Puddle and reflection effects in After Effects CS4

I am currently using After Effects CS4 (will be upgrading to CS6 in a couple of days) and I am currently trying out a test project using basic lighting animation. However, one element I want to create is a puddle on the ground. I was wondering if anybody here could advise on creating a puddle and its effects in After Effects, such as wave movements, reflection (particularly background elements) and whether I should use the basic pen tool or use some sort of diffusion maps. If I wanted to make things a little more complicated, then how can I create rain effects to hit the ground plane without it looking like a screen filter and have it influence the puddle?
If any of you would be able to point me out to some other tutorials on the web, I would be very grateful for that.

GenArts' Monsters GT has a Puddle 3D effect that is quite okay for that. Beyond that I don't see how we should advise specifically without a reference image. There's a million types of puddle from still and murky flat ones to deep asphalt holes to wavy large ones on fields and how "real" they look will ultimately depend on their context.
Mylenium

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I just got creative cloud 2014 and decided to install After effects on my laptop. I get error to install Adobe Application Manager. I got AAM but installing it, I got an error message "Installer failed to initialize. Please download Adobe support advisor"

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Using Adobe Media Encoder to create H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV videos from After Effects - 6/23/14

Very disappointed with this choice. I will definitely be seeking to uninstall this version and go back a version or two. Two many extra steps to export an mp4 now. And now we also have to wait longer for a mp4 to render and can't take advantage of the machine's hardware? You guys fighting mp4 as a standard, forcing us to an additional product, or what? I'll be sharing my extreme disappoint with this 'upgrade' with the rest of the developers at work and who just had it installed. I'm not seeing this being too popular opn social media either. Seems like you only did what was best for you.Thanks for showing us who's boss.

Frank VA wrote:
And now we also have to wait longer for a mp4 to render and can't take advantage of the machine's hardware?
Not necessarily. You can render an intermediate codec with AE's render queue (thus using all of AE's power to render) and then drop that file into the Adobe Media Encoder.
This was the workflow I've always used - even when AE could encode with MP4. Why? Well, because AE sucked at MP4 encoding. You couldn't even do multipass endoding with it!
This is a useful workflow in a few ways:
1. You have an archive-quality file to come back to in the future.
2. You can use AE's full power to render.
3. You can use AME's superior encoding capabilities.
4. You can tweak your compression settings and try various encoding parameters to improve the quality while decreasing the bitrate of your product WITHOUT having to re-render the AE comp every time you try since you're working off of the intermediate file. I mean, imagine a comp with several 3d layers, depth of field, shadows from multiple lights, and 250,000 particles from Particular. What if you made an MP4 and then the client needed a smaller file size or the MP4 you made was too heavily compressed and you needed higher quality? I don't know about you, but I'd much rather only render that 18-hour monster once.
This workflow actually saves time for many people.
And, in any workflow, this produces a better product.
Again, this is what I did even when AE could encode MP4's.
Frank VA wrote:
You guys fighting mp4 as a standard, forcing us to an additional product, or what?
They aren't fighting MP4 as a standard, in fact, when Adobe folks pop in here and answer questions, that's often their recommendation for delivery codec.
Frank VA wrote:
Seems like you only did what was best for you. Thanks for showing us who's boss.
Listen, I understand your frustration. Knocking out a quick compressed file from AE for client review is handy.
However, maintaining the h.264 encoding in AE took up development time. There are only so many person-hours per week for the (relatively tiny) AE team to spend on building each version of AE.
I never liked AE's h.264 encoding - AME has always done a superior job. Since we have AME to do our encoding, I would rather the AE team focus their effort on improving AE as a compositing and motion graphics tool rather than as an encoding tool.
Again, I get the frustration. I can see where it feels like they are doing what's good for them and not us, but I think, in the long run, this way is better for us. Right now, the majority of the AE team is working on making AE faster to work with and faster to render. The sooner we get a relatively bug-free version of that, the better! (Especially for folks on Mac OSX Yosemite who can't RAM preview smoothly in any version of AE).
And at least the After Effects team has been very transparent about things - for example, this blog post talks about their reasoning: using Adobe Media Encoder to create H.264, MPEG-2, and WMV videos from After Effects

EFFECTS OF AFTER EFFECTS

Adobes After effects is something which has been my favourite when it comes to creating motion graphics in the process of film making.
Creativity is onething which gets stucked in my mind whenever i think of graphics.
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Now comming to the possible effects you can create with after effects, theres no end to creativity, each one has varying degrees of creative ideas.
Here below are the links to my creations:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSVI0JmlVgA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLgWexcsw-E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaEXq1qpHok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ8H5tuRBvA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3X7Ffga0Rnk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1D_Ykiw2ho
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ7bhAov-jI
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No.
Help us help you: FAQ: What information should I provide? I mean, at the very least we would need to know what the text of the errors says. It wouldn't hurt if we also knew the exact version number of Premiere, AE, and your OS.

3D Effect In After Effects

Hey everyone this is my first post here, and it happens to be a question I haven't been able to find an answer to.
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diffusecash
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hello guys, im new to this awesome program, im using the trial version so ive limited time to learn XD
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sam.loomis1234
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http://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/kb/supported-file-formats-effects-cs4.html#main_head1
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That doesn't seems to do anything. I have it set up to use 10Gb of ram, yet the system says I'm only using 37% of my ram,
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none of my processors
Secondary processors/ cores will only be used, if you enable the sad excuse that is the "Render multiple Frames simultanuously" feature. As Todd suggested, read that article on "optimum" settings. Just keep in mind that what works well for one project may not work at all for the next one when the balance of footage I/O vs. pixel processing vs. memory consumption changes. You're gonna learn to really hate this...
I have no idea about the graphics card
AE doesn't use it for the most part. Even if you enable all of the hardware acceleration features, AE may turn them off behind your back, one such condition being the use of MP rendering. Can't have both. Conversely, MP rendering might be turned off just the same, if specific effects or features are used. That's also expleianed in teh help. Your only chance of halfway benefiting from hardware acceleration is buying some third-party plug-ins that have their own implementations of OpenGL and CUDA. Still, since you use two different cards i nyour system, that may also be problematic...
Mylenium

Can't open and update my Adobe After Effects CC after upgraded OS X 10.9 Mavericks~ Please help!

After upgraded OS X 10.9 Mavericks, the adobe after effects cc can't be open.
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You have “Adobe After Effects CC” 12.0"
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"Update Failed
Updates could not be applied
Please contact your Administrator if you wish to apply updates on your machine. Updates have been suppressed by the Administrator.
If the problem persist, contact customer support for further assistance."
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> I've try to download and install the updated software - AfterEffectsTrial-12.0.1-mul-AdobeUpdate.dmg
Don't do that. The After Effects CC (12.0.1) patch was only a temporary solution before After Effects CC (12.1) was released:
http://adobe.ly/AE_CC_12dot1_details
> but the system show me
"Update Failed
Updates could not be applied
Please contact your Administrator if you wish to apply updates on your machine. Updates have been suppressed by the Administrator.
If the problem persist, contact customer support for further assistance."
That is telling you that whoever deployed your Adobe software as part of an enterprise software license agreement chose to disable updates. You'll need to talk with your IT people who set up and deployed your Adobe software to reverse this decision.

Puddle and reflection effects in After Effects CS4

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