After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Rendering a 4:3 Center Cut Movie from a 16:9 Composition
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/21
...plus an update on what’s next for the Apprentice series.
As we mentioned what now seems like ages ago, we spent a year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. The introduction plus one or more additional videos from each course are available for free preview; we re-posted here on PVC the videos that contain tips and instruction you might find useful. Well, the series is done, and we’re off writing the next edition of the book. But before we go, we had one last video to share with you, which may be of interest to any After Effects user who still has to create both 16:9 and 4:3 versions of their compositions.
In this wide-ranging course recorded in After Effects CS5.5 and applicable to all recent versions including CS6, you will pull together skills you’ve learned in the previous Apprentice lessons, including using masks, effects, shape layers, text, layered Illustrator files, blending modes, track mattes, collapsed transformations, nested compositions, motion blur, expressions, animation presets, audio, a 3D camera and light, and more. Along the way, we share the mental process we go through as we design a video project, plus important tricks and shortcuts.
We spent an entire “chapter” of the video course discussing efficient render strategies, including how to create output in multiple formats during the course of a single render. In the movie above, we demonstrate how to take a 16:9 square pixel composition, resize it for non-square pixels, and then crop off the left and right sides to create a center-cut version - all inside the Output Module, without the need to create an additional composition to render.
This entire course - as well as all 15 courses in the series - are available to subscribers of lynda.com. Also, for those who prefer to pay once for online access rather than buy a monthly subscription, our publisher Focal Press and their partner Class On Demand has repackaged these courses as three sets of five courses each (as well as a bundle including all 15 courses), aimed at various levels of After Effects user from absolute beginner to those wishing to take on more advanced tasks.
As for us, we’re in the thick of writing the third edition of After Effects Apprentice, updating it to include new features introduced in CS5, CS5.5, and CS6. Once we finish later this summer, we will then create additional videos covering the new features and exercises, which will be inserted into the first 14 courses - as well create an all-new final project. So if we fall quiet for awhile, that’s what we’re up to!
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing with you what we’ve learned from using After Effects since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Using Parenting to Animate Layers as a Unit
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/15
Taking advantage of parenting, multiple 3D views, and AE’s built-in calculator to coordinate a multi-layer animation.
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Buried in the shuffle of the release of After Effects CS6 is that we concluded this series with a 3+ hour course dedicated to that book’s Final Project. Several movies from this course are available for free preview from lynda.com; we’d like to share those with you here - including this movie that demonstrates using parenting to group together a set of 3D layers.
In this wide-ranging course recorded in After Effects CS5.5 and applicable to all recent versions including CS6, you will pull together skills you’ve learned in the previous Apprentice lessons, including using masks, effects, shape layers, text, layered Illustrator files, blending modes, track mattes, collapsed transformations, nested compositions, motion blur, expressions, animation presets, audio, a 3D camera and light, and more. Along the way, we share the mental process we go through as we design a video project, plus important tricks and shortcuts.
In this particular video, we’re tasked with animating a set of four 3D layers as a unit. To do so, we take advantage of multiple 3D views to help visualize the scene, null objects and parenting to group the layers together, and the simple calculator built into many of AE’s numeric dialogs to help calculate the center of an imaginery cube formed by our layers.
Next week we’ll focus on tricks in the Render Queue, including how to set up a 4:3 center cut output from a 16:9 source without the need to create additional compositions. And just as a reminder, this entire course as well as all the other After Effects Apprentice video courses are available to subscribers of lynda.com, as well as for purchase from Class On Demand.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Working with Nested 3D Compositions
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/07
How you can be two places at once inside After Effects
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Buried in the shuffle of the release of After Effects CS6 is that we concluded this series with a 3+ hour course dedicated to that book’s Final Project. Several movies from this course are available for free preview from lynda.com; we’d like to share those with you here - including this movie that includes a selection of small but useful tricks.
In this wide-ranging course recorded in After Effects CS5.5 and applicable to all recent versions including CS6, you will pull together skills you’ve learned in the previous Apprentice lessons, including using masks, effects, shape layers, text, layered Illustrator files, blending modes, track mattes, collapsed transformations, nested compositions, motion blur, expressions, animation presets, audio, a 3D camera and light, and more. Along the way, we share the mental process we go through as we design a video project, including unifying the overall look and handling client changes.
In this particular video, we employ a couple of techniques that can improve your workflow. We start by taking a 3D composition built earlier in the lesson and using it as a single easy-to-handle layer inside a new comp, while retaining its 3D-ness using Collapse Transformations. We then take advantage of Edit This/Look At That (ETLAT) to edit layers in a precomp borrowing colors from and looking at the results in the final composition.
Next week we’ll share a free movie on using parenting rather than precomposing to group layers in 3D, including tricks like using After Effects as a calculator to make easier to center layers. And just as a reminder, this and all the After Effects Apprentice video courses are available to subscribers of lynda.com, as well as for individual purchase from Class On Demand.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from.
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.
In this 3+ hour course recorded in After Effects CS5.5 and applicable to all recent versions including CS6, you will pull together skills you’ve learned in the previous Apprentice lessons, including using masks, effects, shape layers, text, layered Illustrator files, blending modes, track mattes, collapsed transformations, nested compositions, motion blur, expressions, animation presets, audio, a 3D camera and light, and more. Along the way, we share the mental process we go through as we design a video project, including unifying the overall look and handling client changes.
In this specific video, we show how to “wipe on” a dial user interface element by copying the original paths in Illustrator and pasting them into mask paths for the same artwork in After Effects. The Stroke effect can then be used to draw along theses mask paths. We cover issues such as revealing and selecting paths in Illustrator, plus identifying and re-ordering the corresponding mask paths in After Effects.
Later in the same course (available to subscribers of lynda.com, as well as for individual purchase from Class On Demand) we also show how to recreate this element from scratch using Shape Layers in After Effects, and then reveal it using the Trim Paths shape operator. Plus, a new feature in After Effects CS6 is the ability to directly convert Illustrator files into Shape Layers - we discuss this briefly in our review of After Effects CS6 here on PVC, and demonstrate it our separate video course on After Effects CS6’s new features (again, available both from lynda.com and soon from Class On Demand).
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from.
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.
After Effects CS6 Tutorial: Exporting 3D Camera Tracker Data to Cinema 4D
Chris and Trish Meyer | 04/27
You can export the results of the new 3D Camera Tracker to any application that has a way to accept AE keyframe data.
One of the major new features in After Effect CS6 (which we previously previewed here) is a built-in 3D Camera Tracker. Rather than track a specific object or point, the 3DCT automatically tracks hundreds of points in a clip, and uses that information to reverse engineer where the camera was during the scene. This opens up all sorts of interesting workflows.
For example, you can track a piece of footage, export the camera data as well as the location of objects in the scene to a 3D program, add new geometry such as a facade, aircraft, or (please don’t) a dinosaur, render the new 3D objects, and then bring those back into After Effects to composite into the scene. In this free video on lynda.com, we show how to get this data out of After Effects into Cinema 4D using a free export plug-in that Maxon provides. (This video is an excerpt from a 2+ hour video course we created for AE CS6, available currently from lynda.com and soon from Class On Demand.) This is a workflow we intend to pursue in greater depth in the future, but in the meantime we wanted to share with you the bones of how you’d pull off the interchange.
FTC Disclosure: Adobe gave us access to pre-release versions of the software in exchange for testing and feedback. They also paid us to create a few documents for this release, although - as you can probably tell by the mix of pros and cons we’ve shared in our review - these articles on PVC were not subsidized by Adobe. We also make a bit every time you buy one of our courses from Class on Demand or watch it with a lynda.com subscription; we make no money from lynda.com or Adobe when you view the free movie above. We just wanted to make sure you knew it was available.
After Effects CS6 Tutorial: Targeting Properties in the new Ray-Traced 3D Engine
Chris and Trish Meyer | 04/25
Although the new extrusion and beveling capabilities initially seem limited, you can actually edit the individual material options for each group of surfaces.
In our preview of After Effects CS6, we spent a lot of time discussing the pros and cons of the new ray-traced 3D rendering engine, which includes the ability to extrude and bevel text and shape layers. When you start playing around with it, initially it may seem that you have only one color and set of Material Options for the entire layer. In truth, Adobe has provided a back door to go in and change the color and every material option - including amount of transparency and strength of reflections - for the front, sides, back, and bevels individually.
To access these parameters, you need to be familiar with Text Animators and Shape Operators. These are the additional parameters available under the Add flyout menu in the Timeline panel for these layers. When you enable the 3D Layer switch for a text or shape layer, and if the composition has been set to use the Ray-traced renderer, then a set of geometry properties appear in the Add menu, as shown below:
Along with the review mentioned above, we’ve created a 2+ hour video course on AE CS6, available currently from lynda.com and soon from Class On Demand, including an in-depth look at the new ray tracer. The free movie above is from the lynda.com course, and demonstrates the procedure of targeting specific properties for specific pieces of geometry in text layers. With shape layers, you use the same mechanism as adding operators such as Twist or Wiggle Paths. What’s very interesting is that you can also animate these properties, and in the case of text layers even animate which selection of characters are getting this modification - the results will be rerendered in 3D on every frame. Have fun!
FTC Disclosure: Adobe gave us access to pre-release versions of the software in exchange for testing and feedback. They also paid us to create a few documents for this release, although - as you can probably tell by the mix of pros and cons we’ve shared in our review - these articles on PVC were not subsidized by Adobe. We also make a bit every time you buy one of our courses from Class on Demand or watch it with a lynda.com subscription; we make no money from lynda.com or Adobe when you view the free movie above. We just want to help you understand and get the most out of this new release.
The latest version has several significant new features.
Upon the release of After Effects CS5 in 2010, Adobe tried an interesting experiment: Part of the After Effects engineering team was split off to start work on major new features for CS6 with a 24-month time horizon, while the rest started work on AE CS5.5 before joining their compatriots in 2011 to also work on CS6. In addition, Adobe has a separate Dynamic Media Advanced Product Development Group, which has produced such major new features as Roto Brush (CS5), Warp Stabilizer (CS5.5), and the new 3D Camera Tracker (CS6).
As a result, After Effects CS6 is an important new release that has something for nearly every AE user. We’re going to explore a number of those features here, starting with the most visible new one - the Ray-traced 3D rendering engine - and then moving onto the 3D Camera Tracker, Rolling Shutter Repair, Variable Mask Feathering, the Global Performance Cache, and other interesting bits. We’ll be sharing pros, cons, preferred workflows, gotchas, and a number of tips that we hope will get you up to speed with this new release.
Ray-Traced 3D Rendering Engine
We have long advised our fellow motion graphics artists that they would be wise to learn a 3D program - or at very least, a 3D plug-in such as the excellent Zaxwerks Invigorator or ProAnimator. This is because until now, AE’s own implementation of “3D” has actually been 2.5D: layers could be placed in 3D space, but had no thickness of their own. This is finally starting to change as of AE CS6 - but this release is just a first step along what we hope turns out to be a long and fruitful path.
As of After Effects CS6, you now choose which rendering engine you wish to use for 3D layers: the “Classic” renderer (formerly known as the Advanced renderer), which is the prior 2.5D engine, and the new Ray-traced 3D Renderer. When you choose the ray-traced renderer, you can now extrude and bevel text and shape layers (and bend - but not bevel and extrude - other pixel-based layers), and they gain additional Material Options in the areas of transparency and reflectivity. This new renderer also enables support for Environment layers: The ability to wrap a layer around your virtual 3D world, and have it show up in reflections.
The trade-off is the new renderer disables a number of 2D-ish features for 3D layers, including masks, effects, blending modes, layer styles, and track mattes: a limitation that hopefully goes away in the future, but which you have to live with for at least this release. You can only choose one 3D renderer per composition, and an Alert dialog appears when you first enable a comp to use the Ray-traced 3D Renderer:
The beveling options are pretty basic in this release: You only have a choice of a straight chisel (“angular”), rounded (“convex”), or scooped (“concave”) shapes - nowhere near as flexible as Adobe Repoussé* in Photoshop or Zaxwerks Invigorator. The bevel always adds to the size of the underlying shape rather than cuts into it. You get the same shape for inner and outer bevels (although you can reduce the inner bevel size, to tackle problems with the insides of characters swelling shut) and for the front and back (with no current ability to disable the back bevel). On the plus side, the transparency parameters include Index of Refraction to simulate the distortions of light rays bending when they hit the interface between air and another material, and the reflection parameters include the ability to blur the reflection for satin, matte, and other restrained but classy looks.
(*By the way: Support for Photoshop Live 3D layers has been dropped in this release of After Effects. We know not many of you used it, as it was limited and slow to render, but for some it was the only way to import 3D models and get other Photoshop-generated geometry into After Effects.)
The subject of transparency and reflections leads directly to a discussion of render quality. In short, ray-traced 3D objects in After Effects are capable of looking exceptional: You can keep zooming in and never see faceting. However, noise can appear in transparent and reflective areas at the default settings - especially with blurred reflections. You need to dive into Composition Settings > Advanced > Options (the shortcut is to Command or Ctrl-click on the Renderer indicator in the upper right corner of the Comp panel) and play with the number of rays per pixel until you are satisfied the noise is no longer visible or distracting. More rays take a lot longer to render: An array of 3x3 rays (shown below left) means just 9 calculations per pixel, but is often not good enough; an array of 9x9 (shown below right) means 81 calculations per pixel, but often looks quite nice. The number of rays also affects motion blur with ray-traced 3D layers, while the Anti-Aliasing Filter popup affects sharpness versus aliasing for 3D object edges.
The subject of render quality directly leads directly to a discussion of rendering speed. The Ray-traced 3D Renderer can work either on your CPU alone (and is multithreaded, taking advantage of all of your available processor cores), or can use the NVIDIA OptiX library to render on CUDA-enabled NVIDIA video cards. If at all possible, you really, really want to use ray-tracing with an approved CUDA card: The difference will make or break this feature for many users. For example, a 48-frame-long animation of a reflective and transparent logo at 1920x1080 took 44:30 (min:sec) on a 12-core 2.93 GHz MacPro with an unsupported ATI Radeon HD5970 video card (the fastest the Apple Store currently offers); installing a previous-generation NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 dropped that to 14:30; replacing it with a current-generation Quadro 4000 dropped it to 6:15. Installing a second Quadro 4000 - yes, After Effects can take advantage of multiple GPUs, as long as they’re running the same version of CUDA - dropped the render time further to 3:37. (A pre-release version of After Effects CS6 would not work with a pair of FX 4800s; hopefully that gets fixed for those who have more than one of previously top-of-the-line cards.) As of the time of this writing, here is the current list of approved CUDA-enabled cards:
Approved NVIDIA CUDA-enabled cards for Windows:
GeForce GTX 285, GTX 470, and GTX 580
Quadro CX, FX 3700M*, FX 3800, FX 3800M, FX 4800, FX 5800, 2000, 2000D, 2000M, 3000M, 4000, 4000M, 5000, 5000M, 5010M, and 6000
Tesla C2075
Approved NVIDIA CUDA-enabled cards for Mac OSX:
GeForce GTX 285
Quadro CX, FX 4800, and 4000
(*M designates mobile solution for laptops and all-in-one computers)
Fortunately, that list is the same for Premiere Pro CS6 (Premiere Pro also supports OpenCL on a few MacBook Pros; AE CS6’s Ray-traced 3D Renderer does not), plus NVIDIA Quadro is recommended for the OpenGL-based Adobe SpeedGrade CS6 which is now part of the Production Premium suite. After Effects CS6 has also reworked its list of Fast Previews options, including a Draft mode (1 ray), and Fast Draft (works on any OpenGL card at the cost of reflections and transparency). You’ll find yourself working in one of the draft modes or with a low ray count initially, and then optimizing the quality right before you render.
Enough tech - lets get back to talking about visual capabilities. As mentioned above, you can extrude and bevel only vector-based text and shape layers in After Effects CS6. A new feature in After Effects CS6 allows you to convert other vector-based layers such as Adobe Illustrator files into shape layers. It’s imperfect - gradients are currently unsupported, and tricky compound shapes might cause some issues - but this feature by itself is very welcome. Also remember that you can convert unflattened Photoshop text layers into After Effects text. The cool thing is, text and shape layer animation still works, so you can still twist or wiggle your shapes, or apply text Animation Presets:
Reflection map courtesy dvGarage.com
Adobe has extended the previous ability to add Text Animators or Shape Operators to also allow you alter specific Material Options for extruded shapes. For example, if you want the face of your text to be a different color than the bevels, sides, and back, you just add an Animator property, as shown below. (Yes, we said “just” - if you haven’t already, you really should learn how to use Text Animators.) This means you can assign your per-surface modifications to a specific range or characters or shape group, and even animate these modifications through your text. Just remember to rename these Animators to something more descriptive than the default “Animator 1” and so forth; otherwise, you might run into problems when you later try to add an Animation Preset that already uses that name.
Ordinary pixel-based layers cannot be extruded and beveled. This is a major bummer, but somewhat understandable, as the pixel dimensions of a layer would impact how well its shapes could be converted in polygons - especially if it has an interesting alpha channel. However, these layers still support transparency and reflections, and can also be bent around their Y axis to produce more interesting reflections and specular highlights. At maximum bend, they form a shallow U; no, you can’t uncurl a sphere, or create a page curl.
The other option mentioned is the ability to tag any layer as an Environment Layer. This wraps it around a virtual sphere enclosing your 3D world, and makes it available for reflections. You can choose whether it is visible in reflections and/or normally. Ideally, you want a seamless panoramic layer with a 2:1 aspect ratio. You also want it to be very large, as you see only a small percentage of it at a time: With the default 50mm camera, which has a 39.6 degree field of view, you only see 360 ÷ 39.6 = 9.1% of your image’s width at a time. The animated text image above has a 2000x1000 pixel Environment Layer in an 872x486 pixel comp, meaning only 182 pixels of environment are being stretched across the entire comp’s width; study the black circular object in the upper right corner to see the implications of this. For standard definition video, you may want to use at least 8k images, and larger for high-def - which in turn requires more VRAM on your video card. To take advantage of larger maps, also dive into Preferences > Previews > GPU Information and set the Texture Memory to a larger-than-default size, such as 80% of your card’s total VRAM.
All of the above is probably leaving you feeling pretty ambivalent about the new Ray-traced 3D Renderer. In truth, we’re actually excited about having this capability inside After Effects as can create some lovely imagery (and is integrated with other After Effects layers, including shadows and intersections); others are already creating photorealistic objects with it. We just want to make sure we properly tempered your expectations before you tried to create Avatar with it on a laptop without an NVIDIA GPU.
next page: 3D Camera Tracker; Rolling Shutter Repair; mocha AE integration; Variable Mask Feathering
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Exploring Shape Effects
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/31
An overview of five of the simpler shape operators that can turn your basic outline into something quite twisted.
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. In this movie, shows how to alter your basic shapes using dedicated shape effects.
The fourteenth Apprentice course (currently available by subscription to lynda.com; individual course will be available for purchase soon from Class on Demand Online) covers one of our favorite recent features in After Effects, Shape Layers. Shape Layers provide the ability to create and animate vector-based artwork directly inside After Effects. These shapes may be as simple as lines and lower third bars, or as complex as a cartoon character. In the overall course, we walk you through creating shape paths, applying shape effects, and reordering shape operators to get the desired result. After demonstrating the basics, we then lead you through a series of exercises using shape layers to create common motion graphics elements.
One fun set of “shape operators” is the shape effects. These allow you to take either parametric or pen-drawn shapes, and then draw them on, distort them, and animate them in simple to complex ways. In the movie above, Chris shows how to apply shape effects, and walks through five of the simpler ones, including Trim Paths (the way you animate a stroke) and Pucker & Bloat (for instant funhouse insanity).
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Drawing Parametric Shapes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/27
The same tools you’ve used to create masks can also be used to create Shape Layers - with far more options than you might have imagined.
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. In this movie, Chris shares a number of tips and tricks for creating parametric shapes.
The fourteenth Apprentice course (currently available by subscription to lynda.com; the individual course will be available for purchase soon from Class on Demand Online) covers one of our favorite recent features in After Effects: Shape Layers. Shape Layers provide the ability to create and animate vector-based artwork directly inside After Effects. These shapes may be as simple as lines and lower third bars, or as complex as a cartoon character. In the overall course, we walk you through creating shape paths, applying shape effects, and reordering shape operators to get the desired result. After demonstrating the basics, we then lead you through a series of exercises using shape layers to create common motion graphics elements.
In the movie above, Chris covers creating so-called “parametric” shapes: rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and stars. There are a number of modifier keys you can use while dragging out a shape to control its position, symmetry, roundness, number of sides, and the such. After a shape path has been created, it is then highly editable. Chris shows how to dissect a shape layer’s construction: It’s actually a series of modules, and the order of those modules - such as Fill and Stroke - can have a big impact on how the final graphic renders.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: The Puppet Starch Tool
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/12
Not happy with how Puppet kinks and bends your image? The little-known Starch tool helps you straighten it out.
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. In this movie, Chris demonstrates using the Starch tool to clean up problems that can appear when creating Puppet distortions in After Effects.
The lucky thirteenth Apprentice course (available by subscription to lynda.com and now for individual purchase through Class on Demand) introduces a series of creative tools inside After Effects: Paint, Puppet, Brainstorm, and Cartoon. The centerpiece is Paint, where Trish will demonstrate how to use the Brush, Eraser, and Clone Stamp tools to draw on a layer, remove portions of it, or repeat elements around a composition. These can be used for artistic purposes as well as to repair problem areas in footage. Chris then shows off the Puppet tools for distorting layers, Brainstorm to break through creative blocks, and the Cartoon effect to lend an illustrative look to live footage or 3D renders.
In the movie above, Chris demonstrates the third of the three Puppet tools: Starch. Not all problems that creep up using Puppet can be cured by altering the number of triangles used to define the distortion mesh. The Starch tool allows you to target specific areas to make stiffer or looser, helping create more predictable (and desired) distortions.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Eraser Tool Modes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/07
How to target precisely what you’re erasing, from the source image to just your most recent paint stroke.
As we mentioned awhile back, we’ve been busy the past year and a half creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. In this movie, Trish discusses the different Eraser tool modes - Layer Source & Paint, Paint Only, and Last Stroke Only - and demonstrates when to use each.
The lucky thirteenth Apprentice course (currently available through lynda.com) introduces a series of creative tools inside After Effects: Paint, Puppet, Brainstorm, and Cartoon. The centerpiece is Paint, where Trish will demonstrate how to use the Brush, Eraser, and Clone Stamp tools to draw on a layer, remove portions of it, or repeat elements around a composition. These can be used for artistic purposes as well as to repair problem areas in footage. Chris then shows off the Puppet tools for distorting layers, Brainstorm to break through creative blocks, and the Cartoon effect to lend an illustrative look to live footage or 3D renders.
In this movie, Trish spends some time with the Eraser tool, explaining its very different modes: The ability to erase both the original image and the paint strokes you may have made on top of it, erasing just an added paint stroke, and the very handy ability to erase just the last paint stroke you created. Combined with keyboard shortcuts, this makes it easy to touch up paint strokes as you create them. In general, the power hidden inside the Paint tools aren’t always obvious; this movie is an example of how Trish digs in and helps demystify them in this course.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Tracking with mochaAE
Chris and Trish Meyer | 12/03
A quick start on using this powerful alternative motion tracker bundled with After Effects.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie provides a quick start on how to use Imaginer Systems’ mochaAE - a powerful 2.5 planar motion tracker that comes bundled with After Effects (but which has a quite un-After Effects-like user interface).
The twelfth Apprentice course (available both by subscription to lynda.com and stand alone from Focal Press/Class on Demand) - covers two core visual effects tasks you need to learn if you want to take your After Effects skills to the next level: Tracking and Keying. In this course, Chris shows you how to use the motion tracker and stabilizer built into After Effects, with loads of advice on how to handle a variety of shots. On the keying front, Chris demonstrates the basic workflow for The Foundry’s Keylight, which is also bundled with After Effects. By the end of this course, you will be combining these two skills to track greenscreen shot with a handheld camera, and replace its background.
In the movie above, Chris gives a quick tour of the third-party software mocha that is bundled with After Effects. In many situations - such as when performing a perspective corner pin track, attempting to follow objects which travel partially off screen, or dealing with “obscuration” where another object temporarily moves in front of the one you are trying to track - mocha often yields far superior results to the tracking built into After Effects. In the movie above, Chris demonstrates using mocha for a perspective corner-pin track.
Chris also demonstrated mocha as part of the After Effects CS5 New Creative Techniques course on lynda.com. In this alternate movie - shared below - Chris demonstrates a more challenging case of tracking indistinct features on a distant wall with a man running in front:
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Performing a Motion Track
Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/27
Some tips on what to look for when setting up a track in After Effects.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie shares our mental process when we approach a piece of footage to track.
The twelfth Apprentice course (available both by subscription to lynda.com and stand alone from Focal Press/Class on Demand) - covers two core visual effects tasks you need to learn if you want to take your After Effects skills to the next level: Tracking and Keying. In this course, Chris shows you how to use the motion tracker and stabilizer built into After Effects, with loads of advice on how to handle a variety of shots. He also gives a quick tour of the third-party software mocha that is bundled with After Effects (the subject of our next AEA Free Video). On the keying front, Chris demonstrates the basic workflow for The Foundry’s Keylight, which is also bundled with After Effects. By the end of this course, you will be combining these two skills to track greenscreen shot with a handheld camera, and replace its background.
In the movie above, Chris walks through the process he and Trish follow when approaching a shot to track - including identifying good Feature Region candidates to track, plus properly setting up the Motion Tracker Options (an oft-overlooked secret to getting good tracks). If you’re relatively new to tracking in After Effects, and have been frustrated by the results you’ve been getting, watch this movie for a quick course in some things to look out for.
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Creating 3D Objects using Adobe Repoussé
Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/21
If you don’t have access to a dedicated 3D program or plug-in, here’s a way to use Photoshop Extended to create extruded logos and text.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie explains the ins and outs of using Adobe Repoussé to create 3D objects that may then be imported into After Effects.
The eleventh Apprentice course (available both by subscription to lynda.com and stand alone from Focal Press/Class on Demand) - is a beginner-level introduction to 3D space inside Adobe After Effects. If you’ve never worked in 3D before, we build up your knowledge base step-by-step explaining what’s different between 2D and 3D, then moving through cameras and lights – including how to build camera rigs and manage shadows. Once you’ve become familiar with those bedrock skills, we then demonstrate several different workflows for creating 3D objects inside Adobe Photoshop and importing them in After Effects. A set of sidebar movies at the end share additional tips on the difference between 3D rotation and orientation, using the different Axis Modes, and how to maintain maximum quality in 3D.
3D in After Effects is really what’s know as “2.5D” - the layers have no actual thickness or depth. If you want the illusion of extrusion, volume, and depth, you will need to create those objects in a dedicated 3D program, a special plug-in, or - if you have access to the Production Premium or Master Collection suites from Adobe - inside Photoshop Extended to later import into After Effects. Frankly, we prefer using a dedicated program like Maxon Cinema 4D (and we’ve created a separate course on integrating C4D with After Effects), or using one of the excellent plug-in solutions from Zaxwerks, Boris, or Mettle (each outlined in the movie above). However, we realize many of you are in work environments where there is no budget for third-party tools, and you have to make do with what’s available in one of the relevant Adobe suites. Therefore, it’s worth becoming familiar with Repoussé, as it does provide an alternative.
If you’ve tried Repoussé and don’t like it, there’s hope: At this year’s SIGGRAPH, Adobe and NVIDIA gave a technology demonstration of ray-traced extruded objects inside a “motion graphics environment” that looks rather like After Effects:
Fingers crossed…
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Understanding Axis Modes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/14
Moving layers relative to the world, the current view, or themselves.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie explains the differences between the three axis display modes in After Effects.
The eleventh Apprentice course (available both by subscription to lynda.com and stand alone from Focal Press/Class on Demand) - is a beginner-level introduction to 3D space inside Adobe After Effects. If you’ve never worked in 3D before, we build up your knowledge base step-by-step explaining what’s different between 2D and 3D, then moving through cameras and lights – including how to build camera rigs and manage shadows. Once you’ve become familiar with those bedrock skills, we then demonstrate several different workflows for creating 3D objects inside Adobe Photoshop and importing them in After Effects. A set of sidebar movies at the end share additional tips on the difference between 3D rotation and orientation, using the different Axis Modes, and how to maintain maximum quality in 3D.
The “sidebar” movie above is about those different Axis Modes. An innocuous set of buttons along the top of the After Effects user interface controls how a 3D layer’s axis arrows are oriented: according to the way the layer itself is oriented (Local Axis Mode), according to the overall XYZ world space (World Axis Mode), or based on the current view you have into that world (View Axis Mode). Each has its uses when it comes to grabbing the axes of a layer to reposition it in space. If you didn’t have a clear idea of what these different modes meant - or even that these options existed - this movie will give you an extra tool to use when arranging your 3D worlds. Enjoy!
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
Adobe Premiere Pro has a robust titler built in, including the ability to create title rolls and crawls. However, Adobe After Effects has even more advanced tools, including hundreds of Animation Presets for type, Shape Layers to build additional graphic elements such as lower third bars, and a combination of Layer Styles and Effects to further enhance the final look. If you have either the Production Premium or Master Collection suites, Premiere Pro and After Effects can talk to each other using Adobe Dynamic Link, which makes this process more fluid. In this article below I’ll explain the general process of using After Effects to create refined lower thirds for Premiere Pro, and then on the next page is a series of short videos that walk through the actual process (including some design ideas in After Effects).
By the way, fellow PVC writer and After Effects expert Mark Christiansen has written an excellent article on using Dynamic Link to exploit After Effects tools such as the Warp Stabilizer inside a Premiere Pro project - I recommend reading it. Given that, I’m going to focus on a slightly different workflow than Mark, in the name of sharing multiple approaches with you so that you can choose which is best for your particular task.
Getting a Reference Clip Into After Effects
If you’ve already locked the edit in Premiere Pro, the easiest way to get a clip you want to add a title to into After Effects is to right-click it in the Premiere Pro sequence and select Replace With After Effects Composition (this is the workflow Mark covers in his article). However, this may require additional trips back into After Effects if you need to change the edit.
To create standalone title elements while still referring to the clips that will lie underneath them, select the clips of interest in the Premiere Pro Project panel, Copy, open a new project in After Effects, select the Project panel, and Paste. This will create links to those original clips without duplicating them on your drive. Then in After Effects, drag these clips to the New Composition icon at the bottom of its Project panel. If you have multiple clips selected, a dialog will open; select the Multiple Compositions choice under the Create section (as shown here). This will create a dedicated composition for each clip, fitted to the dimensions, frame rates, and full unedited duration of each clip, with the same name as the clip itself. This gives you the maximum duration to work with later in Premiere Pro.
The above approach works great if you only needed to perform straightforward trimming to the source clips in the Premiere Pro sequence. If each original clip contains multiple scenes, you may be better off selecting the already-edited clip in the Premiere Pro sequence, Copying, creating a blank composition in After Effects that has the same dimensions and frame rate as your clip and a few seconds more than the duration you expect to need for your lower third (it’s always great to have extra handle), Pasting (which will keep your edit times and trim points), and then pressing Option+Home on Mac (Opt+Home on Windows) to slide the clip to the start of the After Effects comp. All of this is demonstrated in the first movie on the next page.
Creating the Lower Third in After Effects
Once you have your source clip in an After Effects composition, right-click that clip in either the Timeline or Composition panels and select Guide Layer; an icon representing trimming guide lines will appear next to this layer’s name in the Timeline panel (as shown here). This means the clip will be visible only while you design your lower third inside After Effects; it will not appear when you use Dynamic Link to bring the lower third back into Premiere Pro.
Next, use Shape Layers in After Effects to create your lower third bar. Shape Layers include a powerful gradient editor so you can create a nice, subtle, refined (or gaudy, loud, outlandish) look. You can then optionally apply a combination of Effects and Layer Styles to add further polish. This procedure is demonstrated in the second and third movies on the next page, focusing on a more understated look.
After that, I prefer to add the text inside After Effects (shown in the fourth movie), as I can then also take advantage of its powerful type animation engine. We demonstrate creating custom text animations in both of our books; on the following page the fifth movie shows how to take advantage of Animation Presets, including modifying them to your needs.
Once you have a lower third bar and text design that you like, select these layers, copy, bring up the After Effects composition for the next clip that needs titling, and paste. You can then just double-click the text and change it as needed, with the animation and any additional effects applied still intact. If you like, rename each composition to better reflect the underlying clip; if nothing else, it’s good to add an identifier such as “LT” (for “lower third”) to the composition name to remind you what it contains. This is demonstrated in the sixth movie.
Save your After Effects project; this project file will need to exist on your drive before Premiere Pro can link to it.
Bringing the Lower Thirds Back Into Premiere Pro
Once you’ve finished creating your titles, switch back to Premiere Pro. Choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition. In the dialog box that appears, select your After Effects project in the left pane, and then the composition(s) with your lower thirds in the right pane. Click OK, and these will be added to the Premiere Pro Project panel just like a regular footage clip.
Drag each of these After Effects “clips” into the Premiere Pro sequence above their respective clips. At this point, you can trim and transition them just as you would any other clip - especially handy if the edit points change. If it turns out your client does not like an animation you may have added to the text, use the Slip Tool in Premiere Pro (shortcut = Y) to trim out the animation. By adding the fade in and out transitions in Premiere Pro instead of in After Effects, you can slip edit the After Effects type animation without losing the fades.
If later on you find you need to edit the lower third, right-click on the After Effects “clip” in either the Premiere Pro Project or Sequence panel and select Edit Original. This will open the underlying composition back in After Effects. Make your changes, switch back to Premiere Pro, and your changes will automatically appear thanks to Dynamic Link. These steps and results are demonstrated in the final movie on the following page.
That’s the overview; use the Click to play audio/video link below the disclosure notice to open a page with a series of seven short videos that breaks down and demonstrates these steps - including some nice uses of Effects and Layer Styles to go beyond flat-shaded solids for your lower thirds bars, as shown in the example at the top of this page. The underlying point of this exercise is: Rather than waiting on one application to contain all of the features you need, take advantage of inter-product integration such as Dynamic Link to extend the capabilities of your main program with features contained in others.
