aescripts + aeplugins

Jacob sørensen

Really cool and promising plugin! I have been testing it a bit now, but can't seem to shake of jagged edges on text layers when both fades are at 1 - so that they create a solid shadow. I also tried precomposing the layer, but without luck. Any suggestions? 

Joel Bailey

Great plugin and fantastic promo video. Using the demo, I noticed that unless I use outlined text, there is a thin blank space around text elements. I couldn't detect this happening in the promo video so maybe there's something simple I'm missing. Thoughts?

Joel Bailey

Example:
https://s23.postimg.org/lvqvdl7hn/Capture.png

Eric Lassen

Nice plugin, but getting a black hue when I increase the fade out. Like its some transfer mode on the opacity??? Any help?

Nathen McVittie

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but on export through Media Encoder, the shadow is nowhere to be seen. It shows up inside AE, though. Any ideas?

steven parisi

any chance we can look forward to some tutorials for pulling off these great effects in the preview videos?

Craig Wall

Jacob sørensen said:

Really cool and promising plugin! I have been testing it a bit now, but can't seem to shake of jagged edges on text layers when both fades are at 1 - so that they create a solid shadow. I also tried precomposing the layer, but without luck. Any suggestions? 

I'm having the same problem. If it can't be resolved I may have just burned my money.

Ivan Zlobov

Jacob sørensen said:

Really cool and promising plugin! I have been testing it a bit now, but can't seem to shake of jagged edges on text layers when both fades are at 1 - so that they create a solid shadow. I also tried precomposing the layer, but without luck. Any suggestions? 

Hello Jacob. Could you you please provide an example? A fragment of AE viewport would be enough.

There are several options to deal with jagged edges in different situations that can be found in "post-processing" tab - supersampling, post-smooth and blur. 

Ivan Zlobov

Nathen McVittie said:

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but on export through Media Encoder, the shadow is nowhere to be seen. It shows up inside AE, though. Any ideas?

Hello Nathen,
So far we would only suggest not using Media Encoder, unfortunately. 

We are trying to address that, but AME issues are quite unexpected and we're not even sure it's our fault, tbh.

Ivan Zlobov

Eric Lassen said:

Nice plugin, but getting a black hue when I increase the fade out. Like its some transfer mode on the opacity??? Any help?

Hello Eric,

It's all usual alpha blending everywhere..
Sound like a bug with premultiplied alpha, although we've been testing it versus standart AE blending with similar look. Could you file a bug ticket and provide an example, please?

Ivan Zlobov

Joel Bailey said:

Great plugin and fantastic promo video. Using the demo, I noticed that unless I use outlined text, there is a thin blank space around text elements. I couldn't detect this happening in the promo video so maybe there's something simple I'm missing. Thoughts?

Hi Joel,

I think it might for example be the 2x supersampling, if you're using it with already antialiased object like a text layer, since you're applying more smoothness to already smooth edges.

DEFER Stephane

Nathen McVittie said:

Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but on export through Media Encoder, the shadow is nowhere to be seen. It shows up inside AE, though. Any ideas?

BGRA, cant you tell us if this can be fixed ?
If not working with AME, i wont be able to use it ...

Ivan Zlobov

DEFER Stephane said:

BGRA, cant you tell us if this can be fixed ?
If not working with AME, i wont be able to use it ...

Could you please share why using AME is so crucial for you? 

But yeah, we know about this issue and actively working on it right now. 

It's quite complicated though, it's not a bug but rather a behaviour of AME and needs to be worked around. 

Jacob Sørensen

BGRA-Admin said:

Jacob sørensen said:

Really cool and promising plugin! I have been testing it a bit now, but can't seem to shake of jagged edges on text layers when both fades are at 1 - so that they create a solid shadow. I also tried precomposing the layer, but without luck. Any suggestions? 

Hello Jacob. Could you you please provide an example? A fragment of AE viewport would be enough.

There are several options to deal with jagged edges in different situations that can be found in "post-processing" tab - supersampling, post-smooth and blur. 

I tired the Post Smooth and supersampling at 2x, but it doesn't help a lot. I want hard edges so blur isn't an option in this case unfortunately. Heres a link for a screenshot from After effects : http://pasteboard.co/ljXSMMtB8.png
I also tried rendering it in best settings without luck. 

Ivan Zlobov

Oh, in your case I'd suggest using really short fade out value, 0.9-0.95 or something like that.
We could also add more supersampling modes, like 4x/8x, but it's probably too demanding for low-end GPUs, that's why we don't do that atm. 

Jacob Sørensen

BGRA-Admin said:

Oh, in your case I'd suggest using really short fade out value, 0.9-0.95 or something like that.
We could also add more supersampling modes, like 4x/8x, but it's probably too demanding for low-end GPUs, that's why we don't do that atm. 

That helps very little. Is there anyway that I can enable 4x/8x without being available through the plugin? I think it would help people including myself if you shared some of the project files from the video  

Ivan Zlobov

Oh, all the demo content was made with the same 2x supersampling option that you've got.

