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(Page 1 of 4 pages for this article 1 2 3 > Last ») Filed under: *VIDEO* •CS4 •Motion Graphics •Visual Effects • After Effects CS4A quick tour of the new features that will be of interest to motion graphics artists.
Adobe has announced their Creative Suite 4, in which they have aligned the schedules of virtually all of their products to be updated at the same time. One of these programs is, of course, After Effects, which we have based our business around since its release in 1992. As a result, we obviously go over each new release with a fine-tooth comb, looking for which new features will make our lives easier, will give us new looks, and which may open up new avenues of business for us. That last point has become particularly interesting in light of Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, plus their focus on integrating functionality across the various programs in the Creative Suite. In this article, we will give a brief overview of many of those new features. Then in the coming weeks and months, we’ll focus on some of these features individually, relating what we found interesting about each one, with tips on how to use them (and what might trip you up). These additional articles will be posted on our CMG Keyframes channel on PVC. In addition to articles up here on ProVideoCoalition, there are several other places where you can glean additional information:
On to our hit list of interesting new features in AE CS4:
User InterfaceLet’s get the most obvious feature out of the way first. After a major overhaul in CS3, the UI has gotten some additional tweaks in CS4. It’s darker, it’s tighter (fewer rounded corners), some of the objects are smaller (be still, shaking mouse hand), some UI names are shorter (while other names are longer - for example, character limits on comp and layer names as well as many other items have now been lifted), selected layer bars have texture again, the Render Queue is a lot more space-efficient, and so forth. There are other nice tweaks as well, such as Layer and Comp markers finally having parity in regards to features, and markers can now have a duration (illustrated as a thin bar extending away from the marker, underneath its text). There are also a few gotchas, such as the shortcut to open Interpret Footage having changed (at least we got a new button for it along the bottom of the Project panel), and some tweaks in the way you open nested comps.
But those are just surface details. There are a couple of new elements in the UI which will make a big difference in your daily life inside After Effects: the new QuickSearch fields, and the new Composition Navigator plus Mini-Flowchart.
QuickSearchThe Project and Timeline panels now have dedicated search dialogs. These make it easy to isolate specific elements based on their name, file type, duration, parameter name, comment, and so forth. This will be a big boon in particular for large and/or disorganized projects. In addition to the QuickSearch dialogs in the Project and Timeline panels, there is also a dedicated search dialog for the Help file, and (in the Splash screen) for the Tips of the Day. By the way, you really will want an Internet connection active while using After Effects; the online help files (discussed in the intro) are far more extensive than those that are installed on your drive, plus have links to information outside of Adobe’s web site. If you have web access, After Effects will use the online version. A big tip of the hat to Todd Kopriva for spearheading an effort to make Help much more...well, helpful! Composition Navigator and Mini-FlowchartAs mentioned above, navigating complex projects can quickly become confusing. After Effects CS4 has two tools to help make this easier.
But what if you have a more complex project hierarchy than “A flows into B flows into C”? That’s where the pop-up Mini-Flowchart comes in. Click on the arrow to the right of a comp’s name in the Comp Navigator, or merely tap Shift with the Comp panel forward, and you will get a more detailed diagram that shows the entire chain, including cases where one comp flows into several and vice versa. We see this being particularly handy late at night, on deadline, when the client has asked for a “minor” change in a complicated project - you can quickly see just who is connected to whom.
next page: new effects & bundled software (Page 1 of 4 pages for this article 1 2 3 > Last ») 
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The first is the Composition Navigator. Along the top of the Composition panel, you will now see a chain of composition names, including the one you currently have selected, one that flows into the current comp (the most recently-used or otherwise most “important” comp, if you have more than one nested in the current comp), and the next comp in the chain that the current one feeds. Click on their names to quickly switch between them.
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