FTC Disclosure: The creation of this article was partially subsidized by Adobe. Although they approved the general subject, they had no control over its editorial content. They didn’t even know I was creating videos as well; I decided later it would be the best approach to show you how to work with Shape Layers and Layer Styles.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Creating an Orbit Camera Rig
Chris and Trish Meyer | 11/08
Techniques to make your camera move in a perfect arc.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie demonstrates how to build an orbit camera rig in After Effects, both manually and by using the new menu command added in AE CS5.5.
The eleventh Apprentice course - based on Lesson 08 from the book of the same name - is a beginner-level introduction to 3D space inside Adobe After Effects. If you’ve never worked in 3D before, we build up your knowledge base step-by-step explaining what’s different between 2D and 3D, then moving through cameras and lights – including how to build camera rigs and manage shadows. Once you’ve become familiar with those bedrock skills, we then demonstrate several different workflows for creating 3D objects inside Adobe Photoshop and importing them in After Effects. A set of sidebar movies at the end share additional tips on the difference between 3D rotation and orientation, using the different Axis Modes, and how to maintain maximum quality in 3D.
The movie above demonstrates how to build an orbit camera rig. Creating a perfect orbit around an object or other point of interest using ordinary motion paths for the camera requires careful placement of Position keyframes and tugging on Bezier path handles. Using the Orbit Camera tool in After Effects gives the illusion of creating a perfect arc, but in reality it just defines the end points of the path - not the path in between. However, there is a very useful trick where you can place a null object at your point of interest, parent the camera to the null, and use the null to swing the camera around on the end of a virtual string in a perfect arc. In this movie we demonstrate how to do this manually, as well as take advantage of a nifty new feature added in After Effects CS5.5 to do it manually. Subsequent movies in the same course then show how to expand this rig by adding elevator and tilt functions.
By the way, we’re happy to announce that in addition to lynda.com’s excellent subscription service (where the above video came from), our book publisher Focal Press has now made the After Effects Apprentice video courses available for individual purchase through a partnership with Class on Demand. This particular course - at just under 3.5 hours in length - is only $14.95, including access to the exercise files. They are currently running a promotion where you receive the first Apprentice course (an overview of the program and user interface) for free with the purchase of any other Apprentice course - just use the code AEA1FREE. Enjoy!
FTC Disclosure: We make a bit of money whenever you purchase one of our courses from Class on Demand, or have a lynda.com subscription and watch one of our courses. We do not make any money from either when you watch these free videos. We’ve worked with Adobe over the years, and they give us free access to their software in exchange for testing and consulting, but they did not subsidize the creation of these videos or the book they are derived from. We’re just trying to pay the bills by sharing what we’ve learned from using After Effects in the real world since version 1.0.
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.
After Effects features a variety of settings that control importing files, opening multiple compositions, previewing audio, the appearance and interactivity of the program, plus numerous other details. In this final chapter of CMG5, we go through each of the 14 individual Preference panes, giving an overview of what these settings mean and what they do and highlighting those settings that we find aid our efficiency. Here are but a few of those tips.
Reset Preferences
When After Effects is acting bizarrely or otherwise not behaving, sometimes the problem in a corrupted preference file. First, make a copy of your existing preferences, in the event they weren’t the root of your problem. Where they are saved depends on your operating system. To be safe, first save your current prefs: Search for “Adobe After Effects 10.0-x64 Prefs” (10.5 for After Effects CS5.5) and make a note of where you found them. Here are some typical file paths (which are operating system and software version dependent):
MacOS 10.6:
Drive\Users\(your user name)\Library\Preferences\Adobe\After Effects\10.0\
Windows 7:
C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\After Effects\10.0
Copy this file to a safe place so that you can return to them later if desired. Then, to restore the default preference settings, hold down Command+Option+Shift on Mac (Control+Alt+Shift on Windows) while launching the program.
Managing the Conformed Media Cache
To improve performance, After Effects (as well as other programs in the CS5 Production Premium bundle including Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore, and Soundbooth) converts some CPU-intensive footage file formats such as MPEG to a faster, uncompressed internal format. There is a slight delay when you first import one of these files, but they will be much faster to access afterward. These files are saved in the Cache location, which should be a large, fast drive (that innocuous statement is in itself is a “hidden gem” of how to improve AE’s performance):
The Database is smaller and can exist on your main drive. The Production Premium programs share the same database so that each can take advantage of the decompressed files, even when they exist in another program’s cache. If the original source file is no longer available, it’s a good idea to click the Clean Database & Cache button so the other applications don’t go looking for a missing file.
Here’s the big gotcha: Cleaning the database is not the same as deleting the cached file! If you are running out of disk space, manually delete items in the Cache folder, then click Clean Database & Cache.
Managing Memory
The Memory section along the top of the Memory & Multiprocessing pane is the section where you balance the amount of memory used by After Effects versus your system and any other programs that may be running. While it is tempting to reduce the “reserved for other applications” number as low as possible, don’t get greedy; if you go too far performance will suffer as the operating system swaps elements in and out of RAM.
Note: Since CMG5 was released, Todd Kopriva at Adobe has posted a number of useful articles on the recommended memory settings for the most recent versions of After Effects. Bookmark this page to stay current: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/543440
If you have CS5 Production Premium or Master Collection, the video family of applications can share memory between themselves. This is done automatically for you - but if you’re curious, click the Details button near the bottom of the dialog shown above, and you’ll open this special Details dialog:
The Text Preferences
As mentioned earlier, your preference settings are saved in a text file called Adobe After Effects 10.0-x64 Prefs (10.5 for CS5.5). This file is updated each time you quit After Effects. This text preferences file contains a lot of additional internal switches and settings that are not exposed to the user.
If you’re feeling brave, quit After Effects, make a safe copy of the Adobe After Effects 10.0-x64 Prefs file, open the original in a text editor, and look around. Most of this file will read like gibberish, but there are a few gems hidden inside.
For example, say you checked the Enable Disk Cache preference, but feel After Effects is too quick to delete cached frames rather than copy them to disk. With this preference enabled, quit After Effects, open the text preferences, and search for the phrase “Proclivity Multiplier” (we warned you about gibberish). Set its value to something lower (say, 1.2 instead of 1.5), save the prefs file, and relaunch After Effects.
Changing the Keyboard Shortcuts
In the same folder as the text preferences mentioned above is the Adobe After Effects 10.0 Shortcuts file that maps keyboard shortcuts to functions inside After Effects. If you are using a foreign language keyboard, and need to remap a shortcut to a special key, find that key’s Unicode character (such as U+00A7 for §), and replace the current assignment inside parenthesis with the Unicode value.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
If you’ve updated your copy of After Effects, make sure you’ve also updated your copy of CMG to get the most up-to-date information.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 44 – Prerendering and Proxies
Chris and Trish Meyer | 10/28
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 44 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
One of After Effects’ strengths is that you don’t have to prerender anything: All of your sources, layers, and manipulations are “live” all the time, allowing you to make unlimited changes. However, calculating everything all the time can slow down both your work and your final render.
In chapter 44 of CMG5, we explain how prerendering complex comps can speed up your workflow, and provide an example for you to work through. Here we’ll share both some background information and specific tips from that chapter.
What’s a Proxy?
A proxy is a file that is designed to stand in for a footage item or an entire composition. It can be used temporarily to speed up editing, or as part of the final render. It is easy to turn proxies on or off on an individual basis, or on a project-wide basis when you render. After Effects will also, if needed, automatically scale a lower resolution proxy to match the size of the footage or comp it is standing in for. When it comes time to archive the project, you can trash the proxies without ruining your hierarchy – just remove the proxies to return the project to its original structure.
Composition Proxies
One little-used strategy to speed up After Effects is to isolate a layer or collection of layers that is slow to calculate into their own precomposition, and then prerender a movie of that precomp. This way, After Effects only needs to read already-rendered frames from a hard drive rather than potentially re-calculate a render-intensive effect or composite later on.
Rather than swap this prerender in place of a precomp (which will cause headaches later on if you decide that precomp wasn’t really “final” after all), you can select the comp in the Project panel and assign it to temporarily stand in for the comp using File > Set Proxy > File. Two things will change in the Project panel: A white box will appear next to the comp or footage item in the list, and when you select this item, two sets of information will appear along the top of the panel. The left one is for the original file/composition; the one on the right is for your proxy:
The white box next to the item is the Proxy Switch. Click on it to toggle usage of the proxy off and on. The current status is echoed in the top of the Project panel: The source being used – original file/comp or proxy – will have its name in bold. To change the proxy file, use Set Proxy again; don’t use File > Replace Footage. To remove a proxy, use File > Set Proxy > None.
If you are prerendering a precomp that you know will be used as a Comp Proxy, set the Post-Render Action popup in the Output Module to Set Proxy. When the render finishes, the proxy will be applied automatically, saving a trip to the File menu.
High Quality Prerenders
If you prerender elements that will later be used in the final render, you do not want to lose any image quality in the process. For video work, many have been happy with Apple’s ProRes codecs (installed with Final Cut Studio). For the highest in both quality and compatibility, consider using image sequences of PNG or ProEXR format files, which are good for 16 and 32 bit per channel projects, respectively.
If you are creating field rendered materials, consider rendering your proxies at full frame and double the frame rate (for example, 59.94 frames per second for NTSC). This way, you’ll have the extra visual information you need when you transform them later. However, if you are sure you are prerendering a full-frame layer that will not be scaled or animated further, and your output will be field rendered, you can safely field render the prerender; there is no point in rendering and saving more data than you need.
RED Footage Proxies
Proxies can also be assigned for specific footage items. For example, sometimes we have found it to be more efficient to read a lower-resolution proxy of the huge frames that can be captured by a RED camera. Footage proxies are assigned and managed the same way as comp proxies: Select the target footage item in the Project panel, and use File > Set Proxy.
The RED camera creates its own .R3D format raw files, as well as a set of QuickTime movie proxies at full, half, quarter, and eighth resolution that are calculated from the .R3D file. To take advantage of these in After Effects, first you must install the RED QuickTime codec (download it from RED’s Support page; currently only a Mac version is available).
Rendering with Proxies
When it comes time to render, you can use or ignore proxies. This is determined in Render Settings under the Proxy Use menu, as shown above. You want to ignore proxies if they were low-resolution versions of your footage; you want to render the proxies that are prerenders standing in for computationally intensive compositions.
A common choice is Current Settings, which means obey the current status of the proxy switches in the Project panel. This means the final comp will render exactly as you are viewing it. The other choices override the Project panel settings.
If you were using low-resolution footage proxies, but the prerendered comps were final versions, choose Use Comp Proxies Only for your final render. This will use the original footage, but still use any composition proxies you may have prerendered to save time. This is the setting we use, and we update all our Render Settings templates to use it. If you use this setting too, be sure to actually remove any comp proxies that are no longer valid - don’t just temporarily toggle them off.
Be aware that the default setting for all templates is to Use No Proxies. If you’ve already prerendered horribly slow comps, Use No Proxies will start rendering everything again from scratch (been there, done that…).
If you used stills to stand in for comps, remove these proxies in the Project panel before the final render, or select the default setting, Use No Proxies.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 43 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Chapter 43 of CMG5 is not just about network and scripted rendering (subjects we leave to the book rather than this column here), but also about a set of very useful project management commands found under the File menu inside After Effects. These utilities can help clean up your project by removing duplicate or unused sources, strip out everything except what is needed for selected comps so you can pass a portion of your project onto another artist, collect all of your source footage to one folder for backup or transport, or even enlist the aid of multiple copies of After Effects to help you render a particularly intensive comp. We’ll share a few of those utilities here.
Consolidate All Footage
This menu item looks for duplicates of footage in a project, and removes the duplicates. If a comp used one of the duplicates, these layers will be relinked to use the single copy of the footage item that remains. This feature comes in handy when you’ve imported multiple projects or folders or source materials, and there are overlaps in the sources. (Note that if footage doesn’t consolidate, chances are that the interpret footage settings are set differently for each item.)
Remove Unused Footage
This command looks for source items that are not used by any of the comps in your project and deletes them. This is particularly helpful when you’ve imported a large number of source files early on during a job while you were still deciding which sources to use, and now want to reduce a project down to the sources actually used.
Reduce Project
This command looks at the comps you have selected in the Project panel, keeps these comps, any precomps and source material used by those comps, then deletes the unselected comps and all other unused footage. This is good for reducing a complex project just to the comp or comps a coworker may need to work on. The one occasion when this function can trip you up is if an expression in a comp you kept referenced a comp you did not select before running Reduce Project: The referenced comp will still get deleted. (Tip: Before using Reduce Project, be sure to save the project to a different name. This will save you from overwriting your master project file if you accidentally hit Save after you’ve reduced the project down!)
Collect Files
The File > Collect Files command has several uses. Its primary job is to take a project that may reference source items spread out across several folders and drives, and consolidate all of this footage into a single new folder, complete with a new copy of the project file that links to these copied sources. This is handy for archiving, or moving a job and all of its assets to another computer.
Note that in the Collect Files dialog, the Collect Source Files popup has options to either collect just the sources used in the project (akin to running Remove Unused Footage, mentioned above), or copy all sources whether or not a comp currently uses them.
Be aware that Collect Files does not collect everything you need to re-create a project: Fonts, effects, and codecs are not copied. Instead, Collect Files creates a text file named xxxReport.txt (xxx is the name of your project) that gives you statistics on which files are used by the current project or the selected comps in that project, plus a list of fonts and effects used. If you are archiving a project, or moving it to another machine, it is up to you to make sure a copy of the fonts and effects you need make the trip as well.
By the way, you can also add your own hints, reminders, and comments to the Report file; just click on the Comments button in the Collect Files dialog before collecting.
Merging Projects for Render
If you import a project (File > Import > Project), not only will it add all the comps and source material to the current project, it will also merge all of the items in the imported project’s Render Queue into the current project’s queue.
If we are working with several different project files but want to render them as a batch, we’ll set up their respective Render Queues the way we want, create a new project, import all the projects we want to render, open the Render Queue, and click Render to do the entire batch.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 42 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
To create a movie or still image from your animations and arrangements, you have to render a file. After Effects is very flexible in allowing you to set up and override certain parameters when you render, as well as to create multiple files with different aspect ratios and file formats from the same render pass. You can also create and save templates of these render and output settings. In Chapter 42 of CMG5 we reveal the internal render procedure as well as discuss each option in the Render Settings and Output Module dialogs; we’ll share a few of those gems here.
Render Once/Write Many
Internally, After Effects treats rendering a movie as a two-step process. These two steps are presented to the user as two different sets of options for each comp in the Render Queue: Render Settings and Output Modules. The Render Settings determine the resolution and frame rate, and whether the image is field rendered, and then an RGB+Alpha image is stored in RAM. The Output Module determines how this uncompressed image is saved to disk.
One of the best features in After Effects is that a single render can have multiple Output Modules. Every render must have at least one, and it gets one as a default when queued. To add more, select the comp in the Render Queue, then select Composition > Add Output Module, or click on the + symbol in the last Output Module for the current Render Queue item:
In these cases, you have to render (which is your big time killer) only once, but multiple output modules can take the render and save it in as many formats as you need. In the example above, we’re saving a render both as an h.264 file for web and mobile media consumption, plus as an uncompressed master that we can archive and recompress later to any future format that may be required.
Proxies versus The Real Thing
Proxies are prerendered stand-ins for footage files or entire compositions. They are usually created either to save time (by prerendering an otherwise time-consuming composition that will need to be rendered time and time again), or as lower-resolution placeholders for footage items to make the program more responsive while you’re animating.
In the Render Settings, you get to choose whether or not to use proxies while rendering. The setting Comp Proxies Only will use proxies applied to comps but not to footage. If you are using proxies strictly as placeholders, you can choose Use No Proxies; if you’re using them as prerenders, Current Settings will reproduce exactly what you’re seeing inside your compositions, obeying the proxy on/off switch settings in the Project panel.
(Proxies and prerendering are explained in detail in Chapter 44; we’ll share gems from that chapter in a couple of weeks.)
Color Depth
This Render Settings popup allows you to override the project’s color depth setting at the time you render. This is handy for two reasons: You cannot otherwise set color depth on a per-comp basis, and it is often more efficient to work at a lower bit depth (such as 8 bits per channel) in the name of speed and then render at a higher bit depth (such as 16 bits per channel) while you eat or sleep.
However, don’t just blindly change this setting and hope for the best; changing the color depth can change the appearance of your images, especially when floating point (32 bits) mode is involved. Change it first using File > Project Settings and make sure you see what you expect. (Color Depth was explained in more detail in CMG5 Chapter 26.)
Constrained Output Formats
Some output formats and codecs (such as DV, HDV, MPEG2-DVD, et cetera) have restrictions as to what frame sizes and/or frame rates they will accept – for example, a DV frame is always either 720x480 or 720x576 pixels.
If you try to render a composition with incorrect specifications to one of these “constrained” formats without first resolving the differences yourself, After Effects will automatically scale the output and/or conform the frame rate as needed. If the comp’s settings do not match the requirements of a constrained format you choose in the Output Module, a small, very easy to miss warning icon with the text “Settings mismatch” will appear in the lower left corner of the Output Module. Click on this icon or hover your cursor over it to see a summary of what After Effects is going to do to resolve the issue:
Note that you will not see this warning in the Render Queue panel. This is an issue if you choose an Output Module template that would create a mismatch and don’t open the Output Module to double-check its settings.
Sometimes, this automatic resolution is handy: For example, square pixel widescreen comps will automatically be scaled horizontally to fit the needs of anamorphic widescreen codecs such as DV, HDV, and DVCPRO HD. Other times, this behavior is deadly: For example, a render that was set to field render in the Render Settings may be scaled vertically (a very big no-no) to fit the needs of a given codec. So keep an eye out for the Settings Mismatch icon in the Output Module, and try to resolve any mismatches yourself.
The Color of Alpha
The deceptively named “Color” popup in the Output Module dialog does not have color choices. Instead, it determines how the RGB channels should be rendered if there are also transparent areas in the alpha channel. The alpha type choices are Straight (in which the color information extends, full strength, past the edges of the alpha) or Premultiplied (in which the color information extends only as far as the alpha).
The Channels/Depth/Color menus control which channels are saved and whether the alpha is matted or unmatted. We applied Effect > Stylize > Glow effect to the spaceman image, and rendered using the following variations: RGB with alpha premultiplied (above left), RGB with straight alpha (above right), and alpha channel (left).
Spaceman courtesy Classic PIO/Nostalgic Memorabilia.
If you select Channel > RGB+Alpha, you will normally want the Color menu set to Straight (Unmatted) so that the background color is not premultiplied into the image. If you are rendering Channels > RGB only, be sure to set the Color menu to Premultiplied to composite the color channels over the comp’s background color. Be warned that if you change the Format or Format Options, After Effects resets the Color popup to Premultiplied: annoying at best, as most applications prefer Straight alpha channels.
Also be warned that the “Lossless with Alpha” template that After Effects provides renders a premultipled with black image; be sure to duplicate this template and make a variation with the Straight option. Use this “Lossless with Alpha Straight” template whenever you are rendering an alpha channel for compositing in an external editing system.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 41 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
There are a number of nonintuitive technical issues – including interlaced fields, frame rates, frame sizes, pixel aspect ratios, safe image areas, and color spaces – that differentiate video from images destined to be displayed on a computer. You can’t just ignore them; they must be handled properly to ensure your final work appears on television as you intended - otherwise your final image may be mangled (not to mention your relationship with your client). Chapter 41 of CMG5 contains an overview of many of those topic; we’ll share a few gems here.
Common Field Orders
Let’s dispel a common myth up front: All high definition footage you’re ever likely to see is either progressive scan (no interlacing), or upper field first. All too often I see users advise others that HD is lower field first, usually based on a mistaken rationale such as “DV is lower field first, so HDV must be lower field first.” It’s not. Once upon a time there was an experimental Japanese HD format that was lower field first, but that’s it; all other HD is either progressive or upper.
In the standard definition world, the picture is less clear (no pun intended). All DV is lower field first; all non-DV PAL is upper field first; NTSC is usually lower field first, but there are upper field NTSC sources out there - such as from the Aurora cards, the first D1 Avid systems, and some earlier uncompressed capture devices.
Of course, not all video footage is interlaced. Check to make sure you see the telltale signs of interlacing (such as in the image at right - footage courtesy Creative License) before separating fields. But if you do see interlacing, then in almost all cases you will be better off if you separate those interlaced fields in the After Effects Interpret Footage dialog.
Fixing Frame Rates
The most common frame rates for video in North America are 23.976 or 29.97 frames per second (fps). Don’t be tempted to round these numbers to 24 or 30 fps: The difference sounds tiny, but it adds up to a frame every 33.3 seconds (or a field every 16.7 seconds), which quickly becomes noticeable. Mismatches in frame rates between 30 and 29.97 can cause audio/video synchronization errors, as well as skipped or repeated images.
If you import footage, and the thumbnail along the top of the Project panel says its frame rate is 29.97 or 23.976, but you still encounter problems with frame being skipped or repeated, you may need to conform the clip’s frame rate to clean up internal timing errors in the file. This used to be a problem with Avid footage in particular. To do so, select the clip in the Project panel, click the Interpret Footage button at the bottom of the Project panel, and type the desired number into the Frame Rate >Conform field.
Pulling Out the Pulldown
Film usually runs at 24 fps. When film is transferred to NTSC video, it is slowed down by 0.1% to 23.976 fps, and every four frames of film are distributed across five frames (ten fields) of video through a process known as pulldown.
Some video cameras also shoot at this rate and add pulldown to simulate film-like motion. The result is a staggered set of “whole” (progressive) and “split” (interlaced) frames, as pictured at right.
You can treat the result as normal interlaced footage, but it is preferred to remove the pulldown sequence so that you are working with the original source frames inside a composition. In particular, you want to do this before tracking, stabilizing, masking, painting, or rotoscoping the footage.
Clean versus Production Aperture
The frame sizes defined for standard definition video have a quirk: They contain more pixels than are supposed to be used. When engineers designed these formats, they built in a few extra pixels along the edges to allow for artifacts caused by video processing algorithms and the like. The full captured frame is referred to as the Production Aperture; the smaller area inside which refers to the actual image is referred to as the Clean Aperture.
For many years, video hardware and software ignored this difference, using just the Production Aperture size for everything. A side effect of this choice was that they also used very slightly wrong pixel aspect ratios to make the math work – otherwise, the extra pixels in the Production Aperture made it look like the frames were wider than 4:3 or 16:9.
As of After Effects CS4, Adobe decided to rectify this and started using the technically correct pixel aspect ratios. The suggested square pixel sizes on the previous page encompass the entire Production Aperture; that’s why they have image aspect ratios wider than 4:3 or 16:9 (for example, 720 ÷ 534 = 1.348; not the expected 1.333).
What does this mean for you? Less than you might expect:
None of the original, non-square-pixel frame sizes have changed. This means you can interchange files with other programs without worry.
When you create imagery using the new, correct square pixel frame sizes, be aware that a few pixels on the left and right sides are extra. For example, the Clean Aperture area for 4:3 D1 NTSC is 712 x 486, meaning four pixels along each edge in your 720x486 pixel composition will be ignored when displayed.
When using square pixel compositions or artwork created at the “old” sizes, scale the width to match the target non-square pixel comp, and allow those extra pixels on the top and bottom to be cropped off. This is shown below: The red outline is the full square pixel image; note a few pixels along the top and bottom extend onto the gray pasteboard.
Know that from now on, your “perfectly round” circles will actually be perfectly round.
This issue does not affect any of the anamorphic HD formats; in all of their cases, Clean and Production Apertures are the same.
Some incorrectly believe that an NTSC DV frame of 720x480 pixels has a different pixel aspect ratio than an NTSC D1 frame of 720x486 pixels. Actually, they both have the same pixel aspect ratio; DV is just a D1 frame with 6 lines cut off to save on compression when going to tape. (Remember, DV originally intended as a consumer format; not for real video production or broadcast.)
There are times when you need to convert between the two formats. The easiest approaches - scaling one to fit the other’s composition size, or centering one format in a different format’s comp - both happen to be the less-optimal way to do it. On CMG5’s DVD-ROM, we included a one-page bonus chapter on the best way to convert between these formats; you can click here to download that PDF file.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Bonus Chapter 40B of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
After Effects includes a set of 3D Channel effects, which take advantage of additional information embedded in files rendered from certain 3D programs. Since relatively few users have occasion to employ these, we covered them in a Bonus Chapter on the DVD-ROM that comes with CMG5 - including some of the naming and file format conventions you need to follow to make sure After Effects can import all of the available information. As not all 3D programs embed this information in their render, where practical we also provided alternative workflows that replicate the end result of these effects with files you should be able to generate from almost any 3D program.
How Do I Know If There’s Extra Information to Access?
3D Channel effects work only with specific file formats. The most flexible ones are RLA and RPF, which should contain color, alpha, and a large number of additional channels of information in one file. These files should be identified with the suffix .rla or .rpf.
When these files are imported and selected in the Project panel, the additional channels they contain or reference will appear along the top of this panel, just under the bit-depth information, as shown at right.
These files behave as normal color plus alpha footage items until you apply one of the 3D Channel effects to them. At that point, highlighting the effect in the Effect Controls panel allows you to click on their image in the Comp or Layer panels and have the additional channel information displayed in the Info pane. An example of Z Depth being displayed is shown at right.
Z Depth from SoftImage and Electric Image
Softimage and Electric Image users have direct access only to Z-depth information, which must be rendered into a file separate from the normal color + alpha render pass. In both cases, the resulting files should have the same main name, with different suffixes. For Softimage, the normal file must be tagged .pic while the Z-depth render must be tagged .zpic; for Electric Image, the main render is an Image file with a suffix of your choosing (normal is .img); the Z-depth file must use the suffix .eiz.
When you import these files, make sure both are in the same folder, and import only the normal 3D render – After Effects will find the Z-depth file automatically.
Channel information in OpenEXR files is also supported (see the Help documentation on “Using channels in OpenEXR files”).
Oversampling
3D channel information gives an absolute value for each pixel, such as material #1 or #2. This often results in an aliased edge for the resulting matte. Rendering an image at least double size and scaling down in After Effects greatly improves these edges, at the cost of rendering time and disk space.
One strategy is to render your main color + alpha channel pass at normal size. Then render the special file with the additional 3D channel information at 2× or 4× size, using the fastest render options your 3D program offers. This will take less time to render than a full-quality image at this increased size. Import both into After Effects, apply 3D Channel effects to this second render, and scale it down (keeping Best Quality enabled) to match your normal render so the resulting images line up. This is essentially the same as when your 3D program oversamples the main render.
If you want to keep your normal render and your oversampled 3D channel render together and treat them as one file, there is a procedure to do so using proxies. First, import your oversampled 3D Channel render. With this file selected in the Project panel, select File > Set Proxy > File. Choose your normal render as the Proxy. Files with proxies applied will have two entries along the top of the Project panel when selected, as shown here.
Once you’ve done this, After Effects will scale up your image render to match the size of your special 3D channel render, but will still access the 3D channel information in your special render. You can treat the result as a single file; just remember to keep it at Best Quality and scale it down to fit your comp size.
Better Fog
Fog is another effect that relies on Z-depth information embedded in or linked to by a 3D render. In short, what it does is take a color of your choice and blend it into the 3D image with increasing strength as the Z-depth values increase in the file.
This effect in its basic form can look very synthetic. To make it look more realistic, you need a Gradient Layer, which acts as a luma matte for the fog. You can select which layer in your composition to be used as the gradient directly in the Fog 3D effect. The image at right shows a swirling gradient layer; the two images below show Fog 3D in its normal application (left) and using the gradient layer (right):
3D room courtesy Shetland Studios.
Even better is when this gradient layer animates. Consider using stock footage of drifting fog or smoke. Or you can use various fractal noise effects such as Effect > Noise & Grain > Fractal Noise. Just remember that if you use an effect to generate the gradient, the generation must be done in a precomp; compound effects such as Fog 3D that look at another layer see it before any effects have been applied in the current composition.
Weirder Fog
The point of most visual effects work is to look realistic; that’s the idea behind the suggestion above to use a smokey gradient to treat your fog. You can also use this to add a feeling of realism to otherwise stylized graphical work.
On the other end of the spectrum, the point of much motion graphics work is to look stylized and cool. For example, you might want to take your fog, colorize it, and use blending modes to create a surrealistic final composite. Below left is an example of using more realistic fog in a graphical scene; below right is the same scene using blurs, tints and modes to create a variation on the classic “instant sex” (aka “filmic glow”) effect:
3D world created by Crish Design for QAD; building design by Ridgley Curry & Associates.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe to help us create our books, blogs, and videos. Aside from that, we have also used their software for nearly 20 years to make a living creating commercial work for clients - so the tips we share are based on real-world experiences, not as promotional material for Adobe.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 40 – Integrating with 3D Applications
Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/22
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 40 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Real 3D programs have several advantages over After Effects: For example, their objects have real depth, and the texturing and lighting options are far more advanced. However, After Effects is the better tool in which to refine the final look of your 3D renders, as well as composite other elements on top of them. Offloading portions of the work from your 3D program to After Effects will save time while giving you more power and flexibility - but it requires some planning to set up.
In this chapter in CMG, we give advice on how to successfully integrate your 3D program with After Effects. Unfortunately, there is no one universal file format to bring information from a 3D application into After Effects, so in the book we focus on using Maxon Cinema 4D as it currently has the tightest integration with After Effects, plus is the 3D program we personally use. However, many of the concepts we cover are universal and can be applied to other programs as well. A few of the more universal tips from that chapter are included here.
Camera Export
One of the keys to integrating After Effects with a 3D application is to get the camera move from the 3D program into an After Effects camera. Different programs have different ways of doing this.
For example, with Maya, you have to save the project in the .ma (Maya ASCII) format, not the default .mb (Maya Binary) format. After Effects can then import .ma files, and will cull the camera data from that project. After Effects will also pick up any objects in Maya with “null” or “NULL” in their names and create corresponding layers in After Effects, such as the camera null (cam_null) in the figure below. This is a great tip to use as locators for significant objects – such as video screen faces and even lights – in Maya and then bring those positions into After Effects without transcribing coordinates by hand.
Programs that support the RLA or RPF formats - such as 3ds max and LightWave - require a different workflow. You have to render to an image sequence (not a movie file), and make sure you embed the camera data in the render. Then import the resulting sequence into After Effects, add it to a composition, select it, and choose the menu function Animation > Keyframe Assistant > RPF Camera Import. After Effects will then create its own camera with the same movement.
Other 3D applications may have different workflows. If camera export is not supported directly by the applications, several users and third parties have created plug-ins and scripts to help move the camera data between apps. At the other end of the spectrum, Maxon Cinema 4D will not only export camera data, it will also export lights, mattes, positional nulls, and multipacks renders all in one go, and create a pre-built After Effects project for you. (More on the joys of C4D/AE integration near the end of this post.)
Cameras Don’t Match
Sometimes, your imported camera move will not appear to match the motion in your 3D render. The most common problem is that the Angle of View for the After Effects camera is wrong. Verify the value for this parameter (also known as Field of View) in your 3D program, and enter this value manually in the Camera Settings dialog in After Effects.
Some 3D programs also do not take into account any curves you may have applied to the camera’s path or speed. Therefore, you will often need to “bake” the camera move in the 3D program to create a keyframe for every frame of your timeline before exporting its move. For example, in Maya use Edit > Keys > Bake Simulation in Maya.
Other times, you may have a units mismatch – such as centimeters versus meters. You might need to use expressions to make up the difference, such as value * 100 or value / 10.
The 50 Percent Solution
If we know we will be compositing a layer in After Effects onto the surface of a 3D model, we usually try to make that surface average 50% luminance (gray) after it has been textured and lit.
If we composite the new layer in After Effects using modes such as Overlay or Hard Light, it will pick up the lighting and shadows that fall across the 3D surface without unduly changing the appearance of the new layer. It’s subtle, but it really helps sell the realism of a scene, rather than a graphic appearing to be obviously pasted onto another surface.
The image at left is the render directly out of the 3D program. Below left shows a video composited on the face of the wall using Normal mode, while below right uses Hard Light mode. Notice how the Hard Light version picks up the shadows and broad specular highlight on the wall’s face from the 3D render, Normal mode does not.
video clip WL101 courtesy Artbeats.com
3D Apps Don’t Do Video
Most 3D programs do not correctly handle some of video’s idiosyncrasies such as odd frame rates and non-square pixels. Therefore, it is safest to render your 3D animations using integer frame rates and square pixels, then conform the results to what you need in After Effects.
For example, render at 30 fps with square pixels (720x534 for NTSC D1), composite layers as needed in this composition, then nest this as a layer into a final render composition. Set the final render comp’s frame rate to 29.97 fps, right click on the nested comp layer, select Time > Time Stretch, and stretch it by 100.1% (the exact ratio between 30 and “29.97” fps). Also scale as needed to fit into the final composition.
Many 3D artists like to render individual aspects of their scene – for instance, diffuse color, specular highlights, shadows, reflections – as independent “passes” to be reblended in After Effects using a combination of alpha channel and blending modes (Multiply for shadows, Add or Screen for reflections and other color passes). This results in a high degree of control, such as being able to change the strength or blurriness of a reflection map or darkness of a shadow without having to go back into the original 3D project. If you break out the lights separately as well, it’s easy to color correct the contribution of each light after the fact, which is a huge timesaver when it comes to adding that final polish.