In fact, I'm not sure if understood your question, then. Fade out should be just fine for dealing with jagged edges.

May be you want smoother overall edge silhouette? We can probably do a bigger post smooth kernel, but at the moment you could try to pass the shadow body to any edge smoothing or median filter plugin of your choice. (EG you can use standart ae median filter and set it to operate on alpha channel. If you will set LS' 'Object Opacity' property to 0, you will only get the shadow itself and nothing else).

Also, may be we better continue this discussion in a bug or feature request ticket that you might file.

Jacob Sørensen said:

That helps very little. Is there anyway that I can enable 4x/8x without being available through the plugin? I think it would help people including myself if you shared some of the project files from the video  

Christian Nordmann

Hello,
i have a short Question.
How did you make the striped shadows in the promo clip?
Regards. :-)

Lucky Post

-When I animate the position or rotation of an object the plugin causes some major movement that is just horrible.  i need it to not affect the position or rotation of the layer it is applied to.  windows10, CC2017

- when two identical shadows are stacked on each other (same layer or not) they have a dark edge to them.   Not sure why; if color is 100% tint, and 100% opacity, then it should be identical color on top of each other.

-small suggestion, but not necessary:  have the rotation be a circle control.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Lucky Post,
Please file a bug ticket a provide the cases of your problems - things that you've described shouldn't happen and they don't happen during tests here.

Not sure which 'rotation' are you talking about, there is no such a parameter in the plugin. Shadow direction is a standart AE angular control already.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Christian,

Tutorials are in progress, but in general you have your shadow solid body that you can fill however you like, with, eg, venetian blinds effect.

Christian Nordmann said:

Hello,
i have a short Question.
How did you make the striped shadows in the promo clip?
Regards. :-)

Jacob Sørensen

BGRA-Admin said:

Oh, all the demo content was made with the same 2x supersampling option that you've got.

In fact, I'm not sure if understood your question, then. Fade out should be just fine for dealing with jagged edges.

May be you want smoother overall edge silhouette? We can probably do a bigger post smooth kernel, but at the moment you could try to pass the shadow body to any edge smoothing or median filter plugin of your choice. (EG you can use standart ae median filter and set it to operate on alpha channel. If you will set LS' 'Object Opacity' property to 0, you will only get the shadow itself and nothing else).

Also, may be we better continue this discussion in a bug or feature request ticket that you might file.

Jacob Sørensen said:

That helps very little. Is there anyway that I can enable 4x/8x without being available through the plugin? I think it would help people including myself if you shared some of the project files from the video  

I want a smooth overall silhouette, and right now none of the effects I apply can smooth it out. Where do I file the bug ticket? 

Vincent Raineri

Hi,

I have a bug, 

some time when i use the plugin my layer change his position.

Have you a solution for fix this ?

Thanks

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Vincent, 
do you mean you have a glitch in AE viewport? then you just need to purge your memory data. 

Otherwise, if it happens to some actual animated params, please file a bug ticket and describe your situation, so we could reproduce it.

Vitaly Vyazovsky

Hey, guys!
Nice work on the plugin.
Noob question: is there's an easier way to achieve this gradient color effect on the demo video, other than just replicating multiple layers with fade-out effect? Am I missing something?

Ivan Zlobov

Hey Vitaly. 
No, you are not missing anything - currently precomps are the only way to do that, however we're considering adding gradient controls inside the plugin after several requests, so it might change in the nearest future.

Jaime Martinez

Many times a little glitch on the top left corner appears when using this plugin, why is that?

Sébastien Bruzzo

I'd like to report a problem when animating a position text animator.

When animating a text position line by line, in order to make the first line coming from the left and the second line coming from the right, then the "Grow layer bounds" property causes the second line to move relatively to the first one. When i uncheck "Grow layer bounds", the problem disappear...

I have to precompose the text layer to avoid this problem. But i'd like to have as less precomp as possible...

Sébastien Bruzzo

Another problem is the awkward aliasing effects produced by the plugin, on the edges of the shadow, when the type is moving (with a bounce easy-in).

It's flickering, which makes this effect unsatisfactory, and useless when using it with animated typography...

Ivan Zlobov

Hey Sebastien,

If grow bounds feature doesn't work with your rig and you don't like precomps, you might try applying Longshadow to adjustment layer over your animation instead. Unfortunately, animated text in AE is quite convoluted and there is no obvious way to make grow bounds working properly for all the cases.

To fight the aliasing, please try supersampling feature, fade offs or just apply some ae blur/motion blue to the shadow body. We're working on having softer shadows though, will appear in upcoming versions.

James Brennan

The reel looks nice but don't let that fool you.  This effect sporadically repositions my layers so often that I think it's unusable. IMO it shouldn't be sold on here until it is in a much more polished state.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi James,

It's not that we're getting many complaints.

Please file a bug ticket and attach the example project you're experiencing problems with, so we could look into it.

Ivan Zlobov

Here's a link to create it: https://aescripts.com/contact/?direct=1&product_id=1021  ;

Ivan Zlobov

So, just for the record -  you didn't, and so we still have no clear idea what were you talking about. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Zen Jepras

Am also getting the glitch - disappearing and repositioning in the corner. Also disappearing when I try to perform a preview.

