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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Tips •

After Effects Tips - Installment 4

Continuing our series of After Effects tips, including the itty bitty tilde key and other essential shortcuts for manipulating panels, layers and markers:

Expand panel to fill screen

In the old days (After Effects 6.5 and earlier), you could easily make any panel fill the entire screen. This was particularly useful for the Project and Timeline panels, where you often needed to see a lot of data at once. More recent versions of After Effects have an integrated workspace, where making one panel larger scrunches up all the adjacent panels. When you’re done, you then have to resize that panel to return to your previous layout.

Here’s a better way: To make any panel fill the screen, just move your cursor over it, then press the ~ (tilde) key. Press ~ again to return instantly to your previous layout. Don’t forget to add your own sound effects (like “oooh…” then “aaah…”). [Updated: You don’t need to make panel active first.]

Here we show toggling the Project panel to full screen (below) by pressing the ~ (tilde) key. Repeat to return to the original layout.

Float that Panel

For some panels, such as the Render Queue, you may prefer to float the panel instead of making it full screen: That way you can move it around independently of the other panels, as well as see other panels in the background. To float a panel, right+click (Control+click on Mac) on its tab and chose Undock Panel from the popup menu. If you find an arrangement you particularly like, don’t forget to save it as a new Workspace (go to Workspace popup menu and select New Workspace).

To make the Render Queue panel float on top of all others, right+click and select Undock Panel (above). When you close and reopen it, it will continue to float above the main application. To redock it, drag its tab to the center of any other panel you want it to join. If you make a big mess, you can always select Workspace > Reset “Workspace Name”!

Replace Layer Source

Ever animate a layer and now you want to swap the layer’s source while retaining all the effects and keyframes? To do this, select the layer you want to change in the Timeline, return to the Project panel and select the new source, press the Option key on Mac (Alt key on Windows), and drag the replacement source to the Comp or Timeline panel. The layer will twirl up in the Timeline panel, but all the effects and keyframes from the original layer will be applied to the new source.

The keyboard shortcut is to select the replacement layer in the Project panel and press Command+Option+/ on Mac (Control+Alt+/ on Windows).

To replace the source to a layer while retaining all its keyframes, select the new source in the Project panel (above), press Option (Alt) and drag it into the composition. The layer will twirl up, so press U (the Uber shortcut) to reveal the keyframes again (below).

Background: After Effects is an object-oriented animation program, meaning that it takes a source and applies attributes to it. The project file only has to store these attributes, along with links to the original sources, so it’s generally a pretty small file (meaning there’s no excuse not to keep saving new versions). These layer attributes include masks, effects and transformations, in and out points, blending modes, and so on. Separating the source from its attributes allows you to easily replace the underlying source to the layer and have any attributes applied to the new source.  Another advantage to working this way is that the source itself is never physically harmed! No matter what you do to it in After Effects, you will always have the original source on disk. So if you’re new to After Effects, relax - you never have to commit to any edit, and you can’t break anything… (Compare that to how Photoshop works. Most operations in Photoshop are destructive as they change the actual source pixels. You also can’t change the source to a layer and have all the changes you’ve made over the past week apply to the new source!)

(next page: tricks with names and markers)

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The small addition to your tip - you don’t have to make panel active to expand it to entire screen. Just place your cursor over the panel you want to expand and press tilde key, that’s it. At least it works in CS3, may be it has changed in CS4? Will be interesting to know.
And thanks for your tips, I liked that one about toggling Layer Name/Source Name, had no idea about it. Keep them coming!

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  02/05  at  08:35 AM

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Thanks! It just goes to show that you can learn something new every day with After Effects. (Unfortunately, your tip didn’t keep the dentist away…ow…) Trish

Posted by Crish  on  02/05  at  02:15 PM

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