Most 3D programs require you to set up and render each of these passes individually. If you are trying to isolate specific properties perhaps on just a few objects in your scene, you can tweak your project file as needed between renders. If you know you will be tweaking a multipass render later in After Effects, it is a good idea to “overdo” properties such as shadow darkness, specular highlights, and reflections so that you have some latitude to decrease the opacity of these layers (and therefore, their contribution to the final composite) without having to render the scene over from scratch:
By the way, Cinema 4D makes it extremely easy to create a multipass render and get it into After Effects: You can define which properties you want broken out when you render, have Cinema create a special “.aec” project file for you, import this .aec file into After Effects, and it will automatically reassemble all of your passes into a set of compositions with the correct blending modes already set - you just have to tweak opacities from there. We created a video course on Cinema/AE integration; you can watch it on Cineversity or lynda.com. (If you don’t have a subscription to either, click here for a 7-day free pass to lynda.com.) The introduction to the course is below; in addition to discussing what the course covers, it includes an outline of the basic steps you need to execute to integrate any 3D program with After Effects:
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
FTC Disclosure: We receive software from Adobe and Maxon to help us write our books and create our videos. We receive royalty income from our books and our videos on lynda.com; we gave the videos to Cineversity in exchange to how nice Maxon has been to us through the years. We otherwise are not paid by any of the above to promote their products; they’re what we actually use and believe in.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 39 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
For many motion graphics artists, After Effects serves as their hub where they bring in content from multiple sources (such as 3D applications), enhance it, and then send it out to multiple destinations (such as web pages or editing systems). Therefore, it has to handle a multitude of file and application formats. The previous chapter focused on file-level issues; this chapter primarily discusses higher-level issues of dealing with different programs - although exchange file formats inevitably creep into the mix as well. Here’s a few tips and hidden gems from that chapter.
SWF Alpha Channels
After Effects can recognize transparency in a SWF file; you just have to make sure you set up your project in Flash to have transparent areas. To do this, you need to create a custom background color in Flash: In the Color panel, create a new color with Alpha set to 0%. Then bring the Swatches panel forward, and click along its bottom to add this color to your palette. It will be identified with a graph paper pattern. Then in the Properties Inspector, select this transparent swatch for the Stage color.
By the way, when you import any content originally created for the web - SWF, FLV and F4V files included - you should never separate fields; you’ll just lose half your resolution. Similarly, when you’re creating content for the web, never interlace (field render) your renders, as normal computers do not have interlaced displays.
Flash Professional
After Effects CS4 and later has the ability to export an After Effects composition as an XFL format project, which can then be opened by Adobe Flash Professional CS4 or later. Open the composition you wish to export, and then select File > Export > Adobe Flash Professional (XFL). You may then open the resulting file in Flash Professional and trim, transform, or add interactivity to them within Flash; you may also insert new symbols in-between these layers in Flash.
As nice as this feature sounds on the surface, it brings with it a lot of special case exceptions and gotchas, such as no current support for audio(!), and any keyframed animation is either rendered to a movie during export or converted into a transform keyframe for every single frame in Flash’s Motion Editor (as seen in the figure below). We spend a few pages on these issues - along with an example project - in the CMG book.
NLE Integration
Since Adobe makes both After Effects and Premiere Pro, it is only natural that they integrate very tightly. You can import a Premiere Pro project into After Effects, as well as export an After Effects project as a Premiere Pro project file. Additionally, if you have the CS5 Production Premium or Master Collection bundle, you can also transfer the following:
Footage items – as well as compositions and sequences – can be copied and pasted between the Project panels in both programs.
Footage items can be copied from an After Effects comp’s timeline into a Premiere sequence’s timeline. You can also copy nested comps, solids, Photoshop layers, and audio tracks.
Virtually any track item can be copied from a Premiere timeline and pasted into the After Effects timeline.
An example of this bidirectional transfer is shown below, where an After Effects composition has been pasted into a Premiere Pro sequence:
Going further is Dynamic Link, where you can link an After Effects composition into Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore in its unrendered state and use it as a footage item. These applications will render the comp “on demand” to display a specific frame.
Integration with Avid or Apple systems is understandably less straightforward. Although there are various workarounds, in a situation where time is money, third party vendor Automatic Duck’s Pro Import AE plug-in set is money well spent. Note that in these cases, the transfer is one way: You can bring Avid and Apple timelines into After Effects, but not export back to these systems (aside from rendering a final movie). The new FCP-X is also not currently supported - although Automatic Duck has already figured out how to export from FCP-X to Digidesign ProTools, so hope springs eternal that other solutions might also be forthcoming.
Buttons for Adobe Encore
You can start a menu design in Encore (Adobe’s disc authoring program), then use its command Menu > Create After Effects Composition. Encore will save a layered PSD file of the menu elements and create an After Effects project that has these layers already imported and arranged in a composition. You can then modify or create buttons from scratch in After Effects, and save each button as a layered PSD file to import back into Encore.
Encore requires very specific naming conventions to know which layer is supposed to be which element in a button. To automatically rename these elements in the format Encore requires, select the layers that make up the button elements, and choose the menu item Layer > Adobe Encore > Create Button. Here you have the opportunity to tell After Effects which layer corresponds to which menu element, and After Effects will nest the selected elements into a new composition that has the button’s name, with (+) appended to the front which tells Encore this is a button.
Authoring for Multiple Mobile Devices
Creating content for mobile devices is an important business segment for some. The problem is that there are a number of devices out there, and many have different specifications and requirements. This process has been aided by the ability to use Adobe Device Central - installed alongside After Effects - to automatically build a chain of After Effects compositions.
After defining your target devices, Device Central can export an After Effects project that contains a chain of compositions, shown above (using AE’s Mini Flowchart feature). These comps provide guide layers that show the safe areas for each device in a single Device Master composition. This Device Master comp then feeds a number of render comps where the source has been scaled and cropped as needed for each target device. Finally, these individual render comps feed a final Preview comp where you get to compare the relative crops and scalings side by side:
The biggest disappointment with this feature is that it does not set up the After Effects Render Queue with the correct codecs and bit rate settings for each target device; you still need to do some final work in a program such as Adobe Media Encoder. But it still saves a lot of steps.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Multiple Playback Speeds
Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/13
A simple speed-shift trick to reuse a single element multiple times, and make each instance appear different.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This particular movie demonstrates how to use the well-hidden Stretch parameter for a layer to create multiple variations of a common element inside the same final composition.
The tenth Apprentice course is a collection of techniques focused around a central theme: playing with time. In it we cover Frame Blending (including both normal Frame Mix and optical flow based Pixel Motion modes), different ways to stop motion and freeze frames, and the mind-bending subject of Time Remapping: actually keyframing time. We also throw in a couple of Quizzlers and Idea Corners to show you how to combine these techniques with others. At under an hour a total, it’s a quick idea-generator course that will make you more familiar with several parts of the program.
The movie above is one of those Idea Corners, showing how to combine a layer’s speed-changing Stretch value with a nested composition (introduced in AEA08 course on Nesting and Precomposing) to create a single graphical element - such as a randomly-updating number - and use it multiple times in a composition, with each variation appearing unique. This is handy for quickly populating a screen with background design elements. The advantage of using nesting is that if a client requests a change in design - such as font or number of digits - you only need to change the master instance in the precomp, and that change will ripple through all of your speed-changed layers in your final comp.
If you’re curious about the AEA10 Time Games course, below is an overview of what it covers:
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.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 38 – Import and Interpret
Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/11
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 38 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
This reference chapter discusses specific issues regarding importing different types of footage items – as well as entire projects – into After Effects. We cover all the options in the Interpret Footage dialog, including the differences between straight and premultiplied alpha channels, as well as how best to import still images, sequences, and Photoshop and Illustrator layers files. Here are a few select tips from that chapter.
Copy and Paste Interpretation
Central to handling the footage you import is the Interpret Footage dialog, where you indicate how After Effects interprets and handles your source files as it hands the images off to your comps. To open it, you must select the footage item in the Project panel, then either select File > Interpret Footage > Main, or click on the Interpret Footage icon in the bottom left corner of the Project panel.
You can change the interpretation of any footage item at any time. If you are working in a comp and need to re-interpret a layer but don’t know its location in the Project panel, right-click on the layer and select Reveal Layer Source in Project. Once its select, you can then click on the Interpret Footage button to change the settings.
If you have a number of footage items that all need to have their Interpret Footage parameters set the same – such as Straight Alpha, 29.97 fps, Lower Field First, SDTV NTSC color profile – you can copy and paste from one item to many. Set up one footage item the way you want, right-click on it and select Interpret Footage > Remember Interpretation (you’ll find it also on the File menu); select the other items to receive these parameters, right-click and select Interpret Footage > Apply Interpretation. This can save you countless keystrokes early in a project.
Importing Folders is a Drag
After Effects has consolidated the importing of movies, stills, sequences, layered files, folders, and projects into one dialog: File > Import > File, accessed with the keyboard shortcut Command+I on Mac (Control+I on Windows), or by simply double-clicking in an empty area of the Project panel.
If you prefer to drag an entire folder of sources to the Project panel, hold down the Option (Alt) key as you drag a folder from the computer’s desktop to the Project panel. (If you have trouble, release the mouse button first and then release the Option key; don’t release both at the same time in case the Option key gets released first!). If you forget to hold down the Option (Alt) key, After Effects will attempt to import the contents of the folder as a sequence. (In CS5, dragging a folder to the application icon always results in a sequence.)
Default Frame Rate
Still images have infinite duration in After Effects, and may be trimmed as desired. When you add a still to a composition, its default length is set in Preferences > Import. The default setting for Still Footage is Length of Composition, which means they will be automatically trimmed to equal each comp’s duration. An alternative is to specify a time in this preference, which may be useful if you know you will be building a sequence out of a set of disparate images.
When you import a sequence of stills, After Effects automatically assigns it the frame rate set in the Preferences > Import dialog. We suggest you set this Preference to 29.97 fps (frames per second) for NTSC video sequences; 25 fps for PAL; 24 or 23.976 fps for digital cinema. You can change the preference before importing the sequence, or change the frame rate later in the source’s File > Interpret Footage > Main dialog (discussed above).
The Photoshop Import Do-Over
The most powerful way to import a layered Photoshop file is as a composition. This gives you additional choices on how to handle Photoshop Layer Styles and Photoshop 3D layers, plus whether or not to pre-crop the layers (Retain Layer Sizes). The result is a folder containing the layers, and a composition with them properly stacked and arranged.
But did you know that if you merged a layered Photoshop or Illustrator file when you import it, you can change your mind and convert it to a layered comp without having to re-import it? You can either right-click on the footage in the Project panel and select Replace Footage > With Layered Comp, or if the merged footage item is selected from inside a comp, use the Layer menu and choose Convert To Layered Comp. The layer will be replaced with a precomp that contains the component layers, and the precomp will replace the original layer in the main comp.
The Illustrator Artboard
You can import layered Illustrator files in three ways, similar to the way you import Photoshop files: as Footage (a merged composite of all layers), by choosing a single layer from the file, or as a composition that contains all of the individual layers that make up the file. As with Photoshop, the comp’s initial frame rate and duration are determined by the last comp you created. Both can be edited after importing.
When you import an Illustrator file, areas that would be considered the “paper” in Illustrator will be converted to an alpha channel in After Effects. Text and outlines will be rasterized; more recent versions of Illustrator now embed fonts in the document, so it is no longer necessary to convert text to outlines. However, unlike Photoshop text, you cannot convert Illustrator text into editable text inside After Effects.
After importing a layered Illustrator file, you’ll have a composition and a folder of individual footage items; change the Composition Settings as needed.
The way that “document size” is handled for Illustrator files has changed considerably in recent versions. Illustrator CS4 introduced the concept of Artboards to represent regions that can contain artwork. While Illustrator can create multiple artboards per document, After Effects will use Artboard 01 (the default when you create a new file) as the Composition size when you Import As Composition. To edit the dimensions, double-click the Artboard tool to open the Artboard Options.
Illustrator also includes a set of film and video document profiles. An advantage of using these presets in CS5 is that if you create a new Illustrator file using one of the Video and Film presets, in addition to creating Artboard 01 at the appropriate size, it also creates a second artboard that is much larger (14,400 x 14,400 to be exact). Provided you import your file into After Effects as a Composition (and you have at least two layers), any imagery that falls outside Artboard 01 isn’t cropped off or lost – it will reside outside the composition frame, ready to be animated onto the stage.
If the file was created without using a CS5 preset (or in a previous version), simply create a second artboard at 14,400 x 14,400 – this magic size will trigger After Effects to behave the same way.
Double-click the Artboard tool (circled) to open the Artboard Options dialog. (Note the “Video Ruler Pixel Aspect Ratio” option; we recommend you set it to “1”.)
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 37B and 37C – Expressions and Scripting Bonus Chapters
Chris and Trish Meyer | 09/02
This time, a collection of resources on expressions and scripting - including a PDF of Bonus Chapter 37C on scripting.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
In addition to the book’s introductory chapter on expressions that we covered last week, the dual-layer DVD-ROM that comes with CMG5 includes bonus chapters on both expressions and scripting. Rather than try to boil down nearly 70 pages of PDFs into our customary handful of gems, this week we thought we’d share a set of resources on scripting and expressions - including Bonus Chapter 37C itself, written by Dan Ebberts of MotionScript.com.
Bonus Chapter 37B is called Deeper Modes of Expression, and contains 64 pages of more advanced explanations of everything from useful math expressions (such as how to round off numbers or move in circles) to arrays and space conversions to managing time to making decisions to random numbers (and far, far more).
So far, there has been just one book dedicated to the subject of expressions: After Effects Expressions by Marcus Geduld. Aimed to take you from beginner to expert status, it promises that “no programming skills are required. Foundation concepts and skills orient the new designer and serve as a handy reference to the experienced one. Basics of creating Expressions, variables, commands, and Expression helpers precede the leap into JavaScript and math essentials for more advanced Expressions that include randomness and physical simulations.” (There’s a rumor of an upcoming book on scripting by a popular After Effects power user; fingers crossed.)
Expressions are indeed based on JavaScript. Once you go beyond simple pick whip constructions and want to start coding your own bits of animation automation, it’s a good idea to have a desk reference on the language at hand. My personal favorite is JavaScript, A Beginner’s Guide, by John Pollock. In addition to the traditional subject of programming advanced web pages, this book contains some of the simplest, clearest explanations we’ve seen of the JavaScript language and how it works.
Web Sites on Expressions and Scripts
As mentioned above, Dan Ebberts - who wrote CMG5’s bonus chapter on scripting, as well as edited the bonus chapter on expressions - runs the MotionScript.com site dedicated to helping people learn about expressions and scripting. If you’re more into crowd sourcing knowledge on expressions and scripting, then check out the AEnhancers forums.
If you’d rather just use finished, polished scripts than learn to write them, then your one-stop shop is AEScripts.com. Some scripts request or require a donation, but I haven’t seen a single one that wasn’t worth several times more than the modest fee being asked.
And of course, one should never overlook the online version of the Help file for After Effects; it goes beyond being just a manual and often includes links to external resources. Here are the direct links for expressions help
And finally, as promised, click here to download Dan Ebberts’ Bonus Chapter 37C: Scripting Overview from CMG5. It includes a comparison between scripting and expressions, and then quickly moves onto constructing a couple of simple example scripts you can write yourself. At the end, Dan includes his own list of favorite resources. Enjoy!
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 37 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Creating expressions – the ability to tell one parameter to follow another, stay at a constant value, or create new values as the result of ingenious calculations – is one of the most powerful features in After Effects. For many, it is also one of the most daunting: To get the most out of it, you have to deal with math and what looks suspiciously like computer programming. But it’s not that bad! In this chapter of CMG5, we show you how to make expressions work for you with minimal effort; here are a few choice tips culled from that chapter.
Convert Audio to Keyframes
Continuing on from the audio theme of the last two installments of Hidden Gems, a popular trick is to make an animation seem to follow the beats in the music. There is not yet an expression that can read audio directly, but there is a keyframe assistant – Convert Audio to Keyframes – that can. Combine this with expressions, and many animation possibilities open up. (In the interest of full disclosure, third party solutions such as Trapcode SoundKeys are more powerful and our preferred choice - but we know that for many of you, what comes with AE is all you’ve got.)
To use this assistant, open a composition that features audio, and choose Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio to Keyframes. There is no need to select a layer first; After Effects mixes the audio for all of the layers in the composition, and then creates keyframes based on this final mix. If you have more than one layer with audio in a comp, and don’t want to convert the audio levels of all of them, turn off the Audio switch for the unwanted layers before running this assistant.
The result is raw keyframes with a potential value range of 0 to 100, depending on the amplitude of your audio from frame to frame. You may need to perform some simple math to convert them to the range required by the parameter you plan to hook up via expressions, or you can use one of our favorite expression methods: Linear Interpolation (discussed next).
Interpolating This to That
After Effects features a group of interpolation expression methods (a “method” refers to a bit of expression code that takes a set of values inside parentheses, and comes up with a new value for you). Not to be confused with keyframe interpolation, these methods make it easy to match one range of numbers to another. Take this expression:
linear(transform.rotation, -360, 360, 0, 100)
This says “take the rotation value, and as rotation varies between –360 and +360, output a number between 0 and 100.” After Effects will then perform any scaling needed to match together the two value ranges. Obvious, you can replace any of the numbers or properties inside the parentheses with the values you need.
You can find the interpolation methods under the Expression Language Menu - the little arrow to the right of the expression pick whip:
We’ve found it handy to remember the basic format of this expression with the saying “as that parameter goes from A to B, I want to go from Y to Z”. That reminds us what five values go inside the linear() method.
The Value of value
Quite often, you want to take a parameter’s original value, and use an expression to add onto it or offset it. To do that, all you need to do is tack on the bit of code + value at the end. You can also use value to pass a parameter’s current value - even if it’s keyframed - into an expression for further calculation.
The code value also works with arrays. For example, sometimes you may want to wiggle only one dimension of position or scale - but wiggle normally randomizes every dimension in sight! Let’s say you wanted to keep X - the first dimension (notated by [0] in expressions - the same, but wiggle the second dimension - Y ([1]) - by 100 pixels at a pace of 1 wiggle per second. One way to do that would be to enter the following code:
temp = wiggle(1,100);
[value[0], temp[1]]
The above says store off the two-dimensional wiggle result in a “variable” called temp, then use only the temp-saved wiggled value for Y, and the original underlying value for X.
Note that wiggle is the one expression where you don’t need to do + value in order to have the expression add its results onto a parameter’s underlying value. (By the way, if you’re not already familiar with the wiggle expression, click here to watch an introductory video from our After Effects Apprentice video series.)
So what was that, three or four gems in one?
Saving Expressions as Animation Presets
Expressions cannot be saved by themselves. Instead, you will need to copy and paste them between After Effects and a text document, or import projects that contain expressions you want to reuse.
A better way to save expressions is to use Animation Presets. Expressions applied to effects – or ordinary parameters – can be saved along with the effects as Presets. Simply apply your expressions to effects or parameters, select the relevant effects or parameters in either the Timeline or Effect Controls panel, and use Animation > Save Animation Preset to store the result as a preset. Select a new layer and use Animation > Apply Animation Preset to recall the parameters effects with their settings, keyframes, and expressions intact. (Note that if these expressions referred to other layers or comps, then you will need to re-enter the new layer and comp names).
We particularly like to use Expression Controls and the Distort > Transform effect (which gives you a second set of Position, Scale, and Opacity controls for a layer) to write self-contained expression modules. The Transform effect is particularly useful for presets as it allows you to scale, rotate, move, and fade a layer without touching the layer’s normal Transform properties. And then Expression Controls can provide a simplified “user interface” to a complex expression or effect.
What Were We Thinking?!?
We’re a big fan of adding comments to our After Effects projects - whether it be to inform a client we hand the projects off to, or just to remind ourselves what the heck we were thinking at 3 AM - or three years after we thought the project was done. Therefore, we use layer and comp markers throughout a project, as well as the Comment column in the Project panel. We also like to add comments to our expressions.
Comments need to go at the end of an expression line. After the expression code (and if it’s a multiline expression, the semicolon at the end of an intermediate line), type // (two slashes), then whatever comment you want. After Effects will not execute anything after // and before the next Return. When you enter a Return, this tells After Effects the line is over, and it can start executing the expression again from the start of the next line.
If you want to write a long comment that requires more than one line, or sneak a comment into the middle of a line, surround your comment with the characters /* and */. To wit:
// this is a comment
/* this also works
as a comment*/
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Bonus Chapter 36B of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
After Effects comes with several audio processing effects located inside the menu Effect > Audio. We discussed the basics of audio plus the Stereo Mixer effect in the book’s Chapter 36; in the Bonus Chapter we discuss some of the other effects, including how they work as well as some suggested applications for their use. Our personal bias is more toward audio “sweetening” than special effects creation, and that is our focus in the bonus chapter on the book’s DVD, and in the tips we share here. Of course, the effects available in a dedicated program such as Adobe Audition are far more capable than the rudimentary ones included inside After Effects, but surprisingly often the After Effects versions are all you need to perform simple enhancements.
Truncated Effects
Some audio effects - like delays and reverb - are capable of producing sound that carries on longer than the original sound file lasts. Unfortunately, as soon as the sound file ends, playback of any effects will end as well - sometimes rather abruptly.
To artificially extend the duration of a sound file, you can place it in a longer precomposition and apply the audio effect to the nested layer. To keep things all in one composition, the alternative is to use Time Remapping to “freeze” the source at its natural end, and then drag the Out point of the layer longer to make sure delays or reverbs don’t get cut off. The also allows you to cut off playback of the original audio at any point, such as cutting off a speaker mid-phrase and letting reverb ring on from there - just add a Time Remap keyframe at the desired freeze point, and delete any keyframes afterwards.
Wet and Dry
Many of the audio effects feature a pair of parameters called Dry Out and Wet Out. This is because many of the processings sound best if you mix together the unprocessed sound (“dry”) with the processed version (“wet”). Think of this as a sort of Blend With Original, but with more control. Many effects - like Reverb - sound more realistic with relatively high Dry and low Wet amounts; some - like Flange/Chorus - work better set closer to a 50/50 mix.
A nice trick is to fade up the Wet Out from 0 to some nominal setting over time, causing the effect to fade in without reducing the volume of the original sound.
Adding Some Animation to Sound
The Flange & Chorus effect is often used to add some “motion” to otherwise dull, lifeless sounds. The secret to making this effect sound good is setting a small amount of Modulation Depth and Rate. This causes the Voice Separation Time to wander (modulate), resulting in a slightly watery, unstable sound. Modulation Rate values of under 1.0 are most common; higher values produce more watery or even drunken effects. A touch of this effect will help add depth (or even a touch of magic) to some sound effects such as cymbal crashes and jet engine takeoffs; some also like to use it on vocals to make one voice sound like several.
Which EQ When?
For serious equalization (manipulation of the frequency components of a sound), we use a serious tool like Adobe Audition. But a lot of simple corrective work can be done with the simple tools inside After Effects.
Our most-used audio effect (aside from the Stereo Mixer touched on in the previous installment) is Bass & Treble. Adding a touch of treble can help add clarity to music or voice. Adding a touch of bass can add gravitas to a narration. We also use small amounts of bass and treble to match different audio takes that sound slightly different. This is often caused because the person speaking was closer or farther away from the mic during different takes, often resulting in slightly more or less bass respectively.
Our next-most-used audio effect it High-Low Pass. Rather than subtly emphasizing or deemphasizing the extremes of the frequency range like Bass & Treble does, High-Low Pass aims to cut them out completely.
High Pass mode lets higher frequencies go through unmolested and cuts off lower ones. We use it to try to cut down on rumble, air conditioning noise, and in some cases hum - try a range of 60-120 for starters. Low Pass mode allows lower frequencies to pass and cuts out higher ones. We use it try to tame hiss and other higher-pitched noise in a recording. Contrary to our advice up top, this is one effect where you want to set Dry Out to 0% and Wet Out to 100%.
In a normal audio program, you may use a parametric equalizer to perform most other tasks. Unfortunately, the Parametric EQ in After Effects has a fundamental design flaw where it is based on linear rather than exponential frequency response (in other words, contrary to the way our ears actually work), making it particularly hard to make precise adjustments in the lower frequency range.
Don’t Clip; Dip
Effects that add to the original sound - such as boosting the bass with Bass & Treble, or even adding together echoes or setting too high of a Wet Out amount for Reverb - can cause the composite sound to go over full range, resulting in unpleasant “clipping” distortion as those over-enthusiastic peaks are hit. The meters in the Audio panel will help tell you if you’re in trouble; avoid lighting up the red indicators at the top during previews. However, if you’ve reduced the Levels parameter for a layer, the red warning indicators won’t light up even if you’re clipping - so use your ears and try to detect if something sounds “crunchy” or less clear.
If you experience clipping, and the audio effect you’re using has Wet and Dry controls, you can reduce these in tandem until you no longer experience clipping. If it doesn’t, place a Stereo Mixer effect before the other audio processing effects, and reduce the volume at the Stereo Mixer until the meters get close to but stay out of the red, or the distortion disappears.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 36 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
After Effects has never made audio one of its strong points. If you need to seriously rework a soundtrack, do it in a dedicated audio program (such as Adobe Audition, which is now part of the Production Premium suite as of CS5.5). But if you just need to edit, mix, and do some basic improvement or “sweetening” to your sound track, After Effects already has the tools you need. In this installment, we’ll share some tips on working with audio; in the next installment, we’ll cover audio effects.
Previewing Audio
Unlike video, audio cannot be previewed by pressing the spacebar - you will need to either perform a realtime preview, or scrub it. You can perform a normal RAM Preview by either pressing 0 on the numeric keypad or clicking the Preview button at the far right in the Preview panel (the one highlighted in yellow in the figure at right), which will calculate and play back both audio and video. The playback frame rate will be displayed in the Info panel, as seen here; if playback is not in realtime, then the audio will be out of sync with the video.
When spotting audio (discussed below) or just becoming familiar with the soundtrack, we often preview the audio by itself. To do that, press the decimal point key on the numeric keypad.
(Mac laptop owners with CS5 or later, who no longer have access to a faux extended keypad using function keys: Hold Control and press the equivalent key, such as 0 for RAM Preview, period (.) for audio-only preview, and 8 (*) for placing markers.)
Few know that you can also “scrub” audio in After Effects: Hold down the Command (Control) key while you’re moving the time indicator with your mouse. Scrubbing will play a single frame of audio for each frame you move the time indicator to. If you hold the cursor in place without moving, after a pause After Effects will start playing a one-third second loop of the audio, starting at the current location of the time indicator. This works in the Footage, Layer, and Timeline panels.
Waves to Keys
If you want to use audio to drive an animation, you need to employ an intermediate step. Select Animation > Keyframe Assistants > Convert Audio to Keyframes creates keyframe values that match the combined amplitude of the audio waveforms in a comp. This is great for driving expressions, which is the subject of Chapter 37.
Frankly, the Convert Audio to Keyframes function is a bit rudimentary; if you want more control, there are some great third-party alternatives: Sound Keys from Trapcode, and Beat Reactor included in Boris Continuum Complete.
Spotting Audio
Tall, spiky areas in the audio waveform - which indicate percussive events, or the onset of many sounds - tend to be good “hit points” for keyframes and edits. As the waveform takes up a lot of room in the Timeline panel and also can be slow to redraw depending on your zoom level, we often place layer markers on either the layer containing the audio, or on a separate dummy layer (such as a Null Object) adjacent to the audio layer:
You can add a layer marker at the current time to the selected layer by pressing * on the numeric keypad; hold Option on Mac (Alt on Windows) while pressing * to open a dialog to add a comment - or just double-click an already-placed marker. To add a composition marker, press F2 to make sure no layers are selected before pressing *.
An additional advantage is you can then drag the Current Time Indicator or a keyframe, and add Shift to cause it to snap to marker locations.
Mixing Audio
After Effects interpolates between Levels keyframes using the power-oriented decibel scale, not normal percentage. This results in fadedowns that can range from natural to slightly abrupt. Fade-ups sound very unnatural, seeming to linger at the lower volume, then suddenly rushing up to the higher volume. Given this problem, we take a two-step approach to mixing audio in After Effects:
Use the Stereo Mixer effect to animate fades and other temporary dips
or boosts in loudness.
Use the Levels parameter to then tweak the overall level of a track, to
balance it against other tracks or to avoid clipping.
This may seem like more work initially, but it will save your sanity later. For example, if you already keyframed fade-ups and fade-downs using Stereo Mixer, then later decided the entire track needed to be louder or softer (but wanted to keep the fades), you could just alter the layer’s Levels parameter and leave your keyframes alone.
More Natural Fades
Stereo Mixer gives linear fades rather than the exponential fades that the Levels parameter yields. As noted above, due to a quirk in the way Levels is animated in After Effects, the linear fades will actually sound more natural in many or most cases. To improve on this further, we ease into the second keyframe of a fade. In the figure below, we have the Stereo Mixer revealed in the Graph Editor; the Value graph shows the softened exponential-style fade shape that results:
By the way, as you might have noticed in the figure above we use expressions to tie Stereo Mixer’s Right Level to its Left Level; this means we only need to keyframe the Left value rather than both.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A quick review of what’s changed in recent versions
As Adobe and their various vendors have been offering a variety of discounts and incentives this year (as well as floating the idea that you’ll need to own at least CS5 to get discounted upgrade pricing on the next Creative Suite), we’re guessing a lot of After Effects users who have been getting by with older versions may be thinking about upgrading.
To help inform your potential upgrade decision and ease the subsequent transition, we thought it would be helpful to round up some resources - many free; some costing just a nominal sum - that explain what’s changed between versions. In addition to links to relevant articles and reviews, we’re including a selection of free videos from relevant courses on lynda.com (if you have trouble playing any of them, reload the page); if you don’t already have a subscription to watch the rest of the courses, click through this link to get a 7 day free pass to evaluate these courses and others as part of your potential new subscription.
We’re going to assume you have at least After Effects CS3, which was released in 2007. We’ll give an overview of major changes in CS4, CS5, and CS5.5 in each of these three pages.
After Effects CS4
Here is a quick video introduction to the big new features (at least, as far as we’re concerned) in After Effects CS4:
Overview of New Features in After Effects CS4
Major changes in this version included an updated user interface (darker and more compact in places) with QuickSearch dialogs for the Project and Timeline panels, a Composition Navigator and Mini-Flowchart to help navigate a hierarchy of nested compositions more quickly, three new effects (Cartoon, Bilateral Blur, and Turbulent Noise) along with the OpenGL-accelerated Pixel Blender toolkit for those who want to build their own effects, the bundling of Imaginer Systems’ powerful mocha 2.5D planar tracker, the ability to import Photoshop 3D Layers or export an After Effects composition to Adobe Flash, improved mobile media authoring support, the oft-requested ability to separate XYZ position parameters for more nuanced animation control, and many small improvements such as a new Wiggle Transform operator for Shape layers (click here for a video tutorial elsewhere on PVC). On the potential downside for Mac users, AE CS4 was the first version that would no longer run on PowerPC Macs.
For more comprehensive coverage of these features, check out:
A big under-the-hood feature in After Effects CS4 was support for “new” (actually, old but correct) pixel aspect ratios for non-square-pixel standard definition footage and compositions. This caused a great deal of consternation when introduced. To try to tamp down the fear, we created a quick overview video on the subject:
Perhaps one of the most maligned new features in CS4 was the addition of a Cartoon effect. Intended as a technology demonstration of what Pixel Bender could do, many users were already burned out on this look-of-the-day, plus the default settings did not yield very pleasing results. Here is a video tutorial that shows you how to go beyond the defaults and get some more interesting looks:
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 35 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
One of the most fun areas to explore in After Effects is using the Puppet tools. These provide a new way to warp layers, including shape and text layers created inside After Effects. Applications include creating character animation or just imparting fun movement to otherwise inanimate objects.
Previously, the best tool in After Effects for character animation was parenting (the subject of Chapter 17). Puppeting takes a different approach. Rather than working with a rigid bone analogy, puppeting is more akin to working with a sheet of rubber. You place pins in this sheet where you want sections to stay put or at points where you want to pull and deform the rubber. All the pixels in-between flex as needed to accommodate your movements. There are optional tools for setting stiffness as well as making sections of a layer pass in front of or behind others.
Chapter 35 of the Creating Motion Graphics provides a quick comparison between the parenting and puppeting approaches, and then goes on to demonstrate each of the Puppet tools as well as share several important tips and gotchas. A few of those are included here.
Special Rules
The Puppet tools differ from conventional effects and other parameters in After Effects in a few significant ways:
Unlike every other property in After Effects, keyframing defaults to on for puppet pins. As a result, it is important to set the Current Time Indicator to the point where you want to start a puppet animation before you add a puppet pin. Then when you move the Current Time Indicator and move the pin, a new keyframe will be created automatically, without needing to first enable keyframing.
Unlike Position motion paths, which appear only in the Composition panel, or effect point paths, which appear only in the Layer panel, Puppet Pin paths (such as the one at right) appear in both.
Puppeting works by creating a mesh based on the alpha channel of a single frame of your image, so the outline of the layer must not change over time. If it does (in other words, if it is a movie or animating precomp instead of a still image or other similar layer), the image will break up as it moves outside the lines defined when you first apply a Puppet Pin.
Following on from the last tip above, if you have a busy composition that makes it hard to see the Puppet Pin paths, double-click the layer to open its Layer panel and edit the path there. Remember to set the View popup to Puppet and enable the Render checkbox along the bottom right of the Layer panel to see the Puppet effect.
On the other hand, if your problem is a busy Timeline panel, press SS - Solo Selected - to reveal just the selected pin; twirl it open to reveal its associated parameters.
Overlapping Limbs
After you apply puppet pins to different limbs, you can drag a pin to cause a limb to overlap another portion of the original image. However, if you don’t do anything else, After Effects can be uncertain as to which warp mesh triangles are supposed to pass in front of or behind the others. For example, note the outlines on the forearm on the image at right: One line is in front of the thigh, while the other is behind.
The Overlap tool is used to define the front/back weighting of a portion of your layer. Each Overlap pin has its own In Front % (weighting), plus an Extent value that determines how far the pin’s influence reaches. Rather than place a large number of Overlap pins to define the area that is supposed to go in front or behind, it is far better to use as few Overlap pins as possible, and then increase their Extent as necessary. Fortunately, Overlap pins can be moved after initial placement to help center their extent region.
The In Front % assigned to an overlap extent is displayed visually by its color: the lighter it is, the more in front it is; the darker it is, the more behind. The two images below show a trio of overlap regions set up with their In Front shading visible (left), and what happens when you then drag the arm to cross over the thigh and shin (right):
Mesh Expansion Issues
The oft-ignored Mesh Expansion parameter defines how far beyond the alpha channel that the warp mesh triangles should extend. The reason you need to set this value above zero is that unless you have an infinite number of mesh triangles (which would take an infinite amount of time to render), rounded corners may be cut, and you could accidentally slice off part of your original model - such as the bunny’s fingertips at right.
