animated lower thirds and animate text help..

[RobGBanga]

I am a very basic user of adobe premiere and have been producing some average little photo and dv compositions to music of some cool training stuff i do at work. I recently saw a professionally done piece that had animated text with shapes etc flying across the screen as the text came up. I assumed this was done with AE...so i started to look into it and was a little overwhelmed by it all. Without going to much into what i do for a job (i am in an equivalent of a US swat team but in Aust) I am basically after a template of sorts of a the ability to have text pop up or scroll up onto screen like "Team, not self" with cross hairs or similar coming across the screen also..i know its hard to describe but tahts the best i can do at this stage....I have looked at animated lower thirds but cant seem to find any 'free ones' that do this...

Any constructive help be greatly appreciated.

RG

 

[maruyama]

There may be a few lower 3rds that you can find for free, but the addage: "You get what you pay for" probably applies.

Check Digital Juice (creators of background animation CDs)

Steven Schleicher has some tutorials on the subject for AE at

http://www.creativemac.com

Ko Maruyama
Tutorials

http://www.MacAnimationPro.com

 

[XONIKZ]

creating animations for lowerthirds, etc.. isn't all that hard if you've got the time to learn it.
write down or draw out your ideas first or you'll get lost in the options available. start with a specific look for your goal. then determine the graphics which will be needed.

for instance, to create something like what you've described you'll need a graphic of the crosshair (you can create your design in Photoshop on a transparent layer and import it to AE as a compostition). use the crosshair with keyframed motion and (unless it's the main focus) some blur effects. It might be good to add some lightings effects such as a roving (use motion keyframes) spotlight, or something. behind the crosshair use graphics or color to create a loop (you may want to do this with the crosshair too) wich starts and ends with the same keyframe values, for continuous loop purposes. Anyhow, once you have the gaphics sorted out and the motion applied, chose the method of reveal. If you want to use this third for more than one title then save at this point as a generic profile. the reveal can be through a mask that grows from left, right, top, center, etc.. your choice. once the reveal is set, then work on you text. fill the text space where you want it and then fiddle with effects. there re so many effects options in AE it might be best to choose an effect without knowing if it's there and then look around to find out if it's possible. having a specific requested effect to search for info on is a lot easier then just asking a general question like you did.