CC Composite Issue

[Shredder378]

I'm having issues with the CC Composite effect in After Effects. Here is a screenshot of what version of AE I'm running as well as a video of the problem. Any help would be appreciated!

[Szalam]

Why are you applying those particle effects to text layers? That is, what, exactly, are you trying to do? There might be an easier way to accomplish it.

[Shredder378]

I'm trying to make it look like the text is disintegrating.

[Szalam]

I assume you're following Ryan Shirley's tutorial.

I can't recreate your problem on my machine.

What happens when you move your playhead forward? Have you tried clearing your cache?

Is your project set to use 8-bit, 16-bit, or 32-bit?

[Shredder378]

I am actually ha ha. It's the same not matter where my play head is. I can try clearing my cache. I did figure out a go around where I inserted the composite first instead of the particle system II. When I did that it worked fine; however, if I move the text layer with those effects above my duplicated text layer that same thing occurs. I am using 8-bit.

[Szalam]

That's weird. I'm guessing it's a corrupted cache. Starting a new project should fix it if clearing the cache doesn't.

BTW, at about 5:30 in that tutorial where he's fumbling around with twirl downs trying to get to the keyframes, just select the layer and press U - it'll reveal any keyframed properties on a layer so you don't have to do that mess.

[Shredder378]

I didn't know that! Thanks for the help!

[Rick Gerard]

Ryan's tutorial is OK but a bit confusing to follow. The technique is viable, just not explained very clearly. If you can't get anything to happen when you adjust the parameters you either have missed a step or, as Szalam said, it's probably a cache problem. Ryan's technique also requires you to be very creative with an animated track matte if you want to make just part of the text fly away or use a curved path.

Another option is to use Shatter.

I used a noise layer as a custom shatter map, drew a mask path to copy and paste as the force 1 path, then adjusted the parameters you see here. It took about 2 minutes. Shatter also has the advantage of extruding the text and using the AE camera and the first comp light.