However, the answer isn’t to just blindly increase the Mesh Expansion value. The more you do so, the higher the risk you run of joining together sections of your original layer which you would prefer remain separated so that you could animate them individually. Note in the figure at right how the arms are dangerously close to being stitched to the body, and that legs have been meshed together as one blob - meaning you would not be able to warp and therefore animate them separately.
Our starting point is to set Mesh Expansion to 1.0 and increase the Triangles value until the layer’s alpha is fully enclosed. If the resulting Triangle count is so high that the layer takes too long to render, we then try to balance off increased Mesh Expansion against decreased Triangle count.
When a layer contains multiple disconnected shapes such as the individual characters of a text layer, if you click inside a shape such as an individual character, you’ll be creating one mesh per shape. However, if you want to deform the entire layer as a unit, first draw a mask that encompasses all of the shapes. Then place a Puppet Deform Pin somewhere inside the mask, but not on one of the shapes. This will create a mesh that fills the mask.
If you want to deform just a portion of a layer rather than the whole thing, you can also use a mask to enclose an area smaller than an entire layer before you create a mesh: Change the Mask group popup to None so that it doesn’t create transparency, or delete the mask after you create the mesh.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: The Wiggle Expression
Chris and Trish Meyer | 08/02
This very simple expression can be used to add randomness to virtually any parameter.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has two or more movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This movie demonstrates how to use one of our favorite expressions: Wiggle.
The ninth Apprentice course focuses on what we feel is one of the most powerful yet seriously underused portions of After Effects: Expressions. With expression, you can easily hook up parameters to follow each other, allowing you to keyframe just one property and have a number of other properties or layers follow along - in turn making it much easier to create complex, coordinated animations that are easy to update in response to client whims.
Many artists shy away from expressions, believing they require knowledge of programming and math. It’s true that expressions are based on JavaScript - but in most cases, After Effects writes the necessary code for you. And it is true that a bit of math will help you get more out of expressions - but most of the time, we’re talking elementary school level math. In After Effects Apprentice, we focus on this class of easy but highly useful expressions, getting no more difficult than typing in words like “wiggle”, “loop” and “pingpong.”
The movie above from the AEA09 video course demonstrates how to use the wiggle expression, which allows you to add a user-adjustable degree of randomization and imperfection to your animations. Wiggle auto-animates without the need for additional keyframes, and randomizes per layer allowing you to easily create swarming-type animations.
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 34 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
The Roto Brush is a relatively new tool introduced in After Effects CS5 that helps automate creating a matte to separate a foreground from a background, such as isolating an actor from the room around him. To accomplish this, you draw brush strokes to teach After Effects the difference between the two. After Effects uses this information in conjunction with edge detection, motion tracking, and optical flow technologies to follow the changes in foreground and background over time.
Roto Brush is not perfect, but it’s a lot easier than hand drawing and animating precise mask shapes (plus you can use the Paint tools - the subject of the previous chapter - as well as masking to help clean up any problem areas that the automated Roto Brush may have misinterpreted). In this chapter in the Creating Motion Graphics book, we guide you through a preferred workflow for achieving good results with Roto Brush. Here are a few tips, hidden gems, and general advice from that chapter.
Painting Inside the Lines
We’ve seen many users start off using Roto Brush as they might use normal paint tools: They open their clip in the Layer panel, select the Roto Brush tool, set a very small brush size, and start carefully drawing along the edge of the object they wish to cut out. Not only is this unnecessarily fiddly, it runs the risk of accidentally including portions of the background as part of your foreground definition.
Instead, the preferred workflow is to start with a larger brush size (the Roto Brush may be interactively resized the same as the normal Brush tool, demonstrated in the previous Hidden Gems), and make a large stroke through the area you want to keep, as shown below left. This will give Roto Brush slightly better information to work with in defining the foreground, plus help save you from premature carpal tunnel syndrome! You may then optionally hold Option on Mac (Alt on Windows) and draw a broad stroke defining the background as shown below right; this is helpful if Roto Brush has difficulty finding the edge between foreground and background.
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Business Executives.
Once you’ve made these broad definitions, then you go down to a smaller brush size and paint in smaller details, such as the area around the man’s ear in the image at right.
When creating these foreground and background strokes, it is very important that you don’t accidentally cross over the edge between the foreground and background, as this will confuse Roto Brush’s internal engine that is trying to find these edges automatically based on the information you’ve given it. If you accidentally cross over with, say, a foreground stroke, don’t make a background stroke to correct it (that will just make things worse); undo and then re-draw your originally intended stroke.
In general, don’t worry about giving Roto Brush too much information; worry about giving it wrong information.
Propagate Before You Leap
The second most common mistake we see with Roto Brush is that after creating an initial “base” frame, users then immediately start stepping through adjacent frames and making corrective strokes. After potentially finding themselves having to make corrections on nearly every frame, many give up, declaring that Roto Brush doesn’t work.
In reality, though, creating the base frame only gives Roto Brush part of the information it needs - your next step is telling Roto Brush how to propagate this information outward from the base frame before you make additional corrective strokes. This is where the Propagation section of the Roto Brush effect (pictured at right) comes in: Step about 2-3 frames away from your base frame, and adjust these parameters to minimize any tracking errors you see. If nothing else, try out the different choices for the Edge Detection popup: The Favor Current Edges option puts an emphasis on edges found in the current frame in isolation, which may be more accurate if the image changes a lot from frame to frame. The Favor Predicted Edges option tries to predict where the edge should be based on the location of those edges in adjacent frames (which helps when the footage is noisy, or the foreground and background are very similar). Balanced considers both equally.
Focused RAM Preview
Often while working on a rotoscoping type of job, you don’t need to preview the entire clip to check your work; you’re usually focused on a particular set of frames around the Current Time Indicator. Well, there’s a app modifier key for that: Press Option (Alt) when initiating a RAM Preview, and just a few frames up to and including the current frame will cache and play. The number of frames defaults to 5; this may be changed in Preferences > Previews > Alternate RAM Preview.
This command behaves slightly differently under some circumstances with Roto Brush: If the current frame is within a backward-propagating Roto Brush span, and the Layer panel View menu is set to Roto Brush, then invoking this command while in the Layer panel will preview the specified number of frames including and after the current frame.
Deleting Strokes and Spans
If you have created multiple base frames and corresponding span, and are unhappy with one of them, right-click on it and select Remove Span – this deletes the span, but leaves the strokes. Note that if you have only one Base frame, Remove Span will be grayed out. To delete all strokes on the frame you are viewing in the Layer panel, press Command+A (Control+A) to select all, then press Delete. To delete a specific stroke, type PP to reveal the strokes in the Timeline.
Lock Segmentation
Roto Brush can take awhile to calculate - especially if you jump to a frame that’s some distance from a base frame, as it must track and re-calculate the Segmentation Boundary for every frame in-between.
Good news: You can click the Freeze button in the lower right corner of the Layer panel (shown here) to lock the Segmentation Boundary in place, save it with your project, and prevent time-consuming recalculations later. Just remember to unfreeze if you want to make a correction to the segmentation!
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 33 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
After Effects offers a basic set of non-destructive vector-based paint tools for painting on, cloning, and erasing portions of layers. In this chapter in CMG, we explore using these Paint tools, covering the fundamentals of each operation by running through a series of easy exercises. We also explore the various methods for animating strokes, and walk you step by step through automating a repair task using motion tracking and expressions. Along the way we also present tips for incorporating other effects with Paint, as well as saving custom brushes and clone presets.
Although AE’s Paint tools are nowhere near as evolved as Photoshop’s, they are still useful for repair-oriented tasks such as cloning and fixing alpha channels, and their animation capabilities are fun. Here we’d like to share a few shortcuts, gotchas, and ideas to help improve you experience with this section of the program.
Keyboard Shortcuts
The Paint tools - which are used exclusively in the Layer panel (not the normal Composition panel) - come with a whole host of special keyboard shortcuts. For example, normally you would press Page Up and Page Down to step forward or back by a single frame. However, those keys are on the right side of the keyboard, and most people are right-handed - meaning that they may already have a mouse or tablet stylus in their right hand while painting. Therefore, when the Paint tools are active, the 1 key above the normal section of the keyboard (not the numeric keypad) steps backward by a frame, and the 2 key steps forward. If you happen to have the Duration popup in the Paint panel (pictured here) set to Custom, the number to the right of the popup - which sets how long each brush stroke lasts, for rotoscope work - also controls how many frames you step by.
Some users are also unaware of the keyboard shortcuts for interactively resizing both the brush Size and the amount of feather, otherwise known as Hardness. Hold Command (Control) and drag in the Layer panel to set the Size, then without releasing the mouse button (or equivalent on your tablet’s stylus), release the Command (Control) key and scrub to set the size of a smaller circle inside your brush size circle. The difference between these two circles is the amount of feather for your brush.
Other keyboard shortcuts include Command+B on Mac (Control+B on Windows) to toggle between the Brush, Clone, and Erase tools, X to toggle between the Foreground and Background colors, and D to reset the Foreground and Background colors to black and white.
Even if you knew all those, here’s one we bet you didn’t know: If you are in the middle of painting a brush stroke, and decide a portion of it is wrong - perhaps you scribbled outside the lines - you can press Command+Shift (Control+Shift) to temporarily engage the Eraser tool in Erase Last Stroke Only mode. Brush over the portion of the stroke that was mistaken, release Command (Control), and continue on your merry way. Be aware, though, that this uses the Eraser tool’s settings - not the current Brush settings. Therefore, you might want to set up the Eraser tool to match your Brush tool before you start painting.
Tool Settings Gotcha
Expanding on that last tip above, there are three Paint tools - Brush, Clone, and Eraser - but only one set of Paint and Brush panels where you set up the size, hardness, spacing, and other parameters for these tools. As alluded to above, each tool remembers its settings separately: The Eraser may be a different size than the Brush, for example.
Therefore, get in the habit of selecting your desired tool, then setting its parameters. If you set up your desired parameters, then change tools, you may suddenly find you are painting with a different set of parameters than you assumed.
After the Fact
It’s easier than you might think to edit individual paint strokes after you’ve created them; you just need to know where to look. With the layer you’re painting on selected, press PP to reveal the Paint properties in the Timeline panel. Each stroke is represented as its own mini layer bar; you can even drag the end of these bars to change their durations. You can also keyframe most of the properties for each stroke, including its path. A common trick is to keyframe the Stroke Options > Start or End properties to animate a stroke on or off over time:
Just be warned that creating a new stroke while an existing brush stroke is selected (after editing one of the above parameters, for example) will replace that stroke! Get in the habit of pressing F2 to Deselect All before creating a new stroke.
Write On
Paint has a real-time “write on” mode, akin to Window > Motion Sketch for drawing motion paths in real time, or holding Command (Control) while dragging a pin with the Puppet tool (discussed two chapters from now).
To take advantage of this, set the Duration popup in the Paint panel to Write On, as shown at right. Press F2 to deselect any accidentally-selected strokes, and draw your new stroke with the pacing you desire. After you’re done and have released the mouse, press U to reveal all animated properties for the layer, and you’ll see that After Effects automatically added two End keyframes for your new Brush stroke mini-layer, ranging from 0% to 100%. If you were a slow painter or had a short comp duration, the second End keyframe may be located past the end of the comp. To gain access to the second End keyframe, you can either drag the stroke’s duration bar earlier in time, or temporarily extend the comp’s duration.
You do not have direct access to the speed changes you inflected during your stroke. However, you can still alter the keyframe interpolation for the Start or End keyframes for broad overall control, such as easing into or out of your overall movement.
Touching Up Alpha Channels
The Paint tool provides a handy way to touch up imperfect alpha channels that may result from keying, using the Roto Brush (the subject of the next chapter), and the such.
Since Paint (and Roto Brush, for that matter) is actually an effect applied to a layer, perform your keying or roto work first, then select the Brush tool. Set the Channels popup in the Paint panel to Alpha; the Foreground and Background colors will automatically change to black and white. Select white (the Background) to add to an alpha channel; select black to remove areas from it (no, you don’t need to use the Erase tool). Use X to quickly toggle back and forth between the two, and don’t forget to alter the Hardness (feather) of your brush to create soft-edged corrections, such as painting in motion blur.
In the figure at right, we have enabled the Alpha Overlay in the Layer panel to check the result of a Roto Brush application, and are using the Brush tool to remove a stray lock of hair.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: What Could Go Wrong?
Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/18
Just because there is more than way of doing something, doesn’t mean all choices are equal.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one takes a slightly different approach: Rather than just show the right way to do something, Trish shows you what can go wrong if you do things the wrong way.
The eighth Apprentice course focuses on Nesting and Precomposing: two different approaches to building a chain of compositions. One of the major strengths of After Effects is that you can place an entire composition into another, and have it treated as just another footage layer - with one major difference: It’s still “live” meaning you can make changes to it, and those changes will ripple through automatically to the final comp without having to re-render anything. If you don’t plan ahead and create an intelligent hierarchy from the start, After Effects has a function known as Precomposing where you can select one or more layers and send them upstream into a new composition of their own.
Despite the power of building a good composition hierarchy, many users actively avoid using more than one composition, feeling the added complexity isn’t worth the effort. This movie is for those people - you know who you are. In it, Trish shows several ways you can trip over yourself by relying on track mattes or parenting (or even thoughtlessly precomposing) to group together layers. Sometimes, it is eating your vegetables, understanding how After Effects works under the hood, and planning out what you’re going to do ahead of time, rather than just bulldozing ahead in the belief you can just brute-force After Effects to do what you want.
In the event you are new to (or uncomfortable with) the concept of building a hierarchy of compositions using nesting and precomposing, or are just curious about the course, here’s the introduction/overview:
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 32 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
One of our favorite recent additions to After Effects has been Shape layers: The ability to create vector-based artwork using the Pen tool or a variety of common starting points such as rectangles, ellipses, and polygons. A nice assortment of parameters and shape effects allow you to create quite complex results with relatively little effort. And as is the case with the rest of After Effects, virtually everything can be animated. Here are but a few tips of how to create and control shape layers.
Mask, or Shape? How About Masking a Shape?
The same tools can be used to create shape layers as well as mask out portions of any layer. So how does After Effects know which it is you want to do? By following these rules:
If no layer is selected, After Effects assumes you want to create a shape.
If a non-shape layer is selected, After Effects assumes you want to create a mask.
If a shape layer is selected, the Tool Creates pair of switches determine whether the Shape and Pen tools will create a mask on the shape layer, or a new shape path:
The After Effects Toolbar, highlighting the elements used in the creation and modification of shape layers.
Shaping as You Drag
While dragging out a parametric shape in the Composition panel, you can press the following keys before releasing the mouse to alter some of the shape paths:
If you have a mouse with a scroll wheel, it will have the same action as the up and down cursor keys. You can also change the outer radius of the Star by pressing Command on Mac (Control on Windows) when dragging to create a shape.
You can also reposition any parametric shape before releasing the mouse by holding the spacebar and dragging.
To reset a parametric shape to its default number of points, amount of rounding, and so forth, select the Shape Tool, then double-click it. This will create the requested shape at the full size of the composition, using the default parameters (a good trick by itself). You can then either resize this shape, or delete it and drag out a new one.
Note that these helpers can be used while drawing mask paths as well. The difference is, after you release the mouse, mask vertices are created that you must then edit manually; there are no interactive parametric controls over mask shapes.
Gradient Start and End Points
It happens to all of us: You create a gradient, and you see nice user interface handles in the Comp panel for the Start and End Points that you can grab and interactively move around:
You then go off and do something else, come back to your shape layer…and no gradient handles. The secret is that you must explicitly select the shape group that contains the gradient in the Timeline panel - just selecting the shape layer itself is not enough. So twirl open the shape layer, then Contents, then select the group (such as “Rectangle 1” as shown at right).
By the way, if you keep going and twirl open the Gradient Fill object itself, you’ll find numeric values for the Start and End Points that you can then scrub like any other parameter.
Dashed Lines
A real “hidden gem” is the ability to create dashed lines using the Stroke parameter for a shape layer. To access this feature, you have to Twirl open the Shape Layer, then the Contents, then the shape group, and then the Stroke operator. Then, click on the + symbol to the right of Dashes inside the Stroke operator: The line will become segmented in the Comp panel, and Dashes will twirl open in the Timeline panel revealing Dash and Offset parameters. Scrub the Dash value to change the length of the dashes as well as the spacing in-between.
Want independent control over the length of the dashes and the length of the spaces? Click the + symbol again: A Gap parameter will appear; scrub it to taste. Click + two more times, and now you have control over an alternating pattern of two pairs of dashes and gaps. (Click the – symbol if you got carried away and created too many segments!)
For your next trick, set the Line Cap popup to Rounded Cap: The dash segments will get longer as rounding is added to their ends. Set one Dash value to 0, and you will have alternating dashes and dots:
It’s possible to create custom dashed lines by diving into the Stroke parameters for a shape layer. We then added Layer Styles for the bevel and drop shadow. Map from Duruy’s History of the World published in 1898.
There are a couple of way to animate these lines. Animate the Stroke’s Offset to move the line along the path; you can also use it to just nudge where in the dashed pattern the line starts. To animate the entire line on or off, add and animate the Trim shape effect.
Shape Effect Order
One of the cool things about shape layers is the ability to apply multiple shape effects to quickly create complex imagery. However, keep in mind that the order of the effects has a large impact on the final results.
For example, if you add Twist after multiple shape paths, each shape will be twisted individually, as seen below at left. However, if you insert a Merge Paths effect between the shape paths and Twist (shown at right), then the group will be twisted as a whole (below right):
Similarly, it is quite common to pair together the Repeater - which creates multiple instances of the existing shape paths in a shape group, each offset in scale, position, rotation, and opacity - with the Wiggle Transform effect, which randomizes the scale, position, and rotation for all the shape paths. If you have one shape path in your shape group, place Wiggle Transform after that path, and then Repeater after Wiggle Transform, that single shape path will be wiggled, then duplicated - resulting in all of the repeated shapes wiggling in the same way:
However, if you place the Repeater after your single original shape path, and then place Wiggle Transform after the Repeater, every repeated instance of that one path will be wiggled independently, creating a very different animation:
Fortunately, it’s fairly easy to reorder shape operators and effects in the Timeline panel by dragging them up and down. Every now and then you might find you cannot move an item all the way down the list; you may have better luck dragging it outside the shape group, or cutting and pasting it back into the group.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 31 – mocha and mocha shape
Chris and Trish Meyer | 07/09
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 31 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
In this final chapter on motion tracking, we explore using the planer tracking system mocha from Imagineer Systems, which is bundled free with After Effects. After walking through the steps required to perform a typical corner pin track, we turn our attention to creating “shapes” (mattes defined using spline tools) that are linked to tracks, and bring the result into After Effects to use for targeted processing.
As mocha is a stand-along application with its own very different user interface, those unfamiliar with mocha can find it intimidating. However, we feel working through the simple exercises we created for you in CMG5 will get you a good distance down the road to feeling more comfortable with it. Imagineer also has a lot of tutorials available on their web site.
Editing Values
One of the differences in mocha’s user interface that seems to throw off many new users is the way you scrub values. Rather than dragging left and right, you drag in a circle as if turning a dial. If this drives you crazy, open Preferences > System and change the setting under UI Look and Feel from Rotational to Linear Controls. However, once you get used to it, it’s great to be able to dial in any value you need without dragging your mouse all the way across your desk.
Speaking of user interface, it’s worth noting that mocha’s user interface was overhauled for After Effects CS5.5 (the screen shots in CMG5 - and shown in this post - are from the CS5 version). The biggest change is that the View Controls - which used to appear along the right side of the mocha application window - are now accessed through a series of small icons near the top of the window. When in doubt, hover your cursor over the icons and read the tooltip that appears.
Project Information
A project in mocha is based around the clip you want to track or stabilize. mocha will fill out the Project information based on the information it can derive from the clip you choose. It is worth double-checking the frame rate (especially for image sequences) and pixel aspect ratio (we tend to disagree with mocha’s choices for many formats such as DV; go here and look under the subhead The Real PARs for the correct values for common video formats). Fortunately, you can usually change both after you initially create a project.
The one area you can’t change after the initial project setup dialog is how fields are separated. Become familiar with your footage before you bring a clip into mocha, and if appropriate separate fields at this stage. (If you’re not fluent with the concept of interlacing and separating fields, read up on the subject here.)
Excluding Regions
Spline shapes may be used to define areas you don’t want mocha to track, such as a person walking in front of a sign, a hand that moves in front of a data screen, et cetera. If you draw multiple splines on the same layer, the area where they overlap will be excluded. It is also common to draw exclusion splines on a separate layer above the layer you wish to track; disable the Tracking switch – the gear icon – for these exclusion layers. In either case, the splines may (and should) be animated to follow moving objects.
Perfecting a Track
After you’ve performed a track with mocha, save your project, and take a trip into the AdjustTrack module by selecting the AdjustTrack tab in the Parameters section along the bottom. You will see four red crosses at the corners of your Surface rectangle. Drag these to nearby, sharp reference areas in the underlying footage, such as the corners of the blue outline stroke in the original sign. mocha will use these points as references to help you adjust the track. Make sure View Controls > Zoom Window is visible, and a helpful magnified view will appear to show you in detail what your reference looks like:
Choose one of the corners, and slowly drag the time indicator while watching the Current Frame display, comparing it with the Master Frame:
If you detect drift (as shown in the figure above), stop and click the Auto button in the center of the AdjustTrack > Nudge section. This will create a keyframe in the timeline. If this does not properly re-center your reference point, you can use the Up/Right/Down/Left nudge buttons or manually drag the reference point as needed:
Variable Width Feathering
One of the big attractions to using mocha with the After Effects mocha shape plug-in - also included free in After Effects CS5 and CS5.5 - is the ability to define a different amount of edge feathering for every vertex of the shape path you draw.
Rather than being centered around a spline, the feather happens between inner and outer paths, which is defined by pairs of vertices. This is where you need to be very aware of which tool you have selected. The normal “pick” (selection) tool is fine for selecting points to operate on; the tool with the I at its base is for moving the inner points; the tool with an E at its base for moving the “edge” (outer) points, as shown below; the tool with a B at its base is for moving both inner and outer points together:
To set or offset the width for multiple points at once, select them (you can right-click a single point and choose an option to select all points), then use the Edge Properties panel (in the lower left corner of the figure above). Set an Edge Width value, then either click Set for all vertices to get this feather width, or Add to offset the current values of all selected vertex pairs. Note that after you’ve added this feather width, you can still select and move the inner or edge points individually or as a group.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 30 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
This is the second of three chapters in CMG5 focus on the tools available in After Effects CS5 for motion tracking and stabilization, including the bundled 3rd party tools mocha and mocha shape. As the built-in tracker and stabilizer share many of the same tools, in the previous chapter on Motion Stabilization we covered the concepts and user interface elements that were common to both of them. In this chapter, we discuss the additional features required to make one layer follow a feature in another layer.
TrackerViz
There are numerous scripts available to enhance the power of the After Effects tracker. One of the best is TrackerViz, which “provides a tool box for visualizing positional data. Initially it was designed for manipulating tracking data, like averaging multiple trackers to get a better one, or visualizing trackers as little solids for better control. Now the script offers many more features. (...) You can work with path, and can create a new tracker from path vertices, and reversely (sic) you can create a new path based on an analyzed track” (in other words, you can make a mask path follow the results of a track).
Adjusting the Tracking Regions Without Moving the Attach Point
With stabilization, the inverse of the tracking data is applied to the Anchor Point of the layer you tracked to make it appear stable. With tracking, the tracking data is usually applied to a second layer, hopefully making that layer move as if it were pinned to a feature in the layer you tracked. Key to this is the Attach Point - the crosshair that defaults to the center of the Tracking Regions - as this indicates where the Anchor Point of that second layer will be located.
In some instances, you might need to pin the second layer onto one particular feature in a clip - such as above the helmet of the racer shown here - but another feature in that shot (such as the racer’s face) might be better to track. Fortunately, the Attach Point can be moved independently of the Tracking Regions. Clicking and dragging somewhere inside the Feature Region but not on the Attach Point itself moves both regions as well as the Attach Point as one unit. Holding Option on Mac (Alt on Windows) and dragging inside the Feature Region moves both regions while leaving the Attach Point where you put it.
Because moving the regions can accidentally move the Attach Point (but not vice versa), get in the habit of setting your Tracking Region(s) first, then placing your Attach Point. If you realize you set up the Attach Point in the wrong place after you performed the track, you can fix it using the Motion Trackers > Tracker 1 > Track Point 1 > Attach Point Offset parameter. This offset is used only when you click Apply; it does not fix the motion path after you’ve already applied it.
Multipart Tracks
A feature that’s good to track might also not be present for an entire shot. In that case, you need to pick a feature, track it as long as it is viable, stop, back up to the last good tracked frame, then choose a new feature to track from there forward (until it too is no longer viable).
The secret to continuing a track with a new feature is to hold down the Option (Alt) key while adjusting the Track Point. As mentioned above, this will leave the Attach Point (the + symbol) in its current position. You will see the track motion path extending from the old track keyframes to your new position, as shown at right. Once you have set the new Feature and Search Regions, again click Analyze Forward in the Tracker panel.
Tweaking Tracks After Apply
There are a couple of ways to tweak the results after you’ve applied the tracker. Select the layer that has had the track applied to it and press U to reveal its keyframes. Click on Position to select all of the keyframes, and make sure the Current Time Indicator is parked on one of them (the keyframe navigator box in the Timeline panel will have a check mark in it). Use the cursor keys to nudge the layer directly in the Composition panel.
You can also offset the Anchor Point of the tracked layer to change its relationship to the master layer it follows, which is particularly useful if you need to change the center around which it scales and rotates.
Many advanced users prefer to initially apply the result of a track to a Null Object. You can later attach the real layer to the null using parenting, offsetting the layer as needed. Get in the habit of adding a Layer > New > Null Object to your comp before starting a track.
Effect Track
The Motion Tracker also allows you to have an Effect Point – such as the center of Distort > Bulge – follow a feature of the layer you are tracking. First apply the effect you want to the layer, then use the Tracker.
In the example here, we first applied a bulge effect to the peacock footage. We then tracked the peacock’s eyeball, placing the Attach Point at the center of the eye. After analyzing, we clicked on Edit Target, and selected Effect Point Control instead of Layer for the Apply Motion To option. We made sure that the target was set to Bulge/Bulge Center. Then all we had to do was click OK, then Apply, choosing both dimensions so that the bulge would follow the eye in both the X and Y directions.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Building a Comp Hierarchy Designed to Accommodate Changes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/29
If you have an object that’s being used more than once, sometimes it’s best to give it its own “precomp” to live in.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one tries to get some users over their hang-up about trying to keep all of their layers in one composition by showing how much easier it can be to accommodate client changes by strategically placing repeated elements in their own source composition.
The eighth Apprentice course focuses on Nesting and Precomposing: two different approaches to building a chain of compositions. One of the major strengths of After Effects is that you can place an entire composition into another, and have it treated as just another footage layer - with one major difference: It’s still “live” meaning you can make changes to it, and those changes will ripple through automatically to the final comp without having to re-render anything. The above movie demonstrates some of the advantages of exploiting this technique. While we’re at it, we throw in our usual bunch of tips and tricks, including how to use the Graph Editor to create a fun bubble-pop animation.
In the event you are new to (or uncomfortable with) the concept of building a hierarchy of compositions using nesting and precomposing, or are just curious about the course, here’s the introduction/overview:
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 29 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
The next three chapters in CMG5 focus on the tools available in After Effects CS5 for motion tracking and stabilization, including the bundled 3rd party tools mocha and mocha shape. As the built-in tracker and stabilizer share many of the same tools, in this first chapter on Motion Stabilization we also cover concepts that are common to both of them.
In general, a handy approach for many motion graphics and visual effects tasks is to stabilize a shot first, then process it further. For example, if you were wanting to mask a shot to focus the viewer on a particular area - perhaps for a picture in picture effect - but the subject is moving about the frame (or the camera wasn’t locked down), your life would be simplified considerably if you stabilized the shot first, and then masked it - perhaps in a second composition, or by using a track matte.
Another application is when you want to replace a “shakeycam” camera move with a smoother one: Stabilize, then keyframe your own movement, perhaps by attaching the stabilized layer to a null object and then animating the null (setting up a precomp hierarchy would also work). By the way, this second application is something that the new Warp Stabilizer excels at, as it can stabilize and smooth inside the same effect.
The User Interface
Working with the built-in tracker and stabilizer (accessed by opening Window > Tracker) requires understanding the special user interface elements it employs, including the Search and Feature Regions as well as the different states of the cursor.
Tracking and stabilization both take place in the Layer panel; you can double-click a layer in a composition to automatically open it in that panel. In After Effects CS5 and earlier, to invoke the stabilizer you click on the Stabilize Motion button in the Tracker panel, shown at right. (In After Effects CS5.5, clicking Stabilize Motion will open the new Warp Stabilizer; to use the traditional stabilizer, you need to set the Track Type popup to Stabilize and then click Track Motion.) If you have Position checked in the Tracker panel, this will add one Track Point with a pair of concentric boxes (as shown below left); if you have Rotation or Scale selected, this will add two Track Points.
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Winter Lifestyles.
The inner box of the Track Point is the Feature Region, and must be placed on a section of the image with good contrast in luminance or color to track (more on that in a moment). The outer box is the Search Region, which is how far After Effects will look for the features inside the Feature Region from frame to frame. The contents of the Search Region will automatically magnify the underlying image as you move the box around (as shown above right).
As you move the cursor around the boxes to different target areas, the cursor will change to reflect what you are about to move, as shown in the chart at right.
Essential Options
Exploring the Motion Tracker/Stabilizer Options dialog - shown at right - is the secret to getting a good stabilization or track in difficult situations. There is no one setting that works for all situations; you may need to experiment with different settings to see which gives you the best results.
For example, in the two images below, the track on the left would work better with Channel set to Luminance, as there is a large contrast between the snow on the car and the shadow underneath the window’s rain gutter. On the other hand, the track on the right would work better with Channel set to RGB, as the blue license plate and orange year tag have similar luminance, but near-opposite colors.
Broken Tracks
You do not have to track an entire clip with one Tracking Region definition. The best feature to track might change during the course of a shot. Or, you might not have tracked enough of the original shot, and need to add onto a track you’ve already performed.
If you need to pick up a track in the middle, the most important thing is to not accidentally move the Attach Point: Otherwise, your track or stabilization will have a discontinuous jump in the middle. In case you forget, first save your project to make it easy to revert back to the track’s previous state.
To pick up a track at a later point in time, move the time indicator to the last track keyframe you want to keep (above), press Option (Alt) and carefully move your regions without moving the Attach Point (the cursor will change to a white arrow), then continue your track. At right we’ve moved the time indicator back to the point where we picked up the track, showing the discontinuous jump in the track path - but note that the Attach Point remained close to the original track region (the tail light).
Motion Myths and Madness
As great as being able to track and stabilize objects and footage is, there are a number of gotchas and trade-offs:
Not all footage can be tracked or stabilized. Run tests (including trying different tools, like mocha or the new Warp Stabilizer in CS5.5) before promising the client you can do what they’re asking for.
When you stabilize an image, its useful image area will be reduced in size. This is because it is going to get cropped off at the edges as it wanders around. Plan on cropping and framing the layer in some way in the final composition. You can also scale it up, but be aware that this will soften the image. (This is another case where the new Warp Stabilizer - with its Synthesize Edges option - can come in handy.)
When you stabilize, the image will inevitably get softer. This is because you will be moving and rotating the image off its original, dead-on alignment, resulting in pixels being resampled as they are moved about.
Beware of sudden, quick camera moves, especially with long shutter times: The resulting shot will exhibit natural motion blur that varies with the amount of movement from frame to frame, which you can’t remove. Technology to remove motion blur has been demonstrated in the lab, but as of now is not yet in a reliable, commonly-available production tool.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Non-Uniform Scale Issues with Parenting
Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/21
A weird issue that can crop up while parenting - and how to fix it using null objects.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one explains an obscure bug visual anomaly that can appear when parenting one layer to another that has been scaled differently in the X and Y dimensions.
The seventh Apprentice course focuses on Parenting: A very handy way of grouping layers inside After Effects. Whereas both Parenting and Nesting (another way of grouping layers) were covered in the same chapter of the After Effects Apprentice book, for the video version we’re treating it in isolation, and expanding on it by adding an anthropomorphic example from one of our earlier books.
Although parenting mostly just works the way you might expect, there is one case that may trip you up: If the parent layer is scaled differently in the X and Y dimensions, any attached children will get skewed as they rotate. In this movie, we explain what’s going on underneath the hood, and then show how to work around this problem using null objects to act as a buffer between parent and child. (Indeed, null objects are very useful companions to parenting, and are discussed in both the book and the video course.)
In the event you are new to parenting, or are curious about the course, here’s the introduction/overview:
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 28 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Sometimes you need a captured movie to play back more quickly, more slowly, or backward, or to stop altogether. After Effects has options to Time Stretch a clip, which gives it a new constant speed, or Time Remap it, which allows the speed to change over time. Both of these options are covered in detail in Chapter 28. If you manipulate the frame rate and end up with staggered motion compared with the original clip, we also discuss Frame Blending which can help smooth out the result.
Time Stretch
To time stretch a layer, reveal the In/Out/Duration/Stretch columns in the Timeline panel (see figure below) or right-click on the top of any other column and select Stretch. Then click on the value for Stretch for the layer you want to change. This opens the Time Stretch dialog, which can also be accessed via the menu item Layer > Time > Time Stretch.
Reveal the In/Out/Duration/Stretch columns in the Timeline panel by clicking on the expand/collapse button in the lower left corner (circled in red). You can also scrub the Stretch value directly in the Timeline panel. Scrubbing the Duration value will result in Stretch also being changed. Tip: To quickly stretch the out point of the layer to the current time, Command+click on Mac (Control+click on Windows) the value for Out in the Out column.
You can enter a value for New Duration, or a value for Stretch Factor in % (higher numbers being slower). Notice that when you change the Duration, the Stretch Factor updates accordingly, and vice versa. The Hold In Place option sets the point in time around which the stretching occurs (the layer’s in point, current frame, or out point). Hold In Place defaults to Layer In-point, which is often the most useful.
