After Effects Apprentice Video Tutorial #7

We’ve recently released After Effects Apprentice (2nd Edition). The DVD-ROM that comes with the book includes an hour and a half of video tutorials that provide gentle introductions to major features inside After Effects. We are releasing these videos one per month here on PVC; they are also being made available on Focal Press’ web site - make sure you visit their After Effects micro-site for more related freebies.

Learning how to navigate 3D space can be one of the more daunting features to tackle in After Effects. In this seventh video, we demonstrate how to use the Camera Tools in After Effects both to move 3D cameras, and how they affect the Position versus Point of Interest parameters. We also show how these same tools allow you to customize the additional 3D views the user has access to, making it easier to view your scene from alternate perspectives. Tips include how to quickly switch between the different tools, plus how to use a 3-button mouse in conjunction with the new Unified Camera Tool introduced in After Effects CS4. And it will all take only 4 minutes of your time. Click on the Play Video link below, and enjoy!

(Note: For those who are hearing-impaired, lynda.com has added Closed Captioning to these tutorials. They are available here. We are also in the process of creating video training for all of the After Effects Apprentice lessons; they will also appear on lynda.com. If you do not have a lynda.com subscription, click here for a free 7-day pass.)

After Effects Apprentice was designed for students looking to learn After Effects from scratch, as well as those who do not use AE full time (such as editors or web designers). It starts gently with an introduction to keyframing, and progresses through the important features (such as masks, mattes, effects, text, audio, 3D space, shape layers, expressions, parenting, and building advanced hierarchies of compositions) until you end up keying, stabilizing, and compositing a shot in high def. The second edition has been fully revamped for After Effects CS4, and includes integration with Photoshop CS4 Extended and Flash Professional CS4.

The content contained in After Effects Apprentice - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

PAR for the Course

Over the years, I have seen a lot of folklore and bad math employed to determine how to work with non-square pixels, resulting in a plethora of incorrect working practices. Therefore, in this article I’m going to spend a lot of time laying out the historical and mathematical basis for where these numbers came from. Hopefully this will provide you with a solid foundation on which you can build a new set of working practices.

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