Will post a bug ticket if possible...

Bas Mooij

Hi Im using the effect on a large project an everything works fine! Now I want to render out at a render farm. I've bought the plugin again to supply them with a new licence.

When they try to open the effect however, they get this error:

after effects error crash occurred while invoking plug-in "LongShadow"

Any idea how to fix this? They run AE 14.0.1.5 version. Im running latest version (14.2.34)

*EDIT* Apparently the effect needs OpenGL in order to work? This seems to be a problem for soem render farms..? 

Ivan Zlobov

Hey Bas,

Yes, it's very likely. The effect uses OpenGL for GPU calculations. And yes, it might be a problem for some render farms, although almost all modern AE plugins use GPU one way or another, so I'd expect renderfarm  nodes to provide GPUs sooner or later.

Jaime Martinez

I'm sick of this plugin. I bought it on day 1 it was on the feature list of this page. Since then, everything has been lots of problems and bugs that doesn´t looks like they are even trying to fix. They launched it on january and haven't fixed many of the problems it has. They only give "recommendations on what to do" on the comments but if that doesn't work, you're lost. Hope i can get my money back on this and buy the other options around the web. Is not like it costs a penny to have to deal with all these months of excuses.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Jaime,
It's really sad to know that you're unhappy customer, but please, to get your issues fixed, just try filing a bug ticket
If you file a bug with repro case, you get it fixed.  
I can assure you that 95% of all plugin updates we release are to fix filed bugs and follow user suggestions.
We can't guess what bothers you, unfortunately. And we have 0 open bugs at the moment for this plugin, just so you know.

If we are unable to fix your issue we will gladly issue a refund but please file the bug ticket.

Nicolas Marois

After a long and painful troubleshoot, I thought I should share what I discovered.
Anyone else had weird blinking and position change on a object with this plugin?

Solution 1
-It could be because you copied the effect instead of reapplying it, reset the effect and input your settings.

Solution 2
-If you are using an illustrator layer, make sure it's the same size as your composition in After Effects, move the object in Illustrator if you have to.
At first I thought the issue was moving the layer outside of the composition boundaries, but after I applied the effect I change the layer position.
So it looks to me, if your comp is 1920x1080, make sure your layer is 1920x1080 in Illustrator. The weird thing is, I had plenty layers bigger than the comp and the effect work fine, for some reason one of the layer did not. I redid the whole thing to make sure it was not a corrupted layer in after effects, it was not.

Clear as mud?

Hope this help

Nicolas Marois

Thought you might like to see what I did with the plugin, the problem I wrote about was on a publicity in this series,
title move in from outside the frame, shadow length decrease after.

https://www.facebook.com/pg/ecolesecondairesaintjeaneudes/videos/?ref=page_internal

https://www.facebook.com/pg/ecolesecondairesaintjeaneudes/videos/?ref=page_internal

Ivan Zlobov

Hello Nicolas,

Is there any chance that you could create a bug ticket and attach a project where we could notice this issue?

If so - please do! It would be great, great help. 

Adam Gross

This crashes After Effects 2017 every time I try and use it. Should have read the comments before I bought it, looks like its very buggy. Im dissapointed, this is definitely AEScripts quality.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Adam, the plugin sure is working with AE 2017. As far as i can remember, you're the first user with such problem.
Please open a support ticket, describe your situation and attach minimal aep that causing problems, or issue a refund, it's up to you.

Eric Santiago

Using 2017 on Mac I get this error:

After Effects warning: Expression Disabled. Error at line 1 in property 'Anchor Point' of layer 12 ("SHADOW") in comp 'ent548'.

effect named 'Box Blur' is missing or does not exist. It may have been renamed, moved, deleted, or the name maybe have been mistyped.

This error does not occur on 2015.

The plugin Long Shadow is installed correctly.

Ivan Zlobov

Hi Eric,
Longshadow is a native AE plugin that doesn't use any other effects to render the shadow. So I'm not sure how can you get such warning because of it. Are you sure you're not using some long shadow preset from the internets instead? I think that's the case, and you probably better contact its author, not us.

Gary Bird

Hi there

I just wanted to say what a great plugin Longshadow is - saves so much time and is very versatile. I did not expect it to work so well with Element 3D, but it does Here is my first effort at using it with Element 3D:

https://vimeo.com/248840876

Thanks again

Gaz

Eddie Schneckloth

Hi,

Are there any tutorials available about overlaying the shadow effects to create gradients? I try applying long shadow 2x to the same layer and it changes my position keyframes. Please tell me I don't have to precomp because that's way too inefficient.

-Eddie

Eddie Schneckloth

Hi,

My LongShadow isn't working with motion blur. Is there a setting I'm missing? Yes, motion blur is on for the comp and layer.

-Eddie

Eddie Schneckloth

When I turn on 3d to rotate a layer with longshadow, it changes position and orientation. Basically doesn't work when 3d is turned on. Please help.