Reverse Layer
If you need a selected movie to play from back to front, you can easily reverse the playback direction using the shortcut Command+Option+R (Control+Alt+R). After reversal, the layer bar will show red hash marks along its bottom. All keyframes applied to the layer will also be reversed. This shortcut will apply a time stretch value of negative 100%, while also moving the in and out points so that the frames play in the same position of the timeline as before. (If you don’t use the shortcut and manually time stretch by negative 100%, the layer will reverse itself around the in or out point or current frame, usually resulting in the layer moving in time.) To return the layer to regular playback, reverse the layer a second time using the same shortcut.
Once a layer is reversed, keyframes will appear to be off by one frame in the timeline: Because keyframes are normally attached to the beginning of a frame in time, after reversal they will now be attached to the end of a frame, which makes them appear to be one frame late. As a result, you may find it less confusing to reverse your footage in a precomp, and then do any editing or keyframing in the next comp up.
Stretch versus Conform
When you time stretch or reverse a layer, any keyframes already created are also time stretched because time stretch renders after masks, effects and transformations. However, the built-in frame rate of the movie can be overridden with the Conform Frame Rate setting (select movie in Project panel and File > Interpret Footage > Main). If you enter a lower or higher value, you’ll slow down or speed up the movie before it even reaches the comp, meaning your keyframes will be unaffected. For example, a 30 fps movie conformed to 10 fps will play every frame three times – equivalent to time stretching by 300%. (Note: Time Remapping also does its magic before Masks, Effects, and Transform keyframes.)
Time Remapping
Time Remapping allows you to keyframe which frame of your source plays at a specific time in your overall timeline. After Effects then stretches the clip between keyframes as necessary to make this happen, even playing the clip backwards if an earlier keyframe has a lower value (i.e. frame number in the source clip) than the one before it.
A natural result of this capability is that the stretch value can be different between keyframes, allowing you to create speed changes during the life of the clip. And because you’re working with regular keyframe interpolation types, you get the benefit of velocity curves for ramping speed up and down.
Enable Time Remapping by selecting the layer and invoking the menu item Layer > Time > Enable Time Remapping. It will then be the first item in a layer’s list of properties, because it renders before Masks, Effects, and Transform. You can then keyframe it just like any other property.
If you enable Show Graph Tool Tips (under the circled Choose Graph Type button), dragging a Time Remap keyframe in the Graph Editor allows you to set both the source frame number (the bottom value) and the overall composition time (the upper value). The Time Remap value to the left (circled in red) shows the source frame number at the current time in the comp.
Time remapping takes a little time to get your head wrapped around. Chapter 28 offers a number of tutorials for you to practice with, from playing time games with a movie of a dancer to more practical repairs such as fixing the timing of a shot to better suit the storyline, adding more handle to a short clip, time remapping a title animation, remapping a precomp of sequenced layers, remapping the results of the Exponential Scale keyframe assistant, using time remapping as a frame sequencer, and using time remap to create a step-time effect using hand-picked frames.
The Real Out Point
If you use the default Time Remap keyframes and apply velocity curves, you may not achieve a smooth entry into the last keyframe, particularly if you use a very long ease in. Because the second default keyframe is created one frame after the last real frame of the movie, the last real frame of the movie appears in the comp before the last keyframe is reached and is then repeated if you freeze the end of the movie.
For example, say you are working with a 15-second movie that starts at 00:00. The last frame is 14:29 and it appears at 14:29 in the timeline. But when you enable Time Remapping, the second default keyframe is created at 15:00 – one frame later. (This is a “feature” not a bug; the reason for placing the keyframe one frame after the end is detailed in the book if you’re curious.)
You may notice a problem only if you have a slow ease into this keyframe. Let’s say the image on the last frame is supposed to freeze at the big finale audio sound effect at 24:00. So you drag the second default keyframe from 15:00 to 24:00 and apply Easy Ease In so that the movie slows down and stops at 24:00. The problem is that the image from the last frame will appear in the comp at 23:09, well ahead of the audio sound effect at 24:00, and the timing will appear to be incorrect to the viewer.
We recommend you re-create the last keyframe whenever you apply Time Remapping. Now when you move the last keyframe later in time to slow it down, rounding errors are less likely to occur. The workaround is fairly simple:
Before you enable Time Remapping, select the layer and press O to jump to the real out point (at 14:29 in this case), select Layer > Enable Time Remapping. Press the ; (semicolon) key to zoom in closely in time so you can see some detail. See figure above.
Check the keyframe box (circled in red) to create a new keyframe for the real last frame, at time 14:29. Note: Don’t just drag the default keyframe at 15:00 back to 14:29.
Advance one frame and uncheck the original default keyframe created at 15:00 to remove it, or select it and press Delete. Press the ; key again to zoom out, and continue to work normally with Time Remapping.
Frame Blending
Any time footage is played back at speed other than its original pace, frames must be skipped or duplicated. This results in staggered motion. Frame blending offers some potential solutions to this problem. After Effects offers two types of frame blending:
Frame Mix, where adjacent frames are crossfaded to create new in-between frames. Even when footage is sped up, a small percentage of adjacent frames are blended into the result.
Pixel Motion, where After Effects attempts to track the motion of similar pixels from frame to frame, then creates new pixels where it guesses they should be at an intermediate point in time. This general technique is often referred to as optical flow.
To enable Frame Blending per layer, click in the row of boxes under the film icon in the Timeline panel’s Switches column. The backslash indicates Frame Mix mode; the forward slash is Pixel Motion mode. To see the results displayed in the comp, also turn on the Enable Frame Blending button (the larger film frame icon along the top of the panel).
You don’t have to time stretch to use frame blending. You can frame blend any movie layer that does not have an original frame for every composition frame. Although frame blending often improves the look of footage that has been time stretched or remapped, sometimes the visual artifacts it creates outweigh its benefits. You should always carefully preview the results before committing to a final render with frame blending.
In the chapter’s example project file, we’ve set up some side-by-side comparisons so you can see what Frame Mix, Pixel Motion, and the third-party solution RE:Vision Effects’ Twixtor look like when speeding up and slowing down the same shot (note that another alternative is Kronos from The Foundry). RAM Preview them at 100% Magnification so you can see that whereas a given solution may look good on some frames, it may look terrible on others.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Overview of Per-character 3D Text
Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/13
The difference between 2D text, and animating each character in 3D (well, 2.5D) space.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one explains the added control you get when you add the Per-character 3D characteristic to a text animation.
The sixth Apprentice course covers two of our favorite subjects that are core to much motion graphics work: type, and animating to music. Trish - who has a background as a magazine art director, as well as a deep love of typography and fonts - goes into great detail on how to create professional-looking type, as well as how to animate it using AE’s powerful but non-intuitive text animation engine.
One area that may cause some confusion is the concept of “3D” in After Effects. In reality, it’s 2.5D, in that After Effects layers have no thickness - they disappear when you turn them on edge. We call this look “postcards in space.” In earlier versions of After Effects, an entire text layer would be rendered as a single postcard, regardless of the animation taking place within that layer. More recently, Adobe added a “per-character” option where each character could break free of the surface of that imaginary postcard. Although the characters still had no thickness, the ability to rotate and offset those characters in all three dimensions added quite a large impact to the final result.
In this movie from our Type and Music course, Trish explains the basics of how to work in 3D space in After Effects (including how the Camera tools work) while demonstrating the difference between 2D and Per-character 3D - well, 2.5D - space.
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 27 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
After Effects offers a large variety of keying plug-ins that are designed to isolate a particular color or luminance range in an image, and convert those areas to transparency. In many cases, you can ignore most of them as relics from AE’s early days, and focus just on Keylight from The Foundry: a popular industrial-strength keyer bundled free with After Effects (even the trial version, as of CS5.5). That said, some of the other keyers have worthwhile specialized uses. And Chapter 27 in CMG5 also covers related topics such as edge blending and color correction. We’re going to focus primarily on those fringe issues here, and leave the in-depth tutorials to the book.
Keylight Manual
The Foundry has an excellent user guide for Keylight as well as real-world example files for you to work along with. However, they keep re-organizing their website, meaning this guide can no longer be found where we mentioned in the book. Here is the current direct link to the Keylight User Guide page. The tutorial assets can be found on this separate page. (Until they update their website again.)
This enhancement on a straight luminance keyer focuses on a single channel of information: alpha, overall luminance (good for black or white backgrounds), or just red, green, or blue (the background color you wish to remove). It gives you a visual reference of the luminance values active in this channel (the histogram), and a Transparency Control Bar underneath where you can decide what ranges of this color to key - a clever user interface tool.
In general, being able to “read” a histogram is a useful skill. In case you’re not yet comfortable with them, the height of the histogram graph gives a visual indication of how many pixels in the image share a particular luminance value, from the darkest at the left to the brightest at the right. The taller the graph, the broader an area of image that shares that luminance value.
Color Difference Key
Before Keylight and other high-end third-party keying plug-ins came along, the Color Difference Keyer (CDK for short) was the top dog among the options Adobe had to offer. Although it is complex to use and some would say outdated, a few experienced visual effects artists continue to insist that its “channel operations” approach is still the best way to build a keyer.
The basic premise of the CDK is that there are three mattes. Let’s say the keying color is green:
Partial A is the first matte, and it’s based on the pixels in the image that are most unlike the keying color (the result being the foreground). Magenta is the complementary color to green; red is the complementary color to blue (meaning the CDK may be better for bluescreen work).
Partial B is the second matte, based on the pixels that are most like the color being keyed (the green background for our example here).
By working on these A and B mattes, the resulting third matte – the alpha matte – becomes higher in contrast. You can also work on the alpha matte directly, because at the end of the day, this matte is the one used for determining which pixels are actually made transparent by the keyer.
If you feel like going old-school, dive into the book’s DVD and dig out Bonus Chapter 27B, which we updated in CMG5 to reflect After Effects CS5 as well as the more challenging high-def keying source material (generously provided by Hollywood Camera Work) that we supplied in this edition of the book.
Refine Matte
An alternative to using the Spill Suppressor, Matte Choker, Simple Choker, and related effects is to apply the new Refine Matte plug-in, introduced in After Effects CS5. Use your keying effect of choice just to create a hard-edged alpha channel (no feathering or color correction), and then apply Refine Matte to smooth, choke, and feather the edges, remove (“decontaminate”) the spill color, and create partial transparency where edges should be motion blurred from movement in the underlying shot. We’ve had some success with this approach on shots with lots of motion blur, which might otherwise be hard to key and color correct due to semitransparency in those blurred areas.
As the standalone Refine Matte effect was spun off from the similarly named section of the also-new-in-CS5 Roto Brush effect, we discuss its operation in greater detail in CMG5’s Chapter 34, which is dedicated to the Roto Brush.
Poor Man’s Spill Suppression
As an alternative to standalone spill suppression effects or similar sections built into some advanced keying plug-ins, we sometimes use normal color correction plug-ins to remove color spill, focusing on a specific color range (namely, that related to the colored backdrop which may be spilling onto your foreground).
For example, we often use the Hue/Saturation effect (pictured here): Pick a color from the Channel Control popup that is similar to your backdrop (such as green or cyan), then tweak the sliders underneath the Channel Range bar to fine-tune it to the color of the spill. Finally, desaturate or hue shift the spill as desired. A more powerful approach is to use the “secondary” color correction section of Color Finesse (also bundled free with non-trial versions of After Effects) to select a specific color range.
An alternative approach is to make the color spill work for you, pretending it’s actually a reflection or light emanating from your new background. When creating an abstract backdrop for keyed talking heads, we keep them in the same color range as the backdrop used on the set. That way, any spill, edge issues, reflections through glasses, etc. are more likely to be perceived as just the new background.
Examples of bluescreen (left) and greenscreen (right) backgrounds we created for Xerox Media West. We combined numerous stock library movies and stills with elements created in After Effects, Illustrator, and 3D programs to create something appropriate for each project.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: The “Cascade” Type Animation Recipe
Chris and Trish Meyer | 06/07
Getting multiple characters to transition smoothly requires diving deep into a text animator’s parameters.
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one is for those who have been trying to create their own type animations, but have trouble getting After Effects to animate more than one character at a time.
The sixth Apprentice course covers two of our favorite subjects that are core to much motion graphics work: type, and animating to music. Trish - who has a background as a magazine art director, as well as a deep love of typography and fonts - goes into great detail on how to create professional-looking type, as well as how to animate it using AE’s powerful but non-intuitive text animation engine.
A large part of that non-intuitive power lies underneath the Shape parameter for a Range Selector. The default is Square, which causes a single character to animation at a time as it transitions from “selected” (and therefore, offset from its original position, size, color, and shape) to deselected. To get multiple characters to transition together, the Shape popup needs to be changed to one of the Ramp choices. Additionally, for a cascade-style animation it is easier to animate the Range Selector’s Offset parameter rather than its Start and End. Trish explains this and more in the above movie. If you already gave some experience with animating type, her checklist will be enough to point you in the right direction; if you aren’t yet comfortable animating type in After Effects…well, that’s why we created this course! (As well as our books, too…)
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 26 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
If you’ve ever noticed that a video played back on television looks different when played back on a computer, wondered why your photos don’t look the way you remembered them, or mused how colors on video look different than they do on film, you’ve experienced issues related to color management. Photoshop users and print professionals take color management for granted as a necessity in their line of work; conversely, very few video professionals are even aware of the issue - and virtually no video content creation programs take it into account. After Effects is a shining exception.
For those new to the subject, and without a copy of CMG5, we gave a brief overview in this free article on Color Management in AE CS3 on Artbeats.com. Color Management has evolved since then; CMG5 covers it as of After Effects CS5 (there were no substantive changes in AE CS5.5). CMG5 also discuss the related subjects of working in a linear working space (also known as 1.0 gamma), floating point (including high dynamic range imagery), and Cineon (a logarithmic color space that is common for film work). Below are a few tips from this chapter:
Afraid of Change?
Color management defaults to being turned off every time you create a new project. If you are worried that enabling it means After Effects will change your colors through its rendering pipeline (even if its for the better), keep this in mind: If the Project Working Space (which all colors are translated to on input, and translated from on output), a source’s Input Profile, and the Output Module’s Output Profile are all the same - such as HDTV (Rec. 709) - then no color values will be changed on a source’s trip through After Effects.
Color management only kicks in when a source came from a different source, and therefore has a different profile that needs to be converted in order to be treated properly. It is also handy for translating video files to display proper color on a different device such as a web page (sRGB is a good choice then), or directly on a computer (in this case, change the Output Profile to match the color profile of the monitor attached to the target computer).
Changing the Default Profile
If a source file has a color profile embedded (as is the case with most digital photos), After Effects will default to using that profile when color management is enabled. If the source is video, then After Effects will look at the codec used (and occasionally, the image frame size) to determine what profile to employ - for example, if the source uses the DV25 codec, After Effects will assign the SDTV NTSC Y’CbCr profile to it in a Color Management-enabled project. If After Effects can’t guess, it will assign the sRGB profile by default. The currently-assigned profile is visible at the top of the Project panel when a footage item is selected (as pictured at right).
In some cases - such as when the profile is embedded, or when After Effects can’t guess - you have the option to change the profile used in the Interpret Footage dialog, under the Color Management tab. This will come in handy if you feel a footage item has been mis-tagged, or After Effects fell back on the default sRGB profile for an unusual codec or file format.
Pictured at right is the default list of profiles provided; this list will change depending on what else you’ve installed on that specific computer, This list can be considerably longer if you, say, have a variety of printer paper profiles loaded; you may need to do some looking to find the correct profile.
However, After Effects can be stubborn about video footage items, not allowing you to change its codec-based guesses. In this case, you will need to add the footage item to a composition, and then apply Effect > Utility > Color Profile Converter to the resulting layer.
In the example shown here, we captured the screen actions from a Mac and saved them using the H.264 codec for delivery as online video training. However, After Effects CS5 assumes anything that uses H.264 must be HDTV. Note in this figure how we used Color Profile Converter to change the incorrect HDTV profile AE assigned to the correct Apple RGB profile that reflects the display being viewed while the screen was captured.
Apply Color LUT (Look Up Table)
If an ICC profile does not currently exist for the file you wish to use, a back door way to convert it is to use the Utility > Apply Color LUT effect. This is the preferred way to handle ARRI Alexa footage, for example, using LUTs generated by the LUT Generator on the ARRI website (you must register - free - to access this page).
Color LUTs are also used to apply a creative color “look” developed on another system, as well as simulate particular film stocks and the such. In these cases, a good way to work is to place an adjustment layer above your final edit or composite, then add Effect > Utility > Apply Color LUT to the adjustment layer to make sure everyone gets the same treatment:
Synthetic Aperture’s Color Finesse - installed free along with the non-trial version of After Effects - has the ability to export Color LUTs. In this example, we exported one of their film simulation presets.
Linear Blending
You may be used to the typical computer representation where a 50% luminance value (such as RGB 127) results in an image that appears to be 50% gray on screen. However, this is not how our eyes work; they are much more sensitive to low lighting conditions. An example of this is the “18% gray card” that photographers may be familiar with: A paint chip that reflects only 18% of the light that hits it is perceived by our eyes to be 50% gray.
Therefore, After Effects offers an alternative way of working where internal calculations are “linearized” to match the way our eyes would perceive luminance levels. This approach is sometimes referred to as gamma 1.0 or linear light (the latter not to be confused with the blending mode of the same name). Visual effects artists prefer this mode as it more accurately reflects how our eyes would perceive the same scene - for example, bright areas of a motion-blurred object would be more prominent. It also has creative uses for the motion graphics artist:
When two images (top) are crossfaded normally, the result can appear a bit washed out during the middle of the fade (above left). When linear blending is enabled (above right), brighter areas - such as the sun, and the lights on the buildings - are more prominent during the fade, often creating a more interesting image (as well as more accurately replicating an “optical fade” performed with film). Footage courtesy Artbeats/Sky Effects and Establishments: Urban.
Highlight Compression
One of the main attractions of high dynamic range files - including HDR photos, HDR floating-point renders from 3D programs, Cineon film scans, and video from modern cameras such as the RED or ARRI Alexa saved in “log” (logarithmic) format - is that they contain detail in over-bright areas such as light sources. If your final destination does not support over-range color values (such as ordinary standard- or high-definition video), you can significantly improve the appearance of some shots by taming these hot spots so their hidden detail is visible in the normal color range.
When handling Cineon-like “log” files, the Cineon Converter effect includes a Highlight Rolloff parameter that attempts to bend these overbright areas back into the non-clipped visible realm, recovering some detail in the highlight without radically changing the midtones and shadows. For other floating point HDR files, you can apply Effect > Utility > HDR Highlight Compression to tame those highlights:
In the original HDR photos of a sunrise at top, the sun creates a wide hot spot in the clouds. By setting the After Effects project to 32bpc (floating point) color depth and applying HDR Highlight Compression, you can separate the sun from the glow surrounding it, while the remainder of the image remains mostly unchanged. Image courtesy HDR-VFX.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 25 – Presets and Variations
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/27
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 25 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
If you can copy and paste it, you can save it: That is the philosophy behind Animation Presets. Presets allow you to save static values or keyframed animations for text, masks, effects, layer styles, and transformations. These presets are saved to individual files on disk and presented in the Effects & Presets panel for later application to any layer in any project. You can later edit these values to suit their new application.
In addition to being able to create your own presets, Adobe provides hundreds of factory presets that include effects, text, and shapes. These include one of favorite presets, Behaviors; these allow you to animate layers without applying keyframes or expressions. This chapter also explores Brainstorm, which allows you to select any combination of effects, keyframes, and parameters and have After Effects automatically generate variations for you to check out. Below are a few tips from this chapter:
Saving a Preset
Perhaps the easiest way to learn about Animation Presets is to use them. Open an After Effects project that includes some interesting animated layers that you’d like to apply the same animation to another layer.
First select some properties (masks, effects, transformation, layer styles, and so on) in the Timeline. When you select a property name, all of its keyframes will be selected. By selecting the name of an effect, you’ll make sure you capture all of its parameters as well as any keyframes or expressions that have been applied. Remember you can only save attributes that you can copy and paste, so layer-based switches and popups - such blend modes or the status of the motion blur switch - cannot be included in your selection.
In the figure above, we revealed all modified properties by typing UU, then Shift+selected their names in the Timeline panel. Selecting an effect’s name will grab all of its parameters and keyframes, even though they are not highlighted.
There are several ways to save an Animation Preset; the following methods all have the same result - so decide which is the easiest for you to learn and remember. Most of these require the Window > Effects & Presets panel to be open and forward.
Method 1: Select the menu item Animation > Save Animation Preset.
Method 2: Drag one of your selected items to the Effects & Presets panel and release the mouse.
Method 3: In the Effects & Presets panel, click on the page icon in its lower right corner.
Method 4: In the Effects & Presets panel, click on the arrow in its upper right corner, and select Save Animation Preset from the Options menu that appears.
In all cases, you will be presented with a Save Animation Preset dialog. Enter a name that describes the animation, such as “blur scale fade in.ffx” for your preset, then click Save. (The file extension .ffx should be used for all presets. This extension will not appear in the Effects & Presets panel.) Try to use words in the name of your preset that you can be useful to search on later, such as “blur” or “tint” and so on.
In the Effects & Presets panel’s Options menu, make sure Show Animation Presets is enabled. Then twirl open the folder * Animation Presets, then twirl open the subfolder in which you saved them (see Where to Save Presets below). You should see your preset inside this subfolder.
Where to Save Presets
You can save a preset anywhere; the default is in the Adobe > After Effects CS5 > User Presets folder After Effects creates inside your main user documents folder. This makes your presets easy to find should you want to exchange them with others; the downside is that they don’t appear in Adobe Bridge alongside the Adobe-supplied presets. Personally, we suggest you save them inside the Adobe folder, which appears inside User Presets – this takes you into the Adobe After Effects CS5 > Presets folder.
You can create your own subfolders to keep your presets organized. Saving somewhere inside User Presets (or Adobe After Effects CS5 > Presets) will result in your new presets appearing in the * Animation Presets folder in the Effects and Presets panel. If you save them anywhere else, they won’t appear in this panel, although you can still open them from the Animation menu.
Applying a Preset
To apply your preset to another layer, select it and type I to locate to its in point. This is important, because when you apply a preset that has keyframes, the timing of the keyframes is relative to the placement of the time indicator when you apply the preset.
Also, make sure you deselect any masks and effects you wish to leave unaffected! To give an example, if you have an effect selected, and the the preset you’re about to apply uses the same effect, the preset will replace the selected effect rather than add another instance of the effect. Shift+F2 deselects all masks, keyframes, and effects without deselecting the layer itself.
Just as there is more than one way to save a preset, there is more than one way to apply a preset. These include:
Method 1: Select the menu item Animation > Apply Animation Preset. This will open a file dialog where you can locate the preset you want. This is the approach to use if the preset you need is not saved in the Presets folder (perhaps on a shared file server, for example).
Method 2: Select the menu item Animation > Recent Animation Presets, and choose from this list any one of the last several presets you’ve created or applied.
Method 3: Type Command+Option+Shift+F (Control+Alt+Shift+F). This will apply the last Animation Preset you saved.
Method 4: In the Effects & Presets panel, double-click on the name of the preset (see figure).
Method 5: Drag the preset from the Effects & Presets panel to the layer you want it applied to.
Yes, you could have just copied and pasted these parameters. The advantage of going the preset route is that you can easily apply this same set of parameters anytime in the future, in any composition or project, without the need to hunt down the original source layer.
If you don’t like a preset, it’s best to Undo rather than try to remove the masks, effects and other attributes you believe were applied - it’s too easy to miss something!
Note that unlike “styles” or “instances” in other applications, resaving an Animation Preset will not dynamically update layers that you had previously applied the preset to. If you need to create instances, check out the script ft-Effect Instance by Francois Tarlier, available from aescripts.com.
Expression Containers
Presets also remember Expressions - pieces of JavaScript code that tie parameters together - applied to the properties you copy, which makes presets a great tool for saving and reusing expressions. Expressions are covered in user-friendly depth in Chapter 37; the biggest gotcha here is if you save a preset with an expression that refers to another effect, layer, or comp by name, After Effects will complain when you apply this preset if it cannot find the same name it is looking for. You can usually just relink the expression to make After Effects happy again. When creating expressions, it helps to refer to generic layer names such as “Camera 1” or “Solid 1”.
Applying Presets from Bridge
In addition to being able to save and apply your own presets, After Effects ships with hundreds of ready-made presets for you to employ. Below we’ll use Adobe Bridge to explore and apply some of the hundreds of Text Animation Presets. Start by creating some text that you’d like to animate using the After Effects Type tool (if you don’t select a text layer, After Effects will create some dummy text for you).
Next, select the text layer, then choose Browse Presets from either the Animation or Effects & Presets Options menu. This opens Adobe Bridge, placing you in the Presets folder. Double-click the Text subfolder, and you will see another group of subfolders showing the many different categories of text presets. Click once on a preset to preview the animation in Bridge:
In addition to the presets that are bundled with After Effects (some of which are shown above), Adobe has posted over 300 additional Shape and 3D Text presets for After Effects on its Exchange website. Visit share.studio.adobe.com and go to the After Effects section to see all of what’s available.
When you find a preset you like, double-click it. You will be returned to After Effects and this preset will be applied to your text layer. RAM Preview. To figure out how it was created, type U to see which parameters are animated, or UU to check which parameters have been changed from their default values.
If you don’t like the animation, be sure to Undo to remove the preset and return to the original text, don’t just remove Animator 1 as you don’t know what else the preset changed! Press Home to return to 00:00 (remember: presets apply their keyframes starting at the current time). Return to Bridge and double-click a different one.
Since Animation Presets create normal keyframes, you can customize them any way you like by editing those keyframes - for example, by moving them closer together to speed up the animation, changing their values, adding eases (Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease), or deleting keyframes or effects that aren’t needed or desired.
Experiment with applying more Text Animation Presets. Remember that presets add to properties and keyframes already applied; applying a preset does not delete one you applied before. For instance, try applying a preset from the Animate In folder at time 00:00, then later in time apply a preset from the Animate Out folder.
Behaviors
One of our favorite categories of presets is Behaviors. These use a combination of effects and expressions to automatically animate a layer without the need for keyframes – instead, you set general values such as “move the layer in this direction at this speed.” Here’s a few of our favorites, as well as suggestions on how to preview them.
Create a comp with a few layers in it, and select a layer. In the Effects & Presets panel, twirl open Animation Presets > Presets, and twirl open Behaviors. Double-click Drift Over Time to apply it. RAM Preview; your layer will slowly drift. The Drift Over Time behavior is handy to apply to text layers so that the title doesn’t have to stop moving after it’s animated on.
The Effect Controls panel should have opened when you applied this preset (if not, press F3); at the top are the custom controls. The first effect contains the custom controls; the Transform effect does the leavy lifting thanks to expressions under the hood.
Some behaviors can be combined. For example, double-click Behaviors > Fade In+Out – frames to add it to your currently-selected layer. RAM Preview; the layer will fade in and out at the ends of the layer without having to set any opacity keyframes. You can edit the Fade In and Fade Out Durations in the Effect Controls panel.
On a separate layer, apply Behaviors > Wigglerama. RAM Preview; now your layer wiggles its position, scale and rotation randomly, without having to write your own wiggle expression (which is discussed in detail in Chapter 37).
Note:The Wiggle and Scale Bounce Behavior animation presets do not get along with any layer that is continuously rasterized, including all text and shape layers. If you enable the Continuous Rasterization switch for a layer that has one of these Behaviors attached, they will transform around the upper left corner instead of their anchor point.
Also try out the Autoscroll behaviors; RAM Preview to see an endless succession of your layer repeated across your screen. The advantage of using Autoscroll instead of the Offset effect is that the speed can be set in pixels per second, and because the behavior uses Motion Tile it can also use the layer’s motion blur setting:
In addition to the Fade In+Out behaviors where you can define the fade times in frames or seconds, the Fade In and Fade Out Over Layer Below behaviors automatically adjust their fade times based on how much a layer overlaps the next one in the timeline.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 24 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
A compound effect is one that looks at a second layer to decide exactly how to treat the layer it is applied to. Examples of these vary from Compound Blur and its brethren, which can selectively blur one layer based on the varying luminance values of another, to Texturize, which is great for simulating those embossed station identity bugs most networks use these days, among other things.
Before we get into hidden gems on using Compound Effects, first we need to understand what is going on underneath the hood:
Rendering Order
When an effect is applied to the movie, and that effect is told to refer to a second “map” layer for data, it’s capable of seeing the modifying layer only at its “source” – before any masks, effects, or transformations have been applied to it. In other words, it uses the modifying layer as it would appear in its own Layer panel with View set to None – not in the Comp panel. Hence, no scaling or positioning of the logo layer is taken into account by the compound effect:
When a compound effect, such as Texturize, is applied to a layer, the effect looks at just the source of the modifying layer and ignores any masks, effects, or transformations that may be applied to the “map” layer.
The trick, then, is to present the effect module with a modifying layer that’s the same size (or at least the same aspect ratio) as the layer being effected, and with any attributes already applied to the modifying layer. You do that by preparing the map in a precomp that is the same size as the layer being effected. You can position, scale, and otherwise transform – as well as animate, mask and effect – the modifying source in this precomp, and the result will then be applied faithfully by the compound effect in the main comp:
Apply any transformations (for example, scale and position the logo bug) to the modifying layer in its own precomp, and nest this into the comp with the layer that gets the compound effect (Texturize in this example). Now the effect will take the transformations applied to the bug into account when it processes.
If you’re having problems getting a compound effect to work as you expect, here is a summary of the most common reasons compound effects don’t seem to work initially:
The modifier layer has been left at None, or it defaults to using itself; set the Layer popup to the desired layer.
The modifier or map layer is not the same size as the layer the effect is being applied to, so the aspect ratio is being distorted. Solution: Place the map in a precomp the same size as the layer to be effected, and use this precomp in place of the original map layer in the Effect Controls.
The modifier layer has effects or animation that is being ignored by the compound effect. Remember that the compound effect takes the map at its source before mask, effects and transform. Precompose the map layer, being sure to check the Move All Attributes option.
The precomp has a white background color, but the precomp’s background color is always considered as “black” (zero alpha) by a compound effect. If this is causing a problem, use a white Solid or Shape layer as your background in the precomp, rather than relying on the Background Color.
A Better Compound Blur
Compound Blur can look a bit smudged and boxy. Far nicer-looking compound blurs include the SmoothKit > Gaussian effect from RE:Vision Effects, as well as Adobe’s own Lens Blur (After Effects CS5) or Camera Lens Blur (After Effects CS5.5). RE:Vision Gaussian is smoother; Lens Blur is more realistic. Note that you may need to use double or more the Blur Amount in Lens Blur than you did in Compound Blur for the same result.
Compound Blur (top) is a bit smooshy; Camera Lens Blur (above) yields a better simulation of an actual camera, providing a “squinty” sort of look.
(If you want to learn more about the new Camera Lens Blur effect aside from its compound blur applications, a movie on it was included as part of our After Effects CS.5 review - it’s the last video on this page.)
Edge Artifacts
The Displacement Map effect can cause pixels to be pulled away from the edges of the original layer, potentially exposing other layers or the comp’s Background Color underneath, as seen below. Enabling Wrap Pixels Around can help, but may still result in unsightly edge artifacts. If you can’t rely on the edges being cropped off by a monitor’s bezel, you might want to scale up the result slightly to let the composition boundaries crop off the undesired bits.
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Establishments - Urban
Smoother is Often Better
A map layer that has sharp, high-contrast transitions can sometimes cause aliasing-type artifacts as a compound effect switches its processing suddenly at those transitions. It is often helpful to add a slight blur to the map layer - in a precomp, of course (as compound effects don’t look at effects applied to map layers in the same comp).
In addition to the tips in Chapter 24 of CMG5, we also wrote an article for Artbeats.com on using the Displacement Map effect to make text appear to be projected onto the contours present in a video clip.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Managing Audio Levels
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/17
Audio doesn’t work like other parameters…
As we mentioned earlier, we’ve been busy this year creating an extensive, multi-course video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one is for those new to handling audio, and wondering how to best control its level.
The sixth Apprentice course covers two of our favorite subjects that are core to much motion graphics work: type, and animating to music. Trish - who has a background as a magazine art director, as well as a deep love of typography and fonts - goes into great detail on how to create professional-looking type, as well as how to animate it using AE’s powerful but non-intuitive text animation engine. During an intermission, Chris covers how to handle audio in After Effects, including spotting hit points in a soundtrack to animate to. In the movie above, Chris explains how Levels in After Effects differs from other parameters such as Scale or Opacity, plus also shares his preferred strategy for managing audio levels.
Towards the end of the above movie, Chris mentions that he doesn’t use many of AE’s audio effects beyond Stereo Mixer or Bass & Treble. For more rigorous work, he prefers to go into a dedicated audio program such as Adobe’s Audition - which is now bundled with Creative Suite 5.5. In our review of After Effects CS5.5, Chris demonstrated common workflows between After Effects and Audition. These movies are part of our After Effects CS5.5 New Creative Techniques course, which is now available to lynda.com subscribers (at higher resolution) as well as through AdobeTV (free to all).
The content contained in After Effects Apprentice, New Creative Techniques, and the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A handful of videos on some general concepts and specific effects.
Last week’s installment of Hidden Gems on effects was so well received, we decided to break out of our normal one-chapter-a-week rhythm this week, and instead provide some more resources on using effects.
A couple of years ago, we started a course on lynda.com dedicated to sharing insights into some of our favorite effects, also based on Bonus Chapter 23 from our book Creating Motion Graphics. After adding 46 movies on general concepts plus specific effects, we had to set the concept aside; we hope to revisit some time in the future. In the meantime, several of those movies are available for free, plus we have a couple that never made it up on lynda.com. We’d like to share those with you here.
(If you get an “access denied” error trying to play the movies below, trying re-loading this page.)
