Camera Raw for any sequence

File open dialogue

1. Select Camera Raw in the file filter list
2. Select back All Files filter, now you can select the Format from the list