Using the Effects & Presets Panel
In case you’re not already using the Effects & Presets panel, here’s a quick overview on using this handy dialog to search for effects (rather than try to remember which Effect menu category they’re hiding under):
Compound Effects
An overview of important things to keep in mind when using Compound Effects (where an effect refers to another layer for parameters such as displacement maps):
Calculations
This Swiss Army Knife effect allows you to combine layers in multiple ways, by borrowing select properties of one layer to treat another. (As it is a compound effect, watching the above movie first is not a bad idea…)
Auto Color vs. Auto Levels
Auto Levels scales each color channel individually to cover its maximum range. This can result in color shifts, for better or worse. Let’s compare it to the more restrained Auto Color effect:
Bilateral Blur
This relatively new blur in After Effects (introduced in CS4) allows you to blur color information while keeping luminance (and therefore, details) sharp, providing an alternative to Smart Blur. However, its defaults are not optimal…
Cartoon Effect
This effect was also introduced in CS4 along with Bilateral Blur. Here’s a free movie on it from our After Effects CS4 New Creative Techniques course:
(Again, if you get an “access denied” error trying to play the movies below, trying re-loading this web page.)
Photo Filter and Shadow/Highlight
The next two effect movies never made it up on lynda.com. Click here to view them (we shared Photo Filter as part of Chapter 15’s Hidden Gems; Shadow/Highlight hasn’t seen the light of day until now).
Again, a few dozen of these movies are online in our Insight Into Effects course on lynda.com. Let us know if you find these worthwhile; if so, we’ll try to pick up the series again in the future (otherwise, we have a list of other topics we can’t want to cover!).
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week (this week being an obvious exception). These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Track Matte Render Order Tips
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/10
Workarounds for when effects aren’t working the way you expect with Track Mattes.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one demonstrates a common problem encoutered when trying to combine Track Mattes with effects, and provides a few different ways to get the desired result.
The fifth Apprentice course focuses on ways to create transparency for layers, either to draw attention to a specific area of the frame or to reveal layers underneath. The primary focus of the course is masking - including different ways to create, combine, and animate masks - plus the lesser-known Track Matte feature.
Ever use a logo or text as a Track Matte for a fill layer - then couldn’t figure out how to add a drop shadow to the combination? Then the movie above is for you. We start by reviewing how Track Mattes work, then dive into the difference between applying effects to the matte versus the “fill” layer, including demonstrating the most common points of confusion. We then explore a few ways to re-work the order in which the steps are calculated, using nested compositions and Adjustment Layers.
This is an example of one of the “sidebars” we often add to the After Effects Apprentice video courses that dives into subjects in more detail than a normal linear course might allow. This course also includes a nice selection of “Quizzler” challenges and Idea Corner extensions.
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 23 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
One of the strengths of After Effects is that it can be expanded through plug-ins. After Effects itself ships with over 200 effect plug-ins from Adobe and third parties including Cycore, Digieffects, Synthetic Aperture, and The Foundry; numerous third-party plug-ins are also available for purchase. We’ll assume you know how to apply an effect to a layer using either the Effect menu or the Effects & Presets panel. If you need instructions, please consult Help > After Effects Help.
The Bonus Chapters folder on the DVD-ROM that comes with CMG5 contains a large PDF file (65 pages) plus an After Effects project that goes over many of our favorite effect groups by categories, and tells you how we might use them. Below are just a few of our favorites:
Turbulent Displace
Effect > Distort > Turbulent Displace is one of our favorite effects: It provides an easy way to distort a layer such as text in a cool, liquid fashion. The secret is to animate the Evolution parameter. To make your distortion loop seamlessly, twirl open Evolution Options, enable Cycle Evolution, and set Cycle to the number of revolutions of Evolution you want to make a complete loop. Try different settings for Displacement, Size, Amount, and Complexity.
Distort >Turbulent Displace creates fluid, easy-to-animate, loopable distortions of the layer it is applied to. The left image is the original; the image at right is after applying Turbulent Displace.
Distressing Edges
Effect > Stylize > Roughen Edges (demonstrated at right) is another one of our favorites: It can take the outline of a layer or alpha channel and chew it up with a number of different patterns. You have extensive control over the size and detail of the decay introduced; some options also have a secondary color that adds a selective tint around the edges. For a softer edge, try adding a little Fast Blur before Roughen Edges.
The Photocopy options under Edge Type leave the edges intact but hollow out the insides of your shapes. Less obvious is the ability to animate these edges via the Evolution parameter. To make your animation loop, twirl down the Evolution Options in the Effect Controls panel, enable Cycle Evolution, and set Cycle to the number of Rotations in the Evolution parameter you wish to add up to one loop.
Roughen Edges isn’t your only choice for distressing edges. Beyond their obvious keying-related applications, the Matte effects have some creative uses, such as “eroding” the edges of text for a grungier feel or providing an unusual way to wipe an object on- or offscreen.
The bottom is normal Courier text; the top shows it eroded with Matte > Simple Choker. The Choke Matte value can be animated to erode the text away to black.
Motion Tile
Effect > Stylize > Motion Tile allows you to change the size (through its Output Width and Height) and scale (using Tile Width and Height) of the layer it is applied to, repeating the original image to fill the layer’s new boundaries. The resulting rows or columns can be offset using Phase, and the result can be animated using Tile Center. Believe it or not, it is the only one of the tiling plug-ins that renders motion blur – hence its name.
Stylize > Motion Tile can take an image (a), scale and tile it, then move the result with motion blur (b).
The other tiling plug-ins included with After Effects include:
Distort > Offset: offsets the image inside the layer’s boundaries, akin to the Photoshop effect of the same name;
Distort > CC Tiler: tiles an image as needed to fill out the boundaries of the original layer by Scaling down the image;
Stylize > CC RepeTile: expands the size of the layer it is applied to then replicates the original image to fill out the new layer boundaries; and
Stylize > CC Kaleida: repeats the underlying image with a variety of kaleidoscopic patterns.
Card Wipe
Effect > Transition > Card Wipe is related to Simulation > Card Dance in that it can break an image into multiple squares or rectangles, then animate those rectangles in response to a gradient map. Rather than offset the cards in space as Card Dance does, Card Wipe causes these rectangles to flip over to reveal a second layer (if you don’t define a second layer, they will flip around to transparency, revealing whatever layer is behind).
You have considerable control – and options for randomization – in determining how these rectangles (“cards”) flip. One trick is using this effect to reveal or conceal text elements: The rectangular pieces lend a nice, high-tech, “binary” feel. Card Wipe is a 3D effect, and can be set to react to the comp’s camera.
Transition > Card Wipe can provide an interesting way to reveal text.
Grow Bounds
Several effects – primarily those in the Distort category, but also Generate > Stroke and others – attempt to render images that are larger than the original underlying layer size. If the result is clipped (part of the new image is missing), apply Utility > Grow Bounds, drag it to the very top of the effect stack, and increase its Pixels value until the entire image is just visible.
Some effects (such as CC Bend It show here) can result in an image being clipped (a). Placing Grow Bounds first and increasing its Pixels value will increase the apparent size of the underlying layer, solving clipping problems (b).
Note: Grow Bounds should be placed before all other effects, but if you are using it with the Tint effect in CS5, it needs to render after Tint. This long-standing bug has not been fixed; we suspect it’s ingrown at this point. Also, if Grow Bounds appears not to be working when you first apply it, adjust any parameter in an effect that follows to cause the cache to update. Worst case, close and reopen the project.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Using Masks to Create Vignettes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 05/03
This “shortcoming” exhibited by some lens and films can help focus the viewer’s attention and add class to a composition.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. Each course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re re-posting those videos here on PVC to make sure you don’t miss them. This one demonstrates how to masks to quickly create vignettes.
The fifth Apprentice course focuses on ways to create transparency for layers, either to draw attention to a specific area of the frame or to reveal layers underneath. The primary focus of the course is masking, including different ways to create, combine, and animate masks. We also cover track mattes, where properties of one layer are used to create transparency for another. This course in particular includes a nice selection of Quizzlers, Idea Corners, and Sidebars as well.
In the movie above, we show how to mask a solid to create a vignette for the layer or layers underneath. Along the way, we show a nice shortcut to create a full-frame mask, plus how to balance Mask Feather and Mask Expansion off of each other. (If this movie piques your interest, we created an entire course on lynda.com on how to create vignettes using masks, effects, paint strokes, and even 3D lights.)
As long as we’re borrowing your eyeballs, we should also mention that our course on our favorite new features in After Effects CS5.5 also just went live on lynda.com - this is the same material as you might have already seen on AdobeTV, but with slightly higher resolution (and in some cases, a higher frame rate as well). Enjoy!
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.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 22 – Applying and Using Effects
Chris and Trish Meyer | 04/29
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 22 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
One of the richest areas for exploration in After Effects is its “effects” side. The variety of effects supplied with After Effects ranges from the extremely utilitarian to the extremely wild, each with anywhere from one to over 100 parameters you can adjust. In Chapter 22 of CMG, we start with an overview of how to apply and edit effects. We then move onto some more sophisticated tricks using effects, such as animating their Effect Point, using adjustment layers, exploiting mask paths, and adding blending modes. We end with Layer Styles: a powerful alternative to common effects such as bevels, glows and shadows, borrowed from Photoshop.
We’ll assume you know how to apply an effect to a layer using either the Effect menu or the Effects & Presets panel. If you need instructions, please consult Help > After Effects Help. Below are a few tips that may have escaped you:
Effect Points
Several effects have specific points that they are centered around or that otherwise define the area the effect takes place over or between. Examples include the center of a lens flare or particle system effect, the center of a twirl, or the two points that define a lightning bolt. These are known as effect points and are represented by a crosshair icon in the Effect Controls panel.
Effect Points are identified by a crosshair icon (circled in red) in the Effect Controls panel (left). They can be moved either by directly grabbing this icon in the Comp panel, or by clicking on this icon and then “placing” the crosshair center in the Comp panel (below left). Note that the effect point’s parameter has a value on the X and Y axes that is in relation to the layer, not the overall composition.
The effect point can also be moved directly in the Comp panel. To do this, you must first select the effect in the Timeline or Effect Controls panel; the effect point symbol will then appear in the Comp panel. It is identified as a small circle with a + symbol inside it (in contrast with the anchor point’s registration symbol). Now you can click and drag to edit its location.
While you can edit an effect point in the Comp panel and set keyframes, you can’t see the motion path it creates. Since the effect point has a value on the X and Y axes in relation to the layer (just like the Anchor Point), access to the motion path is in the Layer panel.
To see this in action, apply the Effect > Generate > Lens Flare effect to any layer, turn on the animation stopwatch for the Flare Center parameter, the create a few more keyframes so that the lens flare moves around the frame. Double-click the layer to open the Layer panel, and select the Lens Flare effect from the View menu (bottom-right corner). The motion path will now be visible (see figure). The spatial keyframes default to Auto Bezier, but you can edit the handles just like the motion path for Position (covered in Chapter 3 of CMG5). The Layer panel shows only the motion path; the result appears only in the Comp panel.
Masks as Paths
Several effects let you create an effect that follows the outline of a mask. The parameter you need to set is called Path – this tells the effect which mask path to look at. Examples of effects that can use a mask path include Generate > Audio Spectrum, Audio Waveform, Fill, Stroke and Vegas. In fact, some effects (such as Stroke) do nothing unless the Path popup points to a mask.
Generate > Audio Spectrum is set to follow the mask path we drew along the skyline in this footage (a), resulting in a fun animated outline (b). Footage courtesy Artbeats/Establishments: Urban.
An example of using mask paths for effects is demonstrated in the accompanying figures. We outlined the skyline of buildings with a mask. We then applied Generate > Audio Spectrum, set its Path popup to use our mask path, enabled it to Draw on Original (so we could see the original footage underneath), and set the Audio Layer popup to use a second audio layer. The result is an animated line that traces the skyline and bounces along with the music.
CC Composite
Many effects have a Blend With Original or similar parameter. This allows you to tone down the strength of an effect by blending together “before” and “after” versions of the image.
However, not all effects have this parameter. Also, Blend With Original is slightly misnamed; what it really means is “blend with what the image looked like right before this effect.” If you have more than one effect applied to a layer, the Blend With Original parameter for the later effects don’t reach all the way back to the original image.
The solution to both of these problems is Effect > Channel > CC Composite (pictured at left). Apply it after any effect, and its Opacity parameter will blend between the processed image and the original, unaltered image, no matter how many effects you have applied. As a nice bonus, its Composite Original popup has a long list of blending modes to create different types of looks.
Adjustment Layers
An alternative way to use effects is to apply them to adjustment layers (Layer > New > Adjustment Layer). All the layers below an adjustment layer in the Timeline panel are composited together, then the effects applied to the adjustment layer are applied to a copy of this composite. These two images – the original composite and effected version – are then blended together.
Any content in an adjustment layer is ignored. What is important is its alpha channel, as this determines which portions of the underlying composite receive the effects. A full-frame adjustment layer means the entire frame is treated. To apply effects to selected areas, you can crop the adjustment layer using masks and mattes; to blend in an adjustment layer’s changes at less than full strength, reduce its opacity. Blending modes further affect how the treated and untreated versions of the image are combined. You can also animate the adjustment layer as well as the applied effects.
Any layer can become an adjustment layer if you turn on its adjustment layer switch, although images with interesting alpha channel shapes work best. The original image will disappear, but effects applied to it will modify all layers below based on that layer’s alpha channel.
In this example, the title layer and goldfish image are both used as adjustment layers. Fish courtesy Getty Images; ocean footage from Artbeats/Monster Waves.
To practice this, turn on the adjustment layer switch for a title layer (the image will vanish – that’s okay). Apply Effect > Channel > Invert. The effect will be applied to the layer(s) below, using the title’s alpha channel to limit its area of effect. Try this also with an image with an interesting alpha channel. Multiple adjustment layers are rendered from the bottom up.
Effects and Solids
It’s common to think of effects as filters that treat an image. However, many effects – such as stroked lines and lens flares – create their own images. Although you can apply them directly to footage, it is usually more powerful to apply them to their own separate layer so that you can then perform additional compositing tricks. And the best layer to apply them to is often a simple black solid (Layer > New > Solid) that’s the same size as the comp.
To try this, apply the Lens Flare effect to a full-frame black solid. Make sure the Modes column is visible in the Timeline panel, and experiment with different blending modes to composite the effect on layers below: Screen gives the most natural look for lens flares and lighting effects; Add and Color Dodge give more blown-out looks.
As the lens flare now exists separate from the underlying image, you can apply additional effects to just the flare. For example, Effect > Color Correction > Hue/Saturation lets you change the color of the flare. If you do this while it is applied to the underlying image, this effect would alter both the flare and the image.
A lens flare applied directly to an image (above left) limits your compositing options. Instead, apply the effect to a black solid (left). Use the Screen blending mode to drop out the black background and change the flare color (above right) or add other effects. Footage courtesy Artbeats/Family Life.
Note that the black solid does not need to be the same size as the composition or underlying layers. You can gain extra flexibility by making the solid larger than your comp. This way, you can transform the solid (and therefore, the effects applied to it), including scaling or rotating it.
Bonus tip: If you need to render the black solid with an alpha channel to composite the effect in a different application, there is a trick: Apply the Channel > Channel Combiner effect to the black solid, change the From popup to Max RGB and the To popup to Alpha, then apply the Channel > Remove Color Matting effect. This converts the RGB levels of the image to corresponding amounts of transparency. (This is the equivalent of the “unmult” effects available from third parties.) Save these two effects as an Animation Preset whenever you need an “unmult” effect.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5 (click here for free bonus videos of features introduced in CS5.5). New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
One set of Animation Presets that ship with After Effects create movement without adding keyframes.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. Each new course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re periodically presenting the YouTube versions of them here in case you missed them.
The fourth Apprentice course focuses on ways to edit and enhance layers in After Effects – including looping, sequencing, and frame blending them; employing Blending Modes to create more interesting composites; and applying Effects, Presets, Behaviors, and Layer Styles. Through a series of Quizzler challenges and Idea Corner examples, we also share alternative ways to employ modes, sequencing, and Adjustment Layers, while special sidebar movies cover the subjects of creating seamless loops, animating effects points, understanding pixel aspect ratios, and employing Brainstorm to explore the variety of different looks that effects can create.
Among the hundreds of Animation Presets that ship with After Effects is a category called Behaviors, which employ expressions plus dedicated controller effects to mimic some of the popular Behaviors included with Apple’s Motion. We cover how to apply and use them here, including the popular Wiggle group. You can keyframe the controllers applied by the presets to fade the wiggle amount up and down - good for helping fake the imperfection of handheld camera movements, among other things.
(The movie here is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.)
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 21 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
In the lengthy Chapter 21 we cover the basics of creating and editing text, including text along a path. We cover all aspects of how to use text animators to add sophisticated animation: animating text properties and Range Selectors, the various selector Shapes, animating characters in 3D space, and using the Wiggly Selector to randomize properties. We also touch upon other topics, such as creating outlines from text layers and integrating with Photoshop’s text engine.
Obviously, we can’t reconstruct a 30-page chapter here in a one-page blog post; a couple of these will assume some knowledge of how to animate text inside After Effects (or at the very least, how to create text and apply an animation preset).
Editing Photoshop Text
After Effects’ text engine uses the same core technology as Adobe Photoshop, and so there is some integration. Photoshop files including vector Text layers (not rasterized text) that are imported into After Effects as a Composition can be converted to an editable After Effects Text layer.
To make a Photoshop text layer editable in After Effects, first import the PSD (Photoshop layered file) as a Composition. Then select the layer in After Effects and use the menu option Layer > Convert to Editable Text (as seen at left). Now you can animate the type as if it originated in After Effects and apply presets or text animators to it (below).
Unfortunately you still can’t convert Illustrator text layers to editable text. A workaround is to export the Illustrator file as a PSD [File > Export > Photoshop (psd)] and then import this PSD file as a Composition in After Effects. The artboard size seems to be ignored, but you should be able to convert text layers to editable layers.
Browse Presets in Bridge
We cover Animation Presets in Chapter 25 of CMG, but it’s worth noting here that you can preview what text animation presets look like in Adobe Bridge, and then apply them. To try this, select a text layer and choose Browse Presets from either the Animation or Effects & Presets Options menu. This opens Adobe Bridge, placing you in the Presets folder. Double-click the Text subfolder, and you will see another group of subfolders showing the many different categories of text presets. Spend some time opening different subfolders and previewing their animations:
When you browse presets in Bridge, you will see a small animated preview movie on the right side. Double-click a preset to apply it to a selected layer in After Effects.
When you find one you like, double-click it; you will be returned to After Effects and the preset will be applied to your text layer. Of course, if you don’t need to preview presets first, you can apply them from the Effects & Presets panel by double-clicking their name or drag-and-dropping them onto your layer.
Exploring animations presets is a good way to learn about the different effects you can get text animators. Of course, it helps to really understand text animators in depth to create your own animations from scratch (something we can’t cover in a short blog entry!), but the next four tips includes easy ways to customize a preset that might be close to what you like:
Randomize Order
For any text animation you create, you can have the characters animate in a random order instead of the usual Start to End. To randomize the order in which they appear, twirl down the Advanced section of Range Selector 1. Click on the Randomize Order value to toggle it from Off to On, and RAM Preview. The characters still animate in the same manner over the same period of time, but they do so in a random order. The Random Seed parameter “shuffles the deck.”
Ease High and Low
Perhaps the least understood parameters in the Range Selector’s Advanced section are Ease High and Ease Low. These refine the shape between characters being fully included in the selection (the high point) and fully excluded (the low point).
The best way to understand how the ease controls work is to see how they affect characters as they animate. Select a text layer and apply a very simple preset, such as Text > Animate In > Drop in by Character and RAM Preview to get familiar with it. (Make sure the characters are not off-screen at the beginning of their transition.) In this animation, characters drop in to position from the top, so they are fully affected by the animator when they are higher in the comp (their “high” point) and transition to being unaffected by the animator when they land (their “low” point).
Adjust the ease parameters to affect the speed at which individual characters fall down into place. Setting Ease Low to 100% gives a soft landing.
In the Timeline panel, twirl down Text > Animator 1 > Range Selector 1 > Advanced and adjust the Ease High to 100% and RAM Preview; characters now ease away from their high point (where they are “most selected”). Undo, and try setting Ease Low to 100%; characters now fall gently down into position as they move toward the low point of their range.
Note that using Ease High and Ease Low is different than easing the Range Selector’s Start, End, or Offset keyframes (Chapter 4 of CMG). In that case, you are changing the speed that the range selector moves across the characters, without control over how each character behaves. This is still useful; for example, adding an ease in to the last keyframe of a text animation gives a sense of finality, and also forces the viewer to pause and ponder the last few characters or words.
Centering Text
In After Effects CS5 and later, to start a new text layer with the cursor exactly centered in the composition, double-click the Type tool. (In previous versions, select Layer > New > Text Layer to do the same thing.) You might want to also select the Center Text option from the Paragraph panel so the title will be centered on the cursor.
When characters are rotated and scaled in an animator group, they default to using their own baseline as an anchor point. If you’d like a text animator to animate around the vertical center of the text, there are two approaches: add the Anchor Point property to the text animator and adjust its Y value, or use the More Options > Group Alignment option and adjust its Y percentage value. Note that the Anchor Point method affects only characters that are selected, while the Grouping Alignment method affects all characters in multiple animators.
The Grouping Alignment values are based on a percentage of the text size (not pixels). This means you can change the type size without having to tweak these values. To vertically center the anchor point, try values for Y of -25% to -50. Note that in CS5 and later, the anchor point is now visible in the Comp panel as you adjust the Grouping Alignment (as well as any transform properties applied to a text animator). In previous versions it was difficult to know where the anchor point was located.
Per-character 3D
You can enable Per-character 3D for any text animation, even in a 2D comp.
The Per-character 3D option allows you to position and rotate the individual characters in a text layer through 3D space. Although you can enable Per-character 3D in a 2D comp, to get the most out of this feature you should be working in a comp that also has a 3D camera and lights (working in 3D was covered in Chapters 13 through 16 of CMG).
Per-character 3D simply adds to all the other tricks you can do with text animators and you can enable it to any preset you like. Note that not all text properties are affected by Per-character 3D (for instance, Blur, Opacity, Skew, Fill Color, and Tracking appear the same whether or not it’s enabled). However, Anchor Point, Position, Scale, and Rotation all will gain a third dimension: a Z parameter.
One trick you can do with Per-character 3D is enabled is create text that stands up on a path. To see this in action, select Browse Presets (covered earlier) and apply the 3D Rotate Around Circle preset from the Text > 3D Text folder. Press UU (two U’s in quick succession) to show all properties that have been changed from their default settings. This preset creates text on a path (a mask shape), enables Per-character 3D, and sets the X Rotation X to +90°. Clicking Reverse Path will draw the text on the opposite side of the path. To arrive at the orientation you need, use the layer’s regular Transform > Rotation controls. If you are in a 2D comp (with no camera), select View > Custom View 1 (from the bottom of the Comp panel) to view the layer with perspective.
It is important to understand that there is a big difference between enabling Per-character 3D for a text layer and merely enabling its 3D Layer switch: In Per-character 3D mode, each character is rendered as an individual element with its own 3D position and rotation offsets. Compare the text in the figure at left with the figure above: At left, the 3D Layer switch is on, but not the Per-character 3D option. This means the text elements exist only on a flat 2D plane, which can then only be animated as a whole in 3D space. The text will go around the rim of your circle – but not stand up along its path, as they do in the figure above. The individual characters also will not cast shadows on each other. View your 3D composition from different angles using multiple views to get a better understanding of how the layers interact. In this example, Per-character 3D and a mask path are used to curve text between layers. Footage courtesy Artbeats/Gears and Industry: Gears and Machines.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Pyrotechnic Composites
Chris and Trish Meyer | 04/19
Please: Stop using Luma Key on footage (such as pyro effects) shot on black. There’s a better way.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. Each new course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re periodically presenting the YouTube versions of them here in case you missed them.
The fourth Apprentice course focuses on ways to edit and enhance layers in After Effects – including looping, sequencing, and frame blending them; employing Blending Modes to create more interesting composites; and applying Effects, Presets, Behaviors, and Layer Styles. Through a series of Quizzler challenges and Idea Corner examples, we also share alternative ways to employ modes, sequencing, and Adjustment Layers, while special sidebar movies cover the subjects of creating seamless loops, animating effects points, understanding pixel aspect ratios, and employing Brainstorm to explore the variety of different looks that effects can create.
One regular feature of the Apprentice lessons is what we call Quizzlers, where we present you with a challenge that can be solved using something you (should have) already learned earlier in that lesson. This movie is an example of a Quizzler Solution (spoiler alert), showing the right and wrong way to composite footage shot against black on top of another clip. By the way, this technique can be used in any program that includes Blending (aka Blend, Composite, Transfer, etc.) Modes, including Adobe Premiere as well as Apple Final Cut Pro and Motion.
(The movie here is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.)
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 20 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
We covered nesting and precomposing in the last two chapters, which are useful for grouping layers as well as fixing render order issues. We wrap up our focus on After Effects’ rendering order by exploring the pros and cons of Collapse Transformations and its cousin, Continuous Rasterization. These powerful features open a door to higher quality and faster rendering, as well as enabling precomps with 3D layers to behave like complex 3D objects when nested.
The Render Order
After Effects renders in a series of discrete steps: Masks, Effects, Transformations, Track Matte, Layer Styles, and so on. The order of these steps is predetermined, so the order in which you apply effects and transformations is largely irrelevant. (By that we mean, whether you create a mask and then apply an effect, or apply the effect and then createthe mask, the rendered result will be identical.)
You’re probably also aware that when a layer is set to Best Quality, After Effects antialiases it when an effect is applied that distorts pixels as well as when the Transform properties (position, scale, rotation, anchor point, and motion blur) are calculated. Each time a layer is antialiased, pixels are altered and the image appears slightly softer. However, if you change your mind about how a layer is effected or transformed, at least these values are reapplied to the original source, so the image is not degraded with every edit.
The ability to re-edit a layer while maintaining its original resolution can be lost when you start building a hierarchy of comps. When Comp 1 is nested in Comp 2, the nested comp is “rendered”: Effects and transformations are applied to each layer, which are antialiased if necessary, and all layers in Comp 1 are composited together. Comp 2 receives only the composited frame (a “flattened” image) and has no history of the layers in the first comp.
At least, that’s how it works if you don’t know about the Collapse Transformations switch. This feature allows you to perform two sets of transformations without a loss in quality – the downside being a potential loss in sanity. Read on…
Collapsing 101
At its simplest, Collapse Transformations allows you to scale a layer in one comp, scale it again in a second comp, and retain the same sharpness and resolution as it would have if you had scaled it just once.
To see how this magic work, create this example:
1) Create a first composition (let’s call it Comp 1) and add a layer to it. Scale this layer to 10%:
In Comp 1, the image is scaled down to 10% and reduced to just a few pixels. Alarm clock from Classic PIO/Sampler.
2) Create Comp 2, and nest Comp 1 into it. Select the nested comp layer and press S to twirl down Scale; the value is 100%.
3) Change the Scale value to 1000%: The small image is blown up ten times – and looks as ugly as you might expect:
Comp 1 is nested in Comp 2 and scaled 1000% for a truly ugly result.
4) The Collapse Transformations switch for the layer in the Timeline panel is set to Off (it appears empty), which is the default setting. Time for some magic: Turn on the Collapse switch in Comp 2 for the nested Comp 1 layer. The lost resolution returns, as the Transform values applied in the first comp are combined with the values applied to each layer in Comp 1. A calculator will tell you that 10% times 1000% equals the original value of 100%, which yields a final composite as sharp as the original:
When the Collapse switch is turned on, the original resolution from Comp 1 is restored, as the two Scale values are calculated in one step (10% × 1000% = 100%).
Of course, applying scaling values that result in a value larger than 100% would introduce degradation – you can’t improve on the resolution of the original image. (That would be magic…)
Collapsing 102
There are pros and cons to Collapsing Transformations. We don’t have time in this brief excerpt to detail all the issues, but they relate to images that spill onto the pasteboard not being cropped, adjustment layers and stencils from Comp 1 reacting to layers in Comp 2, and a complicated render order when you apply masks and effects to the collapsed nested comp layer. All of these issues are detail in Creating Motion Graphis. The next example is one situation where the result is just good news:
Some artists prefer to work in D1 square pixels (720x534) so round images and titles do not look distorted.
To render the final movie, the Main Comp is nested into a Render Comp, which is a non-square pixel 720x486 comp. The nested comp layer is scaled down to fit the D1 comp size (shortcut: Layer > Transform > Fit to Comp).
Figure A: With the Collapse switch off, layers in Comp 1 are composited together before flowing through to Comp 2’s rendering order of Masks/Effects/Transform.
Normally, scaling this layer would add another antialiasing step, which would degrade the image. By collapsing the nested layer, the scale value of 91% is added to all the scale values in the precomp. Because the images are scaled once, you get better quality and faster rendering.
Figure B: When you turn on the Collapse switch in Comp 2 for the nested Comp 1 layer, the Transformations applied in Comp 2 are combined with the values applied to each layer in Comp 1.
Note: Some artists are doing the D1 “squish” in the Output Module, but Collapsing Transformations will give better results. If you instead render your square pixel comp (with fields off), and then Scale in the Output Module, the render order is to create a progressive frame at 720x534, and then apply antialiasing when scaling the image down to D1 720x486. Of course, you are limited to progressive rendering only; if you turn on field rendering, you would be creating fields for a 534 frame size and then scaling those fields in the Output Module. The result will be “field mush” - not recommended!
Collapsing and 3D Space
Collapsing also works with 3D layers. This can come in handy when you have a group of layers that need to be treated as a unit: Rather than have them clutter up your timeline, you can precompose them (resulting in one layer in your current comp), then use Collapse Transformations. The result is that they will continue to react to cameras and lights in the original comp. This sequence shows the basic idea:
The initial model consists of four white solids and a null object, all in 3D space (above left). the purple light provides all the color. When they are precomposed, the precomp renders them with a default camera and no light (above right). Enabling the 3D Layer switch for the nested layer allows it to be affected by the main comp’s camera and light, but it is still just a 2D composite moving in 3D space (below left). Enabling the Collapse Transformations switch brings the 3D coordinates through, with the benefit of just one layer to manage (below right).
Continuous Rasterization
Continuous rasterization – rendering a vector-based layer at any size requested to maintain maximum sharpness – is closely intertwined with collapse transformations. For one, they share the same switch in the Timeline panel. Additionally, the render order is rewired as transformations are rendered before masks and effects are applied.
Many think of continuous rasterization as “the Illustrator switch” because in earlier versions, that was the only type of footage item it would work on. Now other types of layers (such as solids, PDFs, and SWFs) also have the option to be continuously rasterized, while text and shape layers are always continuously rasterized. These files are based on vectors rather than pixels: They have, in essence, infinite resolution.
If continuous rasterization is off, they are converted into pixels at their “native” sizes (the document size of an Illustrator file, or the pixel dimensions in the Solid Settings dialog), and they are treated as any other pixel-based layer. If you enable continuous rasterization, the layer’s transformations are calculated before it is converted into pixels, meaning its edges always stay sharp no matter what size you scale it to.
When applied to Illustrator layers, the Collapse Transformations switch in the Timeline panel becomes the Continuously Rasterize switch.
To see this in action, add an Illustrator file to your composition with continuous rasterization disabled (the default), and scrub the Scale value. As it goes over 100%, it starts to get fuzzy. Now enable the Collapse switch (also known as the Continuously Rasterize switch): The edges are rendered sharp again. Better yet, no matter what size you scale the layer, it remains crisp. This is because After Effects is applying the Scale value to the original Illustrator file, then converting the larger image to pixels.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A series of videos demonstrating how to put the new features to work.
Just one year after the release of After Effects CS5, the AE team has cooked up a very nice update with some significant new and updated features (plus a lot of nice small ones as well) that will be of interest to both motion graphics and visual effects artists. To share our take on these with you, we’ve worked with AdobeTV who is hosting a series of videos we created on how to take advantage of our favorites among the new features. These are embedded over the next few pages, along with some quick comments about the new features. These movies include:
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 19 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Continuing with Part 5, Precomposing is the second of three chapters that show you how to build a hierarchy of comps. In the previous chapter, we explained that nesting is used to group layers and fix visual problems caused by the default 2D render order. You’ll find that nesting is an intuitive way to create a chain of comps when you’re planning ahead. However, predicting exactly how many comps will be needed to build an animation is difficult; you may need to insert a comp in the middle of an existing hierarchy. That’s where precomposing comes in.
The third chapter in this series, Collapsing Transformations, will cover specific issues that arise when nesting and precomposing comps containing 3D layers.
Precompose for Grouping
Precompose is used primarily for the same reasons you would use nesting – grouping layers and manipulating the rendering order. The difference is that nesting implies moving up the hierarchy; when you precompose, you’re inserting an intermediate comp lower down in an existing hierarchy. You could think of it almost as nesting backward: The precomp created is always rendered first, before the original comp.
To try precomposing:
Select two or more layers, then select Layer > Pre-compose.
In the Pre-compose dialog, give the new composition a useful name, say “Title group”. (Note that when multiple layers are selected, Move All Attributes is the only option available; more on this next.) Make sure the Open New Composition switch is unchecked for now, and click OK.
The selected layers will be replaced with one layer, a nested comp called “Title group”. You can now easily animate or apply effects to the group; you can also trim or apply a blending mode or mask to the group.
Just as with nesting compositions, all layers remain “live” for further editing. Simply double-click a nested comp layer to open it for further editing. You can switch back and forth between the precomp and the original comp using the tabs in the Timeline panel or by using the Composition Navigator (covered in Chapter 18). Note that if you need to open the Layer panel, Option+double-click on Mac (Alt+double-click on Windows) the nested comp layer.
Move All Attributes
The Pre-compose dialog offers two options: Leave all attributes in “current comp”, or Move all attributes to the new composition. Attributes refers to the values and keyframes for masks, effects, transformations, blending modes, layer styles, trimming, and so on.
When you precompose multiple layers, only the second option, Move All Attributes, is available because the relationship between the layers can be maintained only if their attributes are kept intact. The layers that are precomposed will appear as one layer in the original comp so you can animate and effect them as a group.
To summarize Option #2, Move All Attributes:
The Move All Attributes option is available for both single layers and multiple layers, including nested comps.
The precomp will be the same size and duration as the original comp.
Any attributes (masks, effects, transformations, blending modes, trimming, and so on) applied to the layer(s) before precomposing will be moved to the precomp.
The layer in the original comp will have a fresh render order, and any attributes applied to this layer will render after the attributes in the precomp.
Leave All Attributes
Precomposing a single layer is used to solve unforeseen rendering order problems. The solution to problems with the default rendering order is to reverse the order of some events by spreading the layer across two comps, so you can pick and choose which step happens in which comp.
To summarize what happens when you use Option #1, Leave All Attributes:
The Leave All Attributes option is available for single layers only, including nested comps.
After you precompose with Leave All Attributes, the precomp will have one layer in it, and the size and duration of the precomp will be the same size and duration as the original layer.
Any attributes (masks, effects, transformations, blending modes, trimming, and so on) applied to the layer before you precompose will remain in the original comp.
The precomp will have a fresh render order, and any attributes applied to the layer in the new precomp will render before the attributes in the original comp.
Numbering Precomps
Don’t name a precomp with a higher number than the current comp, as you might do when nesting. If the current comp is Comp 2, the precomp will be inserted between Comp 1 and 2 (so it’s a 1.5, not a 3!).
Fixing a Clipped Layer
Some effects – such as Simulation > Shatter or CC Pixel Polly (pictured) – can’t draw outside the layer’s original boundary, and instead are clipped at the layer’s edge. Fortunately most effects are now capable of drawing outside the layer’s edge, but if you do come across this problem, there are a few workarounds:
First, check if the effect has a Resize Layer option, as offered by the Radial Shadow effect.
If not, apply Effect > Utility > Grow Bounds and make it the first effect in the stack. Then increase its Pixels parameter until the effect no longer clips. (Note that if Tint is in the effects stack, place Tint before Grow Bounds. Don’t ask why!)
The third option is to place the layer (or layers) in a precomp; this comp should be whatever size you need the layer to be so that the effect has enough room to draw into. Nest this into a second comp and apply the effect. The effect will think that the layer is as large as the precomp. If the effect still clips, return to the precomp and increase its size. This method also allows you to animate the layer(s) in the precomp (this animation renders before the effect).
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Time Stretch versus Altering the Frame Rate
Chris and Trish Meyer | 04/05
So you changed a clip’s sped - did you expect the keyframes to change as well?
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. Each new course has a selection of movies that are free for all to view; we’re periodically presenting the YouTube versions of them here in case you missed them.
The fourth Apprentice course focuses on ways to edit and enhance layers in After Effects – including looping, sequencing, and frame blending them; employing Blending Modes to create more interesting composites; and applying Effects, Presets, Behaviors, and Layer Styles. Through a series of Quizzler challenges and Idea Corner examples, we also share alternative ways to employ modes, sequencing, and Adjustment Layers, while special sidebar movies cover the subjects of creating seamless loops, animating effects points, understanding pixel aspect ratios, and employing Brainstorm to explore the variety of different looks that effects can create.
Not all footage you import has the native frame rate that might work best for your composition. There are two ways to change this: by using the Time Stretch parameter inside a composition, or by altering the footage item’s master frame rate in its Interpret Footage dialog. This movie demonstrates the pros and cons of these two approaches, focusing on what happens to any keyframes that you might have already applied.
(The movie here is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.)
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.
Another selection of “hidden gems” (and essential advice), this time from Chapter 18 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
Continuing with Part 5, Nesting Compositions is the first of three chapters that show you how to build a hierarchy of comps. Here, our focus is on creating complex animations that are easy to edit, and we explain the various ways to efficiently navigate and edit a chain of nested comps. We also delve further under the hood of After Effects’ rendering order: Understanding how data travels through the hierarchy will help you troubleshoot if the result is not exactly what you expected…
This chapter includes many examples showing you the benefits of nesting 2D comps; the following chapter will cover Precomposing (sort of like nesting backward). The third chapter in this series, Collapsing Transformations, covers specific issues that arise when nesting and precomposing comps containing 3D layers.
The Benefits of Nesting
Graphics applications vary wildly, but advanced ones usually have one thing in common: a method of “grouping” items so you can transform multiple layers as easily as you can transform one layer. In After Effects, there are two main ways to edit layers as a group: Parenting (covered in Chapter 17), and Nesting Compositions.
By placing a group of layers in their own composition, then “nesting” this comp inside another, you can not only apply transformations to a group (which is the benefit of Parenting), but also trim, fade, and apply effects to the group as if they were one layer.
Another benefit is that you can create a precomp and nest it into multiple comps. (A precomp is simply a regular comp that you don’t intend to render directly.) A precomp can be useful when creating an animated element (like a logo) that may need to change; when you edit the precomp, its output will ripple through to all the other comps in which it is nested.
Nesting comps serves a second purpose: It allows you to override the default rendering order performed on a layer in a single comp. In those cases where nesting is a better solution than parenting, the question becomes whether or not you were planning ahead. If you were, you’ll find nesting comps to be quite straightforward and intuitive. However, if you discover a problem after the fact, you’ll probably need to use the Precompose feature (which we’ll cover in the next chapter).
By nesting Comp 1 into Comp 2 (A, above left), you’ll have two render orders to work with and can pick and choose which attributes render in what order. By applying the effect in the first comp and the Mask in the second comp (B), the default rendering order of Masks > Effects is reversed. In this case, you would animate transformations in Comp 2 (after the mask).
Nesting a Comp
Nesting a comp is very straightforward. Let’s say you have already created the Main Comp (the one that will be rendered as the final movie). You also have a group of layers that comprise an animated logo or title, a layered Photoshop file, or even a sequence of edited movies that you wish to edit as a single layer. Create a second comp and organize this group of layers. This second comp can be any size and any pixel aspect ratio, but make sure it’s at a high enough resolution so that you don’t have to scale it later above 100% when you nest it.
To nest it, bring the Main Comp forward, select the second comp in the Project panel and drag it into the Main Comp (it’s just like dragging in a piece of footage) where it appears as a single layer. Now you can mask it, apply effects, and transform it easily.
Remember that the second comp is still “live” - any changes you make to the group of layers will appear immediately in the Main Comp. The second comp renders all its layers first, and then sends a composited image to the Main Comp. Note that as far as the Main Comp is concerned, it’s receiving a flattened RGB+Alpha image, not a group of individual layers (unless you collapse the transformations, which we’ll cover in Chapter 20).
The station ID bug is animated in the small [stationID] precomp. This comp can be nested into multiple comps.
Nest the small [stationID] comp into the D1-sized [Ex.01-Weather] comp and snap it to the bottom righthand corner (above). Note that it appears as one layer in the Timeline panel (below) and that the comp marker in the precomp appears as a layer marker when nested (Chapter 6). Footage courtesy Artbeats/Winter Lifestyles.
Double-clicking Duplicity
Double-click on a nested comp layer to open the original comp; add the Option (Alt) key to instead open its Layer panel. The opposite is true when the layer has Roto Brush or Paint applied (yes, this will drive you crazy).
Navigating Nested Comps
After Effects CS4 introduced two very useful enhancements for navigating chains of nested compositions: the Composition Navigator and the Mini-Flowchart:
The Composition Navigator is a new user interface element that has been added to the top of the Composition panel. Click on a comp’s name to jump directly to it.
A shortcoming of the Composition Navigator is that it shows just one “thread” of a chain of nested comps. If there are more than two compositions nested into the currently forward comp, After Effects displays the name you opened most recently. If you don’t see the comp you’re looking for, try using the Composition Mini-Flowchart.
Press the Shift key to have the Mini-Flowchart pop up centered on the cursor’s location. When a comp is nested more than once into another comp, the number of times it is nested is displayed in parentheses after the comp’s name (circled in red).
After we replaced the background layer with the comp [Ex.07-background precomp], the Mini-Flowchart will now display two nested comps in this hierarchy. Note that the Composition Navigator (along the top of the Comp panel) will display the precomp you opened most recently.
Edit This, Look At That
After Effects CS4 also introduced enhancements to the “Edit This, Look At That” (ETLAT) behavior. Previously, you could lock the Effect Controls panel of a layer used in one comp, then bring another comp forward. This allowed you to edit an effect’s settings inside a nested comp while viewing the results in a master comp downstream.
You can now also lock the Comp panel for a master comp, then edit layers in the Timeline panel for a nested comp. To try this out:
First make sure two (or more) comps in a nested chain of comps are open in the Timeline panel – the ETLAT behavior works best when all the comps you might edit are open!
Background grid from Artbeats/Digital Biz.
Bring the Main Comp forward and click on its lock icon to the left of its name along the top of the Comp panel. The lock will turn yellow.
Select the tab in the Timeline panel for the nested precomp. Its timeline will come forward, but the Comp viewer for Main Comp will still be displayed.
In the Timeline panel for the precomp, edit one of the layers any way you choose (in the figure we’re editing an effect). The Comp panel will display the result in the Main Comp.
To return to normal behavior, click on the lock icon in the Comp panel to unlock. The comp you were working in will now be displayed in the Comp viewer.
This trick will save you from having to open two Timeline and Comp panels while working with tricky chains of nested comps. Note that selecting comps to using the Timeline tabs is the most reliable method for getting this trick to work: If you switch to another comp using the Composition Navigator along the top of the Comp panel, the newly selected comp will then become the “locked” comp.
Preserve Frame Rate
Normally when you nest a comp, the second comp determines the frame rate that the precomp is sampled at; so if the final comp in the chain is set to 29.97 fps, all nested comps also render at that frame rate. At the end of the chain, the frame rate is ultimately controlled by the Render Settings, which determine how the comp being rendered – and all comps nested within – actually renders. However, the Preserve Frame Rate option is designed to override this default behavior.
Check the Preserve Frame Rate switch in the Advanced tab of Composition Settings to force this comp to be sampled at its frame rate no matter what frame rate it is eventually rendered at.
Preserve Frame Rate is particularly useful when you want to “lock” animation keyframes to a movie’s frame rate. For instance, if you’re rotoscoping or masking a 24 fps clip shot on film, do the work in a precomp set and preserved to 24 fps. Nest this into your final 29.97 fps comp, and the mask keyframes will remain locked onto the film frames when you render.
Preserve Frame Rate can also be used for locking effects that randomize, such as Numbers, to a different frame rate than the comp they’re nested into. Here we’ve created random numbers with the Numbers effect, and set this precomp to 10 fps with Preserve Frame Rate turned on. When this is nested in the Main Comp, it can be duplicated and time-stretched to create many other frame rates.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Another selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 17 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (CMG5) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include essential advice for new users, plus timesaving tips that experienced users may not be aware of.
This installment’s subject is Parenting. Parenting allows you to group layers together and to treat them as one object. Any Position, Scale, or Rotation transformations (but not Opacity, Masks or Effects) applied to the parent are passed on to its children. Meanwhile, the children can still have their own animations, even as they get dragged around by the parent. Parenting can be used for anything from moving two layers at the same time to setting up complex coordinated animations.
This is the first chapter in Part 5: Building Hierarchies. After parenting - which happens inside a single composition - we’ll be talking about managing multiple nested compositions.
Parenting with Null Objects
One potential assumption about parenting that you need to set aside is that you always parent one visible layer in a composition to another visible layer. Quite often, the better approach is to create an invisible layer with the menu command Layer > New > Null Object, and then attach (parent) visible layers to this invisible handle. This is especially handy when your visible layers already have their own independent animation, and you don’t want one of them - as a child - to suddenly pick up unwanted transformations from an animating parent. By using a null instead, you can then safely reposition or even animate the null without harming the independent animations of the children. For the same reason, nulls make excellent “handles” for collections of 3D layers that may build a more complex object. In short, they provide a great way to quickly group together layers residing in the same composition.
The two text layers have their own horizontal motion paths - the red and orange lines. If you parented one to the other, the opposing motion of the parent would offset the child. By parenting them both to a null object (the cyan outline) they get to keep their own relative movements, oblivious to where the null parent is taking them. Footage courtesy Artbeats/Business on the Go.
By the way, Null Objects are just a variation on Solids. The differences are that they default to a certain size (100 x 100 pixels), with their Anchor Point in the upper left corner (coordinates = 0,0 which simplifies the parent/child math), and Opacity = 0% (and they won’t render even if you increase their Opacity setting). You can rename and resize a null just as you do solids by using Layer > Solid Settings (Command+Shift+Y on Mac, Contro+Shift+Y on Windows). Indeed, we highly recommend you rename your nulls to later remind yourself what they were supposed to be doing!
Beware of Non-Uniform Transformations
A parent’s transformations can be thought of as a reality distortion field cast over any attached children. If a parent has been scaled nonuniformly (where the X and Y axes have different Scale amounts), and a child is then attached, the child will now be nonuniformly scaled as well. As a result, the child’s shape will skew when it’s rotated, as seen at right.
This is another case in which a null object (or any other layer) placed between a parent and children can invisibly “soak up” transforms imposed by the parent. This is because the intermediate layer gets the nonuniform scaling, leaving the child downstream unmolested.
Parenting to Solve Messy Math
With a bit of preplanning, you can use parenting to help build complex arrangements of multiple layers by letting After Effects do the math for you.
For example, say you have six spheres lined up in the same position. You’ve been asked to arrange them in a ring around a seventh central sphere. Quick: What are the Position coordinates for each outer sphere that would place them all the same distance away from the center? Answer: Put down the protractor and slide rule, and let After Effects do the math for you:
Parent one outer sphere to the center sphere.
Rotate the center sphere 60 degrees (the result of dividing the 360 degrees in a full rotation by the 6 spheres you want to evenly space around it).
Go back to Step 1, and repeat until done.
To create symmetrical arrangements of layers, start them from the same position, attach one to a central parent, rotate or otherwise offset the parent, attach another child, and so on until finished. Background courtesy Digital Vision/Naked & Scared.
Jump Parenting
When you parent one layer to another, After Effects alters the child’s transform parameters to take the parent’s transformations into account. There is one case when this does not happen: If you hold down the Option (Alt) key when you parent or unparent, the child will assume the absolute position values. Normally, this would make a child jump to a perhaps unforeseen location in the comp. With a little planning, however, this becomes a vital trick when you want to move an animating child to a new parent - such as in the example below:
The yellow gizmo layer is parented to the left ear null at the end of one antenna ear (above left). If you hold down the Option (Alt) key while you’re changing its parent to the right ear null (left), it will jump to the other ear (above right), keeping the same relative animation. Gizmo courtesy Quiet Earth Design, antenna from Classic PIO/Televisions.
With or Without You
When you right-click on a parent, an option appears at the bottom of the contextual menu to select all of its children as well. This comes in especially handy when you’re getting ready to precompose a group of layers (our subject a couple of installments from now).
On the other hand, if you want to quickly separate a child from its parent, Command+click on Mac (Control+click on Windows) on the parenting pick whip tool in the Timeline panel for the child. This tool is only visible if you have the Parent column open in the Timeline panel; Shift+F4 is the shortcut to toggle it open and closed (or remember, you can right-click on any column header to hide or reveal any available column).
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 16 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Parallel Worlds was a new chapter created especially for CMG5, covering a number of special cases and “gotchas” that crop up when you try to combine 3D layers in After Effects, Live Photoshop 3D Layers, plug-ins that render 3D images onto 2D layers, and renders from 3D programs. It also includes new tutorials on Adobe Repoussé (part of Photoshop CS5 Extended) and Digieffects FreeForm (included in After Effects CS5). Many of the problems and workarounds are rather involved, so this is a case where having the book and its accompanying project files will be very helpful, but we’ll summarize the steps to accomplish a few choice tricks below.
This is the last chapter in Part 4 – Cameras! Lights! Action!. After this we get into Building Hierarchies: Parenting, Nesting, Precomposing, and Collapsing.
Rendering Bins and Breaks
At the core of understanding how various types of “3D” layers interact in After Effects is to remember that at its heart, it’s a 2D compositing program. Enabling a layer’s 3D Layer switch has two consequences: It allows the layer to be moved in three dimensions, but it also routes that layer off to a separate internal rendering engine. The output of that separate rendering engine is a 2D layer, which is then composited with the other 2D layers inside a composition. This is how 2D and 3D layers can coexist inside the same comp: 3D layers must eventually be rendered to 2D layers.
When multiple 3D layers are adjacent to each other in the Timeline panel’s layer stack, they may interact by way of intersecting each other, casting shadows onto each other, and receiving shadows from each other. However, if a 2D layer appears between a selection of 3D layers, the 2D layer acts as a “rendering break” that separates adjacent 3D layers into their own groups or “bins”:
Placing a 2D layer between 3D layers (look for the 3D cube icon - this column is for the 3D Layer switch) in the Timeline panel acts as a “rendering break” which disrupts how shadows fall between them. Note the lack of shadows on the front bikewheel. Also notice that the full-frame background video does not receive shadows from any of the 3D layers, even though it appears to “receive” shadows from the Drop Shadow layer styles applied to the 2D Bug and 2D Title layers.
(By the way, one of the tradeoff involved with Layer Styles - which typically look better than their 2D plug-in effect alternatives - is that they break up 3D groups when applied to 3D layers, whereas the 2D effects don’t. We cover other 3D rendering order issues, opportunities, and gotchas in Part 4 of CMG5.)
Casting 3D Shadows Onto 2D Layers
Normally, 3D shadows only happen between objects inside a 3D rendering group; 2D layers are excluded. However, there are several tricks to catch a 3D shadow and blend it onto a 2D layer. Our current favorite approach requires knowledge of a 3D layer’s Material Options as well as a bit about Blending Modes:
Create a white solid or shape layer that is large enough to catch the desired shadow. If it’s too small, you can scale it up later as needed; a layer’s Scale value does not affect the sharpness of the shadows it receives (we discussed the parameters that do affect shadow sharpness in Chapter 15’s Hidden Gems).
Enable its 3D Layer switch, and position it at the point in 3D space where the 2D layer theoretically exists. If the “2D” layer is a render from a dedicated 3D program, use the position and rotation of the surface that should be catching the shadow from the 3D program (we discuss this subject at length in CMG5 Chapter 40: Integrating with 3D Applications).
Under this “shadow catcher” layer’s Material Options, make sure Accepts Shadows is On, but set Accepts Lights to Off - this will remove any side effects from a light’s cone, color, intensity, angle to the layer, et cetra.
Then set its Blending Mode to Multiply. This means only the captured shadow will darken any layers underneath.
A white solid in 3D space will catch shadows from other 3D layers (left). Position and scale it up as needed, turn off its Accepts Lights option, and set its Blending Mode to Multiply to make this layer disappear and instead “cast” its captured shadow on 2D layers behind (right). Grid pattern courtesy Artbeats/Digital Biz
3D Effects and 2D Layers
Many effects – from such classics as Shatter and CC Cylinder, to the newly bundled Digieffects FreeForm, to popular third-party effects such as Zaxwerks Invigorator, Trapcode Particular, and Boris BCC Extruded Text – create 3D imagery with depth and perspective. Most “3D” effects also have options to react to 3D camera and lights in After Effects. However, in reality these effects are miniature 3D programs residing inside After Effects: Rather than using the After Effects rendering engine, they have their own internal rendering engines that create their own imagery. The result is a 2D layer (the 3D Layer switch is supposed to be left off) that does not interact with 3D layers in After Effects, including no native ability to receive shadows from or cast shadows onto those layers.
That said, CMG5 presents a couple of examples that work around this shortcoming. The general concept involves a few steps:
Enabling the 3D Layer switch for the 2D layer that has the “3D” effect.
Causing this layer to orient toward the camera, to remove unwanted perspective distortion from viewing the rendered image at an angle.
Enabling this layer to Cast Shadows. (Also do the same to any 3D layers that are supposed to cast shadows onto this layer.)
Doing whatever other fudging is necessary to make the resulting composite work, as you may still have issues with tracking the camera. But at least you’ll have shadows!
The 3D effect CC Cylinder renders perspective and follows a 3D camera correctly, but it does not cast or receive 3D shadows, and it breaks the rendering order between 3D layers (left). After enabling the 3D Layer switch for Cylinder and entering an expression for its Orientation, 3D shadows appear, and proper 3D perspective is somewhat maintained (right). Cylinder wrap texture courtesy Getty Images/Discovery
Making Photoshop 3D Layers More Interactive
Creating 3D objects in Photoshop and importing the resulting PSD file into After Effects has a lot of shortcomings and compromises compared to using After Effects plug-ins like Zaxwerks Invigorator, or a real 3D program like Cinema 4D. But if you work at a place that has the Adobe Creative Suite but no other software, it at least gives you an option to create objects with actual depth. In CMG5, we cover how to create these objects (as well as use Photoshop’s Vanishing Point module); buried in there is a key gem on reducing your frustration level with Live Photoshop 3D objects:
After creating your object in Photoshop but before you save the file, open Window > 3D, look at the Render Settings pane (shown here), and set the Anti-Alias popup to Ray Traced Draft. The default of Interactive has rough, aliased edges and nowhere near as nice as lighting, while Ray Traced Final will take forever to render.
When you import this PSD file into After Effects (make sure Live Photoshop 3D is enabled in the Import settings dialog), the object will initially render in Interactive mode, not Ray Traced Draft. This is because the Quality switch for the layer with the Live Photoshop 3D effect applied defaults to Draft. That’s okay to start out, as Interactive is much faster to work with when you are setting up your scene and animation.
When it comes time to render or otherwise perform a “confidence check” on image quality, either manually set the Quality switch to Best, or double-check your Render Settings in the Render Queue (shown below) to verify that Quality is set to Best.
Displacement Mapping with FreeForm
One of the options of the powerful Digieffects FreeForm effect (created by Chris Bobotis of mettle.com) is to use another layer as a displacement map. This creates all sorts of interesting extrusion, landscape elevation mapping, and related effects.
However, when you first select a displacement layer under Displacement Controls > Displace Layer, you may be very disappointed in the results: It will render as indistinct blob with the default settings. This is because the default setting for 3D Mesh Quality > Mesh Subdivision is waaaaaay too low for displacement work. We find we often need to increase it to at least 300 for standard definition resolution work; going much higher is not uncommon - with a resulting tradeoff in rendering speed. If you’re noticing a problem with aliasing edges after increasing Mesh Subdivision, try slightly blurring your displacement layer in a precomp (the subject of Chapter 19 in CMG5) to smooth the transitions at sharp edges.
FreeForm’s default Mesh Subdivision setting is too low to yield any real definition when using a displacement map (left). Increasing it at least 300 yields considerably better results (right).
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Ocean Water Effects
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Work Area Tips & Tricks
Chris and Trish Meyer | 03/15
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The third course is based on the Advanced Animation section of the book, where we demonstrate a number of tools in After Effects to create more sophisticated animations - from mastering the Anchor Point and getting over your fear of the Graph Editor, to using Motion Sketch, Smoother, Auto-orientation, Roving keyframes, Motion Blur, and Hold keyframes.
This movie demonstrates additional tips on taking advantage of the Work Area, including editing the contents of a composition based on the Work Area’s duration. (The movie here is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) This is an example of the many “sidebars” of additional information that we include in both the book and the video training series.
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.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 15 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 15 covers lighting 3D layers in After Effects. It discusses the different types of lights and their parameters, how lights interact with layers and their Material Options, the many secrets of shadows, creating gels and gobos, faking reflections, adjustment lights, projection lights, and using 3D lights to re-illuminate already-shot 2D footage.
This is the third chapter in Part 4 - Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next chapter in this series will cover tips for combining different types of “3D” layers.
How Lights and Layers Interact
A light’s Intensity value is only one part of the equation for how much light a layer receives. A non-ambient light (such as a spot, point, or parallel light) actually illuminates a layer twice: an overall lighting referred to as the Diffuse property (the top left image in the simple example below), and the “hot spot” which is referred to as the Specular property (top right). Ambient lights provide a third way to illuminate a layer (lower left). All three are added together to create the final lighting effect for each individual layer. The mix between these properties are controlled by each layer’s Material Options (seen at right), revealed by selecting a 3D layer and typing AA - two As in quick succession. The Shininess parameter controls the size of the Specular highlight - increase its value to make the “hot spot” tighter.
Shine versus Glare
A 3D layer’s Metal parameter determines if the specular highlight is based on a layer’s color (the default of Metal = 100%), or the light’s color (Metal = 0%). This is then added to the layer’s underlying color values. The default of Metal = 100% has the apparent effect of both brightening and increasing the saturation of the image around the specular highlight, which is usually aesthetically pleasing.
However, if the underlying layer was dark - such as black text, or a predominantly black illustration - adding a color value of 0 to 0 still results in 0 (black), meaning you won’t see the specular highlight. In this case, you will need to decrease a layer’s Metal value to see the specular highlight as a glare (the same color as the light) on darker layers; this is particularly useful for adding a slight glare to black text layers.
Lights normally interact with a layer’s surface color - and black doesn’t leave much to interact with (left). Decrease the layer’s Metal parameter, and the light becomes visible as a glare - even in black areas (right). image courtesy Getty Images/Discovery
Colored Lights to Change Temperature
We tend to use white lights as our starting point; deeply saturated colored lights rarely look as nice as you might expect. However, a very slight colored tint (20% or less Saturation) for the light’s color can be used to warm up or cool down a scene:
image courtesy Digital Vision/Beauty
(If you want to perform a similar trick on 2D layers, you can use the Photo Filter effect. We’ve included at the end of this article a link to a quick video we created awhile back on Photo Filter, but never got around to releasing.)
Adjustment Lights
3D Lights normally illuminate all 3D layers in a composition, regardless of the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel. However, if you enable the Adjustment Layer switch for a light, it will only illuminate the 3D layers underneath it in the timeline stack. And since you can create a light with a negative Intensity value, you can even use an adjustment light to darken layers below.
Knowing this, you rearrange the stacking order of your layers to focus attention on only a few select objects: Move them to the bottom of the stack, underneath the “adjustment light.” As long as you leave their Position values alone (and don’t put 2D layers or other rendering breaks between them - a subject we discuss at length in Chapters 13 and 16 of CMG5), you won’t change what layer appears in front of the others in the Composition panel.
Quick Lighting Parameter Tips
Here’s a quick list of other tips that might not be immediately obvious; all are demonstrated in more detail in the book:
New lights almost always default to being too close to layers (especially those placed at Z=0). One of the first things we do after creating a light is either scrub its Z Position value to back it up, or hover the cursor over the light’s icon in the Composition panel until a small Z appears next to the cursor, and then drag down or to the right.
Intensity can go greater than 100 to over-illuminate a scene. It can also go below 0 to remove light from an over-lit scene (this is also useful in conjunction with Adjustment Lights, discussed above). The Intensity can of course be animated, creating some interesting transition possibilities.
Ambient lights are a useful cheat to add (or subtract) illumination evenly across an entire 3D scene, without worrying about which light is illuminating which layer.
If a shadow is too sharp, increase the light’s Shadow Diffusion value. If a shadow is too soft, open the Composition > Composition Settings, click on the Advanced Tab, click on the Options button to the right of the words “Rendering Plug-in”, and increase the Shadow Map Resolution setting. (For those who are trying to learn all of After Effects’ secrets just by poking around, you should get to this by year five…)
Shadow Darkness can be set to greater than 100% to help force the casting of shadows in otherwise over-lit scenes.
Casts Shadows can be toggled to Only, meaning the original layer disappears and only its shadow remains.
Shadows default to being black. Increasing a layer’s Light Transmission parameter changes it to be the layer’s color, yielding gel, stained glass, and video projection effects:
Setting the Light Transmission value of the video to 100% allows it to project onto the floor (left). However, you will need to balance the other light and material parameters against each other to get more sophisticated effects, such as blurry reflections and not seeing an illumination cone from the projection light (right). footage courtesy Artbeats/Animal Safari and Exteriors
Note again that the last two are controlled by an individual layer’s Material Options - not the light’s own parameters. Mastering Material Options will put you well ahead of many After Effects users.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files (CS5-only) and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Overshoot Animations
Chris and Trish Meyer | 03/09
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com that includes some Graph Editor tips you may not know.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The third course is based on the Advanced Animation section of the book, where we demonstrate a number of tools in After Effects to create more sophisticated animations - from mastering the Anchor Point and getting over your fear of the Graph Editor, to using Motion Sketch, Smoother, Auto-orientation, Roving keyframes, Motion Blur, and Hold keyframes.
The movie above demonstrates different ways to create “overshoot”-style animations by taking advantage of the keyframe interpolation influence handles in the Graph Editor. (The movie above is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) This is an example of our of “Quizzler” challenges in the book where we demonstrate an animation that you are supposed to figure out how to recreate based on what you learned previously in that lesson. Enjoy!
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.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 14 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 14 covers creating and animating a camera, including creating camera rigs and taking advantage of auto orientation, as well as showing how to cut between multiple cameras. We conclude by discussing the camera’s parameters in more detail, including how to fake focus and depth of field effects.
This is the second chapter in Part 4 – Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next chapter in this series will cover tips for working with lights.
Before we get into details of using a camera, let’s go over some general issues related to using cameras in After Effects:
Cameras only view 3D layers. If you enable the 3D Layer switch for an object, it will now be rendered in perspective based on how a camera is looking at it, with distance from the camera affecting how large the object appears.
If the 3D Layer switch is off, that layer is rendered normally, regardless of the camera’s settings or where it is pointing. This ability to combine 2D and 3D layers in the same comp is a real boon: You can set up stationary background movies and foreground text or logo bugs in 2D, then fly around just the elements you need in 3D.
Cameras appear as layers in the Timeline panel. If there is no camera layer in a comp, After Effects uses an invisible default camera.
You can have more than one camera in a comp; if you do, After Effects looks at the in and out points of the camera layers and notes which one is highest in the Timeline panel layer stack to decide which is the “active” camera at any given point in time. This means you can cut between alternate camera views. (Sorry; you cannot dissolve between them - unless you use a trick we explain in the book involving nested comps and collapsed transformations.)
View Options
By default, when a camera is not selected, it is represented by a box. When it is selected, you will also see lines that represent its Angle of View and Zoom distance (and if you are using the two-point camera model, its Point of Interest), as well as Focus Distance if Depth of Field is enabled.
If you’d like to always see these extra lines – even when the camera is not selected – then open the View Options in the Comp panel’s Options menu (from the upper right corner). Click on the popup next to Camera Wireframes, and change When Selected (the Default) to On. You can also set this option to Off, if you find them distracting.
You can also set similar options for spotlights (discussed in the next chapter). These options can be set per Comp panel as well as per view; enable Share View Options from the Select View Layout popup to share options across views.
Don’t miss the “3D Views & Shortcuts” section in Hidden Gems for Chapter 13, as it contains tips on how to resize the 3D views so as to maximize the size of the camera icon. This also covered shortcuts to automatically zoom and center your view to see all of the desired layers.
One-node Camera
The two-node camera model makes it easy to precisely aim the camera: Just place the Point of Interest where you want to look. However, it can be difficult to coordinate both Position and Point of Interest for some motion paths, such as flying around objects when you need to make multiple turns. So After Effects also gives you the choice to create a one-node model whereby you orient the camera’s body to decide where it is looking.
There are two methods for creating a one-node camera:
In CS5, when you create a new camera, set the Type popup in the Camera Settings dialog to One-Node Camera. If the Preview option is enabled, the line leading to the Point of Interest will disappear, and the camera will snap around to face straight ahead. (You can also edit an existing camera by double-clicking the camera layer.) Click OK to close the dialog.
In CS4 and earlier, this option can be set by selecting the Camera layer, and selecting Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient. When the Auto-Orientation dialog opens, choose the Off option, and click OK.
Whichever method you choose, you will need to point the camera using the Orientation and Rotation properties. Note that if you use the Rotate tool to alter Y Rotation or Orientation, there is a nasty glitch that if you go beyond +/-90 degrees, the X and Z values flip by 180 degrees (try it!). That’s why we prefer scrubbing the values directly in the Timeline panel.
When using a one-node camera, the Orbit Camera tool rotates the camera by changing its Orientation values - not Rotation. Whereas Orientation is good for posing a 3D layer, Rotation is far better for animating it in a predictable manner - so keep that in mind.
Another little gem or gotcha (depending on what you’re trying to do): Using the View > Look At menu options and corresponding shortcut keys alters just the camera’s Position, taking into account its current rotation and orientation.
Auto-Orientation
There are a couple of variations on auto-orientation that can be handy when animating a camera moving along a path in a complex 3D world.
First, you can have layers always face the camera so that they don’t appear skewed or distorted. To do this, with the layer selected, choose Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient. When the dialog opens, select Orient Towards Camera and click OK.
Another trick involves having a camera auto-orient along an animation path. It can be hard to set up sweeping motions that don’t appear to drift; this option points the camera for you. With the camera still selected, open its Auto-Orientation dialog, choose Orient Along Path, and click OK. You can also set the middle keyframes for the Camera’s Position property to rove in time (see Chapter 4) so that the speed will be fairly constant.
Normally, layers and cameras point where you tell them, which starts out as straight ahead (A). However, you can set layers to orient toward the camera, and also tell the camera to orient itself along its motion path (B).
The one shortcoming of Orient Along Path is that it does not cause a camera or layer to “bank” – rotate along its Z axis – while swooping about. Feel free to manually keyframe a little Z Rotation of your own to anticipate turns.
Handheld Camera
A little humanization can go a long way to make your movements seem more realistic. To create a handheld or floating “Steadicam” look, add a wiggle expression (Chapter 37) to a camera’s Position or Point of Interest. (For an in-depth discussion on the wiggle expression, see the corresponding installment of Deeper Modes of Expression.)
Separate XYZ
Editing motion paths and keyframing the result may not be the easiest way to create a smooth camera animation. Many users prefer to create “camera rigs” where individual dimensions of the camera’s movement are divided among a series of null objects. These independent nulls can be used to correspond to a camera’s dolly track and crane movement, for example.
As an alternative to building a camera rig, you can also take advantage of the Graph Editor and Separate XYZ option (mentioned in our Hidden Gems for Chapter 4) to create precise, refined camera movements, such as moving smoothly along an imaginary dolly in the X and Z dimensions, then later doing a crane elevator move in the Y dimension. To use this feature, select the Camera layer, then click the Separate XYZ button at the bottom of the Graph Editor (circled in the figure above).
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Auto Bezier Keyframes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 03/01
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The third course is based on the Advanced Animation section of the book, where we demonstrate a number of tools in After Effects to create more sophisticated animations - from mastering the Anchor Point and getting over your fear of the Graph Editor, to using Motion Sketch, Smoother, Auto-orientation, Roving keyframes, Motion Blur, and Hold keyframes.
The movie above demonstrates how to apply and use Auto Bezier keyframes, which help smooth out abrupt animation movements - a great companion to Easy Ease. (The movie above is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) The complete course also includes a lot of coverage of Hold keyframes, which are essential for creating slam-down style animations as well as curing problems when a supposedly stationary object starts to wander around the screen.
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.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 13 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 13 covers the basics of working with 3D layers in After Effects and includes moving, rotating and animating layers in 3D space, offsetting their anchor point in Z, as well as auto-orientating layers along a 3D path. We also cover using the Composition’s 3D Views, View Layouts, and Axis Modes, along with the rendering order when mixing 2D and 3D layers. The article contains a few tips from that long chapter that you might have missed.
This is the first chapter in Part 4 – Cameras! Lights! Action!. The next three chapters will cover tips for working with Cameras, Lighting in 3D, and Parallel Worlds (more on mixing 2D and 3D layers, Photoshop Extended layers, and third-party 3D effects).
When you enable the 3D Layer switch (circled in red) for a footage item, it gains values for Z Position and Z Scale. The layer usually does not initially appear different in the Comp panel, except for the addition of a set of red, green, and blue axis arrows showing the X, Y, and Z orientation of the layer.
After Effects has implemented 3D space in a very flexible manner. Not all layers in a composition need to be in 3D; you can enable the 3D Layer switch just for those objects you want to add an extra dimension to, while keeping the others in familiar 2D space. You don’t need to add cameras or lights either; a composition has a default camera that provides a head-on view, and a default light, which illuminates all 3D, layers evenly regardless of their orientation. (Of course, you can add and animate cameras and lights; this is covered in the next two chapters.) However, with After Effects’ implementation of 3D, the objects do not have true depth, which does limit the illusion of 3D space (that’s why we call these layers “postcards in space”!).
Rotation versus Orientation
3D layers have four – count ’em, four – Rotation parameters: Orientation, X Rotation, Y Rotation, and Z Rotation (this last value being the same as 2D Rotation). This may seem like overkill, but each has its purpose.
Why have two separate ways to rotate a layer? Because each animates differently. Rotation always goes through the entire range of values you request, while Orientation takes a shortcut to reach its final pose with a minimum amount of fuss. The Orientation values are also limited to one revolution – unlike Rotation, you can’t keyframe multiple revolutions with Orientation. In general, it’s better to use Orientation to “pose” a layer, and to use Rotation to animate it.
Although you can rotate a layer with the Rotate tool, there is a nasty glitch: If Y Rotation goes beyond +/-90 degrees, the X and Z values flip by 180 degrees (try it!). We recommend you scrub values directly in the Timeline panel.
3D Views & Shortcuts
It can be difficult to work in 3D with only a single 2D view. Fortunately, at the bottom of the Comp panel are two buttons to make life easier: The 3D View menu can show alternate views (it defaults to Active Camera), while the Select View Layout menu allows you to display show multiple views at the same time (it defaults to 1 View).
The default 3D View for a comp is Active Camera. Click on it and select an alternate view. The six orthographic views do not show any perspective, so all of the characters look the same size even though they are different distances from the virtual camera. The three Custom Views offer a quick way to view a scene from different perspectives, without having to create a camera first.
Click on the 3D View popup; you will get a menu with nine additional choices: six orthographic views (Front, Left, Top, Back, Right, Bottom) and three “custom” views. You can think of your layers as floating in a very large room, with the six orthographic views as being the view from each of the six surfaces of the room, and the custom views being temporary cameras or viewing positions inside the room.
The orthographic views often default to showing the layers too large (so they are on the pasteboard) or too small (so they are clustered in the center) compared with the black “background” area. (By the way, this rectangle in the background has no real significance except in the Active Camera view – in the other views it simply determines whether you see pixels when layers are at an angle, or whether you see a bounding box if layers are on the pasteboard.)
You can change the view’s zoom level two ways: The obvious one – and the one you don’t want to use – is to reduce the Magnification of the Comp panel. Why? Because if you reduce the Magnification for a view to 50% or 25%, the XYZ arrows for a layer become so small you will have a hard time selecting them! (The same is true for the icons for cameras and lights.) This makes working with 3D layers very frustrating!
Use the Camera tools to customize your views to better frame the layers you are working with. Here we have chosen the Unified tool, and are right clicking to select the Track Z tool that enables us to zoom in on the layers in Custom View 3.
We recommend you set the Magnification for all your views to Fit Up to 100%, and use the Camera tools (Orbit, Track XY and Track Z) to customize your view so that layers fit inside the view. Better yet, if you have a three-button mouse, select the Unified Camera tool (the camera icon). When the Unified Camera tool is active, you can left-click to temporarily activate the Orbit tool, middle-click for Track XY, and right-click for Track Z. (You may have to customize the preferences for the software that comes with your mouse to make the middle button work.)
Note that if you first select Share View Options from the Select View Layout menu, when you set the Magnification for any view to Fit Up to 100%, all the views will use that setting.
Once you fiddle around with the Camera tools, you’ll really appreciate this shortcut: To automatically zoom and center your view to see all of the desired layers, use View > Look at Selected Layers or View > Look at All Layers. If one of the Camera tools is selected, press F to Look at Selected Layers, and Command+Shift+F (Control+Shift+F) to Look at All Layers. (You might still find yourself zooming out a little as layers will fill the view right to the exact edge!) Note that if your 3D View is set to anything other than Active Camera (or any specific camera), these commands only alter your view (but does not move layers or the camera); if your 3D View is set to Active Camera or a specific camera, then these same commands move the camera.
So to summarize, when setting up your workspace for each 3D comp, your first job – before you start to animate layers – is to maximize each view so that the layers fill the view. That way, you can use the Fit Up to 100% Magnification option for all views and you will see each layer at its largest size and all the XYZ axis arrows (as well as camera and lights) will be easy to grab. We can’t stress enough how important it is to have a well-designed 3D workspace to reduce your frustration levels!
View Options
When you have multiple views open, by default the view with the Active Camera will RAM Preview. If you want to change this behavior, disable Previews Favor Active Camera from the RAM Preview Options menu (above left). Each viewer also has an Always Preview This View switch in their lower left corner (above right). This latter switch is particularly useful if you have both the Comp and Layer panels visible, and want to always preview the Comp panel while working in the Layer panel.
Axis Modes
Along the right edge of the Tools panel are three small icons: These select the coordinate system for the axes. Left to right, they are: Local Axis Mode, World Axis Mode, and View Axis Mode.
The Axis Modes determine if a layer’s axis arrows are oriented according to the layer’s local coordinates (the default), the comp’s overall world space, or the current view. To try these out, first rotate a 3D layer slightly askew in X or Y, then view the layer from one of the Custom Views.
(Radio image courtesy Classic PIO.)
In the figures here, the layer orientations are identical (tilted back in X and centered in the Comp panel) – only the axis modes change as you select each mode in the Tools panel. View Axis Mode is most useful when a layer (like a title) is centered in the view and you want it to move closer or farther away from the camera when the camera is looking at the world from an angle. Reselect the Local Axis Mode again when you’ve finished experimenting; otherwise you may forget what mode you were in and cause yourself a lot of confusion later on.
Mixing 2D and 3D Layers
Life gets a little more complicated when you combine 2D and 3D layers in the same composition. In short, 2D layers act as “render breaks” between 3D layers. Groups of 3D layers that are stacked between 2D layers in the Timeline panel are internally flattened down to a 2D result, as if they were in a precomp by themselves. The entire composition is then rendered as if it consisted only of 2D layers, with each group of 3D layers being treated as a single 2D layer in the middle of the stack.
It is all too easy to break up groups of 3D layers, meaning those individual layers can no longer interact with each other (such as intersecting or casting shadows from one to another). Inserting the following types of layers between 3D layers will break up their groups:
Any 2D layer, with the exception of Null Objects.
Any Adjustment Layer (Chapter 22), even if its 3D Layer switch is enabled. (The exception is an Adjustment Light (covered in Chapter 15).
Any layer that has a Layer Style (Chapter 22) applied to it.
Inserting an adjustment layer between 3D layers will break them into separate groups, and stop them from interacting with each other. (Turning on its 3D switch will not fix this.)
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series from our book After Effects Apprentice and distributing it through lynda.com. They just released the next installment today: Layer Control. Some of the subjects this course covers includes:
editing and sequencing layers
looping, time-stretching, and frame blending footage (including importing image sequences, and a trick for forcing footage to loop seamlessly)
blending modes
applying effects, presets, and layer styles
Brainstorm
non-square pixel aspect ratios
If you don’t already have a subscription, the introduction plus three movies are available free to all; you can also click here for free 7-day trial pass. Premium subscribers get access to source files for AE CS4 and CS5 (the book was for CS4; the movies were recorded using CS5). Enjoy!
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.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Arranging Layers
Chris and Trish Meyer | 02/21
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The second course is based on the Basic Animation section of the book, where we guide you through creating a simple project from importing sources to arranging and animating layers through rendering.
The movie above demonstrates how to add and arrange layers in a composition, including replacing a layer’s source. This will be useful for new users, as well as those who feel they’re doing the same thing over and over in the same composition. (The movie above is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) The complete course also includes movies on other ways to arrange layers, including taking advantage of Action and Title Safe areas, Grids and Guides, and the Align & Distribute panel.
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.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 12 – Stencils and the “T”
Chris and Trish Meyer | 02/18
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 12 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 12 focuses on Stencils, which are relatives of Track Mattes (covered in the previous chapter). Whereas Track Mattes use either the alpha channel or overall luminance of the layer on top to cut out the layer immediately underneath, Stencils use this same information from the layer on top to cut out all of the layers underneath inside a composition. (Technically, since layers render from the bottom up, the stencil is really only cutting out one image – the composite image of all layers below.)
Rather than appearing in the dedicated “TrkMat” mode popup, Stencils appear at the bottom of the Blending Modes popup (as Modes also affect the composite of all layers underneath). Inverted Stencils are referred to as Silhouettes (as in, Silhouette Luma rather than Stencil Luma Inverted). The otherwise short Chapter 12 also covers two often-mysterious functions in After Effects: the Transparency (“T”) switch, and Alpha Add mode.
You Can’t Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
We’ll start with a tip that becomes obvious all too quickly when using Stencils: You can’t combine a stencil and a full-frame background layer in the same composition. Stencils cut out everything underneath them in the layer stack. This is great for filling an alpha channel of, say, text or a client’s logo with a composite of multiple layers, but if you then want to place that result over a full-frame background, the background will get cut out too! Instead, you will need to perform the stenciling in one composition, and then nest that composite over the desired background in a second composition. Once nested, you can also add edge effects such as a drop shadow or glow.
An inverted stencil - Silhouette Luma - is used to create a cutout from a composite of two layers (top left). This composite is then placed in a second composition on top of the desired full-frame footage and a drop shadow is added (top right). Footage courtesy Artbeats Desktop Technology, Digital Moods, and Business World.
Preserve Underlying Transparency
Preserve Transparency - the mysterious “T” switch in the Modes column of the Timeline panel - can be thought of as a reverse stencil. Rather than saying “this layer affects everyone underneath” (which a stencil does), it says “this layer is affected by everyone underneath” - the combined transparencies for all layers underneath affect the transparency of the layer you have turned it on for.
Below left is the combination of three layers created in Adobe Illustrator. The content of the layers is opaque; the area surrounding them is transparent (noted by the Transparency Grid visible around them). Below center is a full-frame piece of footage that is placed on top of those three layers with interesting alphas. Below right is the result of setting the “T” switch for the full-frame layer on top. Underneath the three images is the layer stack in the Timeline panel; note the “T” column between Mode and TrkMat:
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Digidelic.
Why not use track mattes or stencils in this case? Because stencils and mattes borrow transparency from just one layer; here we are relying on the composite of multiple layers to create the final pattern of transparency we wish to preserve. With the Preserve Transparency switch, you would need to nest the text layers off into their own composition, and then use the resulting combined transparency as a matte or stencil in a second composition.
This technique also comes in handy for visual effects work such as keying and rotoscoping, where you may want to combine multiple keys or matte passes to create a composite transparency for a tricky source layer you need to cut out. Concentrate on each element of the source (such as hair, arms, body, etc.) separately in its own layer, then place the original footage on top with its Preserve Transparency switch set to receive the composite of each of these component transparencies.
Add Alpha Mode
While we’re on the subject of unusual transparency tricks, the almost-as-mysterious Alpha Add mode works great with stencils.
For the image of the heart at right, the left side is a nested composition that uses Stencil Luma, and the right side is a second nested comp with the same heart image but using Silhouette Luma (exactly like the left side, but inverted).
These two halves are then combined in a third comp. Where the alpha channels meet along the seam, both antialiased edges have identical transparency values. But instead of adding these values together, the transparency of both layer edges are honored and factored together (50% opaque + 50% opaque = 75% opaque, not 100%). Since this fails to result in a fully opaque pixel, you get a seam. Note that this is not a problem with just stencils - you will see similar problems with track mattes and masking where identical edges meet.
To fix this, select the top layer, and select the Alpha Add mode from near the bottom of the Modes column, as show above. The complementary alpha channels are now added together – as opposed to compositing on top of each other – and the seam disappears. The resulting composite is shown at right.
Bonus Gem: Effecting Stencils
This is a subject not covered in CMG5, but is worth discussing here (especially as this is otherwise a short chapter, without a lot of other gems to uncover).
It’s not obvious how to predictably add edge treatments such as bevels and drop shadows to track matte pairs; the three solutions are to use Adjustment Layers, nesting the track matte pair into its own composition and effecting the resulting layer in a new comp, or the little-known trick of applying a Photoshop-like Layer Style to the layer with the Track Matte mode applied.
The first two also work with stencils and silhouettes; unfortunately, Layer Styles don’t - they break the stencil function:
A typical application of stencils would be having this ampersand illustration cutting out a composite of layers underneath (above left). However, if a Layer > Layer Style such as Bevel & Emboss is applied to the ampersand, the stencil is disabled, the black ampersand gets the bevel, and the layers underneath are no longer cut out (above right). The broken layer stack is shown below.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
After Effects Apprentice Free Video: Editing Interactively in the Composition Panel
Chris and Trish Meyer | 02/15
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions. The second course is based on the Basic Animation section of the book, where we guide you through creating a simple project from importing sources to arranging and animating layers through rendering.
The movie above demonstrates how to edit Transform properties such as Position, Scale, and Rotation interactively in the Composition panel - this will be helpful to new users who are more comfortable with dragging objects around a stage than just entering numbers. (The movie above is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) The complete course also includes “going deeper” movies on creating variations, better understanding keyframes, alpha channels, layered Photoshop files, and common mistakes beginners often make - but which you can now avoid.
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.
CMG Hidden Gems: Chapter 11 – All About Track Mattes
Chris and Trish Meyer | 02/11
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 11 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 11 covers the art of track mattes: borrowing the luminance or alpha channel from one layer to serve as a new alpha channel for the layer underneath. In the book, we talk about how to optimize mattes, the ability to animate the matte and/or “fill” layers independently from each other, strategies for keeping the two component layers together, and other important techniques. Here are a few tips and gotchas that might not be apparent from just poking around in the program, starting simple and ending complex:
First, The Obvious…
We’ll start with the basics - although everyone gets caught out by at least one these at some point in their time with After Effects:
In the Timeline panel, the layer providing the alpha channel (the matte) must be on top; the layer being cut out (the RGB fill) must appear directly underneath.
The track matte mode popup (labeled “TrkMat” in the column headers) must be set for the fill layer underneath; do not set this popup for the matte layer on top.
The matte layer almost always should have its Video switch (the eyeball icon) off. When you first set the TrkMat popup from None to one of the four valid matte modes (Luma or Alpha Matte, inverted or not), After Effects will automatically turn off the Video switch for the layer above. However, if you turn that switch back on, and then change the TrkMat popup to another matte mode (such as from Luma Matte to Luma Inverted Matte), After Effects will not turn the Video switch back off again; you will need to do it yourself.
When the TrkMat (track matte) popup has been set for a fill layer, both it and the matte layer above get special icons next to their names in the Timeline panel, indicating the matte (on top) and the filled result (underneath).
(So, when would you want the Video switch for the matter layer turned on? You may wish to turn it on temporarily as you apply effects to it or animate it. Just remember to turn it off when you’re done!)
You Can See It All
The TrkMat popup exists in the same column as Blending Modes, which normally shares space with the Switches column. To flip between them, click the Toggle Switches/Modes at the bottom of the column in the Timeline panel, or just press F4.
However, if you have a wide enough monitor, you can see both at the same time: Just right-click on any Timeline panel column header (those Mac users still suffering with a one-button mouse can Control-click), and select whatever columns you want to see or hide. You can then re-arrange columns by clicking on their headers and dragging them left and right.
Not All Colors are Created Equal
A Luma Matte derives the overall luminance value from an RGB matte image to determine how transparent or opaque to make the pixels in the fill layer. If you’re using a color image for your matte (such as the one below on the left), there’s a good chance its luminance values may be lacking (below center), and that the result may be more transparent or washed-out than you hoped (below right):
Instead, you want to pick the color channel in the matte layer that has the best contrast. To do this, turn on the Video and Solo switches for the matte layer to see it in isolation. Then use the Show Channel popup along the bottom of the Composition panel to audition the various color channels to see which works best.
Return Show Channel to RGB, and apply Effect > Channel > Calculations to the matte layer. Set the Input Channel popup the color you chose above. If necessary, follow this with Effect > Color Correction > Levels and use the Input Black and White as well as Gamma controls to maximize the contrast. Then turn off the matte layer’s Video and Solo switches, and you will have a better matte:
Where’d My Shadow Go?
A common source of frustration when working with track mattes is you can’t seem to get shadows or other edge treatments to work properly. If you apply them to the fill layer, the matte layer usually chops off these treatments; if you apply them to the matte layer, they just alter the alpha channel of the resulting composite - not the color channels.
To work around this, place the track matte layers in their own composition and then effect this “nested” composition in a new comp downstream. Or: You can take advantage of Layer Styles. Borrowed from Photoshop, the little-known Layer Styles have a unique place in the internal rendering pipeline, being processed after the track matte is calculated. Just select the fill layer (the one on the bottom), and apply Layer > Layer Styles > Drop Shadow or any other desired treatment, such as Bevel and Emboss.
Footage courtesy Artbeats Digital Moods (background) and Ocean Water Effects (fill inside the text).
The movie and the matte each have their own set of Masks, Effects and Transformations, which are calculated before the Track Matte module. Layer Styles applied to the fill layer render after the Track Matte is calculated.
Multiple Mattes from One Source
Track Mattes require that their component layers be kept in pairs. However, sometimes you want to use the same source as a matte for multiple fill layers. If you don’t feel like duplicating the same source every time you need it inside a composition, you can try Effect > Channel > Set Matte instead.
Set Matte is applied to the fill layer, where it can then select any channel from itself or another layer to use as a matte, regardless of its placement in the layer stack. Since the Set Matte effect determines the transparency of the movie, you can then follow it with normal edge treatment effects such as a Drop Shadow, and they will work on the fill as expected. If you want to affect the strength or contrast of the matte, you can still use Levels (applied immediately after the Set Matte effect), but you must set its Channel popup to Alpha rather than the default RGB. An example of such a hierarchy is shown here.
The biggest drawback is that Set Matte is a “compound” effect, which in short means that any effects or animation applied to the matte layer must take place in a precomp.
Another solution for applying a single matte to multiple layers is to use a stencil, and that will be the topic of our next installment.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A freebie from our new video training series on lynda.com.
As we mentioned earlier, we’re creating a video training series based on our popular beginner’s book After Effects Apprentice, which progresses from “I haven’t used it before” through core skills including keyframing, masking, text animation, and 3D space to advanced techniques such as motion tracking, green screen, and expressions.
As is the case with most of our video training, these videos are being offered through lynda.com. For those who don’t already have a subscription, they regularly make a few of movies from each course available for free on their site as well as on YouTube. We want to make sure our PVC readers are aware of these resources.
The first course is based on the Pre-Roll section of the book, where we introduce you to the After Effects user interface. The movie above discusses the UI: We think it will be useful to those opening the program for the first time, or who haven’t used After Effects for several years - the UI underwent a major overhaul a few years ago. (The movie above is the lower-quality YouTube version; a larger, higher quality version can be viewed for free on the lynda.com course page.) The complete course also covers how to import sources, manage compositions, preview your work, and render a final movie.
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.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 10 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 10 covers creating and editing simple geometric mask shapes, Bezier masks, and RotoBezier masks. We build on your expertise until you’re comfortable managing multiple masks with Mask Modes. We also discuss using effects with masks, rotoscoping techniques, importing paths from Photoshop and Illustrator, as well as the Mask Interpolation keyframe assistant.
While you can draw masks directly in the Comp panel, you can’t see the area of the image that you’ve masked out. But you can in the Layer panel - if you set up the Layer panel options correctly.
In the figure above, note the View menu and the Render checkbox in the Layer panel (left viewer). These decide what part of the rendering chain is displayed. When the Render switch is off, you can see the entire Source in the Layer panel and the results of your masking in the Comp panel (right viewer).
Remember that to quickly switch to this split view, select the Comp panel and press Command+Option+Shift+N on Mac (Control+Alt+Shift+N on Windows) to get two viewers side by side. Now you can use the left viewer for the Layer panel.
Shape Shortcuts
There are a number of ways you can manipulate the basic shapes created with the Shape tools while you’re initially drawing a mask. Below are just a few:
Double-click the Shape tools icon to create a mask that uses the currently active shape (Rectangle, Ellipse, Star, and so forth) and that has the same outer dimensions as the layer. (If another mask is selected when you double-click the Shape tool, that mask will be replaced.)
The Polygon and Star tools always draw from the center out; Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, and Ellipse draw from a corner out. To draw rectangles or ellipses from the center out, press Command (Control) after you start dragging.
To interactively change the mask you are drawing with the Shape tool, there are a set of modifier keys you can press after you start drawing the shape but before you release the mouse. For instance, if you draw a Rounded Rectangle mask shape (see figure below), before you release the mouse, press the up/down cursor keys to increase/decrease the corner roundness. This same shortcut also edits the number of side on a Polygon shape or number of points on a Star shape. [Note that the same shortcuts will also work when creating Shape Layers (Chapter 32), but with shape layer you can always edit the shapes numerically in the timeline after the fact – a luxury you don’t get when creating masks shapes!]
Rotobezier Masks
An alternative to working with Bezier handles is to create RotoBezier masks. This type of mask – also created using the Pen tool – automatically calculates the curves leading into and out of mask points based on the positions of adjacent points. RotoBezier shapes can be easier to use for flowing, organic objects that feature curves rather than hard corners.
To create a RotoBezier mask, select a layer, then select the Pen tool. Along the Tools panel to the right the word RotoBezier will appear; enable it by checking its box (see figure).
As you click, you’ll initially see a straight line segment between your two most recent points; as you continue adding points, After Effects calculates the curves between the earlier points. Don’t sweat it if you’re unhappy with the immediate results; you can edit your points later.
After you have finished drawing a mask, return to the Selection tool. Click and drag any point around, and watch as the curves before and after it automatically bend to follow.
You can adjust the otherwise-automatic tension of RotoBezier masks either after they’re created or while you are drawing. Hold down Command+Option (Control+Alt) and click on a mask point to change it to a hard corner; doing so again returns its tension to 25%. Clicking and dragging with these modifier keys held allows you to adjust the tension of the imaginary Bezier handles running through the mask point; the Info panel updates the value between 0% and 100% as you drag. Note that these commands also work on all selected points, so be aware of what you have selected!
Holding Command+Option (Control+Alt) allows you to adjust the tension (roundness) of a RotoBezier point.
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Incarcerated.
First Vertex Point
When you select all points on a mask, have you noticed that one point is a bit larger than all the others? This is the First Vertex Point, and it controls how mask points interpolate. The First Vertex Point at one keyframe always interpolates to the First Vertex Point on the next keyframe – all the other points around the path follow their lead. When you’re interpolating from very different shapes, you may need to manually change this “leader” point to create the best match from shape to shape. To do so, select the mask point you want to use as the First Vertex, right-click on it, and select Mask > Set First Vertex.
Note: The First Vertex Point is also the point used for the start/end of a closed mask shape when it’s used by an effect (such as Stroke) and when creating text on a circle (or any closed shape).
Locking & Hiding Masks
When you’re working with multiple masks, you can lock a mask to protect it from accidentally being edited. Just click the Lock box associated with each mask group in the A/V Features column. Masks will still appear in the Comp and Layer panels, but you won’t be able to edit them or change any keyframes.
To hide locked masks from displaying, select Mask > Hide Locked Masks.
Keeping masks in sync with the source
A mask is drawn to fit a movie running at 24 fps (upper left). When nested into a comp running at 29.97 fps, the mask will look correct only when it lines up with a keyframe (upper right). Interpolated frames will appear to slip (left).
Pendulum courtesy Artbeats/Time & Money.
If a keyframed mask shape appears to be “slipping” position in the rendered movie, even though it looks fine in the composition, there’s a likely culprit: A mask is interpolating out of sync with the source frames. This is caused by a mismatch between the mask’s keyframes and the frame (or field) rate of your footage. For example, if your footage has 24 progressive frames (not interlaced frames), you would mask this layer on whole frames in a 24 fps composition. However, if you then nest this precomp in the final comp and render at 29.97 fps, the mask will now interpolate at 29.97 fps (or at 59.94 fps, of you field render!) and will appear to slip in between frames of the original source.
To solve this problem, you can enable the Preserve Frame Rate option in the precomps Composition Settings > Advanced tab. Now the nested comp’s frame rate will be honored no matter what frame rate the final comp is rendered at. (Nesting compositions and the Preserve Frame Rate option are covered in Chapter 18.)
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 8 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 9 of CMG5 contains an exhaustive discussion of Blending Modes, including numerous figures and examples plus explanations of the math behind the modes. Therefore, in this Hidden Gems installment we’re going to focus on some of the less obvious tips, plus throw in a video on an alternative approach to tinting or colorizing footage:
Having Your Cake and Eating It Too
You’re probably used to the idea that you can toggle the Timeline panel between displaying the Switches or Modes column by clicking the similarly-named switch at the bottom of the panel, or pressing F4. But did you know you don’t have to choose, and can have them both open at the same time? Just right-click on any column header in the Timeline panel, and select any additional columns you would like to open:
Quickly Scrolling Through Modes
To quickly try out different modes - especially ones that are adjacent to each other on the Modes popup menu list - select a layer, hold down Shift, and press the + and - keys along the top of the keyboard to move up and down the list.
Fade To Gray
Overlay plus Soft, Hard, Linear, Vivid, and Pin Light modes all change how they process images depending on whether a pixel is above or below 50% gray. If one of the images in the composite has an area that is 50% gray, the other image will be composited unaltered. You can use this little fact to your advantage when you need to composite a new layer in After Effects on top of a 3D render or even live action, and want the result to look more realistic.
Real surfaces (including those synthesized in 3D) are rarely perfect; they will feature highlights, shadows, falloffs, and other anomalies, such as the creases in the blank videowall below (left). By making the surface of that blank wall average 50% gray, and then using a mode such as Overlay or Hard Light to composite footage on top of it (below right), those distinctions and imperfections - such as the creases - are kept rather than pasted over. The result is much more realistic than merely cutting out the new layer and slapping it on top of the layer underneath using Normal mode:
Footage courtesy Artbeats/Lifestyles Mixed Cuts 1
Classic Coke versus New Coke
Some modes appear in two versions, such as Classic Color Burn and Color Burn. This is usually because the older “classic” version has problems at extreme colors. For example, if a layer has a drop shadow and you choose Classic Color Burn, the drop shadow will disappear; it will be retained with Color Burn.
On the other hand, Color Burn, Color Dodge, and Difference all exhibit some artifacts where areas of a composite may lose their color if you fade out the layer with these mode applied; the Classic versions usually keep interesting color across the entire image during fades:
You usually want to use the updated version of a mode instead of the Classic version. The major exception is is if you’re altering the Opacity of the layer with the mode: the Classic version (Classic Difference is used at right) often looks much better than the newer version (Difference, left) in these cases.
Divide and Conquer (color casts, that is)
After Effects CS5 gained two new modes: Subtract and Divide. Divide has a suprising use: It can be used to remove the color cast from an image, just like any number divided by itself always results in a value of 1 (white). In the example below, the image on the left is the original footage, which has a strong blue cast. Create a new solid or shape layer, and for its color, eyedropper an area in the underlying footage that should be pure white. Make sure this solid or shape is on top, set its mode to Divide, and boom - the color cast is removed. Alter the opacity of this new layer to control how much cast is removed (the image below at right).
If you want to add (rather than remove) a color cast to footage - for example, to unify a series of shots with the same tone or to given the impression they were all lit with the same color gel - place a full-frame solid or shape layer on top, set its color to match your desired tint, and set its Blending Mode to Color. Alter its opacity to control the depth of the tint. If you like, create a gradient rather than use a solid color. To see this last trick in action, click here to watch a video we created on this tinting trick:
Click the figure above to watch a video on using solids or shape layers with modes to colorize footage. Footage courtesy Creative License
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Visual learning based on our popular entry-level book.
Many After Effects users know us for our books Creating Motion Graphics (CMG) and After Effects Apprentice (AEA). CMG is intended as a deep reference for After Effects, while AEA is structured as a series of lessons to help a beginner or part-time user get up to speed more quickly with the key features of the program in a real-world environment.
We’re very excited to be taking the lessons in After Effects Apprentice and recording them as a video training series for lynda.com. Videos allow us to better explain what we’re thinking when we choose a particular tool, effect, or parameter value - it’s like being able to look over our shoulder and listen in on our brain as we work, and better conveys both the technical and creative process we go through. Not being restricted to the page count of a printed book also allows us to expand more into related features and techniques, and actually work through the Idea Corner and Quizzler challenges sprinkled throughout the book. We feel this additional background will make these videos useful both for people learning on their own, and for instructors who use AEA in their class.
Rather than release the entire video series as one exhaustive course, we’re recording each lesson as a self-contained video set. We hope this approach avoids the potential of a beginner feeling overwhelmed by the breadth of After Effects, and allows you to more easily focus on the areas of the program you’re most interested in or need to learn for a particular job. To this end, we’re also taking some of the lessons in the book that covered two disparate features - such as Painting and the Puppet Tool - and breaking them out into separate video courses. Although the most recent edition of AEA was written for After Effects CS4, we’re recording the videos using CS5, and making project files for both CS4 and CS5 available to Premium Users (others can refer to the disc that comes with the current AEA book).
The first three courses were just released on lynda.com:
Pre-Roll, which goes over the user interface as well as how to import sources, manage compositions, and preview as well as render your work.
Basic Animation, which is a classic “first project” in After Effects where you build an animation from scratch - including numerous tips on arranging and keyframing layers.
Advanced Animation, where you will master (after a basic review of keyframes and interpolation types) the Anchor Point, Graph Editor, Motion Sketch (including the Smoother), Auto-Orientation, Roving Keyframes, Motion Blur, and Hold keyframes - all core tools that even some experienced users are not familiar with.
We’ll be adding one or two courses a month. If you are not already a lynda.com subscriber, the introduction as well as a few individual movies from each course are offered free to all. And as a reward for making it all the way to the end of this post, click here to register for a free 7-day all-access pass to lynda.com. Enjoy!
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.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 8 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 8 of CMG5 covers motion blur as well as echo-style effects. Here’s a few tips on these subjects, including using a stock After Effects plug-in to fake motion blur in footage that doesn’t have enough:
Enabling Motion Blur
This first one is well known to experienced users, but often trips up new users: Motion Blur (as well as Frame Blending) needs to be enabled in two places before you see the result in the Comp panel.
You need to enable the Motion Blur switch (the column underneath the icon with the echoed dots) for a layer in order for it to render with motion blur calculated. In the figure above, the first two layers have motion blur enabled; the third layer does not.
You also need to enable the master Motion Blur switch along the top of the Timeline panel to preview motion blur in the Comp panel. Motion blur will be calculated only for those layers that have their individual Motion Blur switches enabled.
Remember that After Effects will only calculate motion blur for layers that are enabled, and that are being moved by animating the Transform properties such as Rotation and Position. The Motion Blur switch will not add blur to previously-rendered or -captured footage (although there’s a workaround for that below…); note that not all effects that create movement will calculate motion blur. If the motion is happening in a precomp, either remember to enable blur for the layers in that precomp, or also enable Collapse Transformations. (Both precomposing and collapsing are covered in later chapters.)
Setting the Amount and Quality of Blur
To change the character of the motion blur, you must open Composition > Composition Settings and click on the Advanced Tab. To see the results of your edits, enable the new-in-CS5 Preview switch in the lower left corner of this dialog (see image at right). There are four values that control blur:
Shutter Angle is the amount of blur, with 360 degrees being a full frame of continuous blur. 180 degrees emulates a standard film camera. To emulate a video or still image camera, take the shutter time (such as 0.002 for 1/500 of a second), divide it by the duration of a frame (such as 0.033 for 29.97 fps), and multiply by 360 (in our example here, the result would be 21.58 degrees).
Shutter Phase decides how much the blur leads or lags the point in time described by the current frame. To center the blur on the current time, set Shutter Phase to minus one-half the Shutter Angle. (Older versions of After Effects set it to 0 degrees, which meant the blur always lagged the action.)
Samples Per Frame controls how many intermediate samples are used to fake continuous blur for 3D layers, Shape Layers, and some effects that support blur. We tend to max this out, unless rendering gets really slow - in that case, back it down until just before you see visible echoes on fast-moving layers.
Adaptive Sample Limit controls how many intermediate samples are used for everything else not covered by Samples Per Frame. Again, we tend to max it out; if you don’t, you might notice echoes on fast-moving objects. In the image at right, the purple object has maximum adaptive blur; the green object has the minimum blur.
Faux Motion Blur
If you receive footage the does not have enough motion blur - such as a 3D render without blur calculated, video footage with a too-fast shutter speed (perhaps shot in Auto mode in daylight - invest in some neutral density filters!), or you just want to create a drugged-out special effect - you can synthesize the blur after the fact. Apply Effect > Time > Timewarp, set Speed to 100, and toggle the Enable Motion Blur switch on. Set the Shutter Angle to taste, and increase the Shutter Samples (the default of 5 is almost always too low, resulting in visible echoes) - 12 is often a reasonable balance between quality and rendering time. Keep on the lookout for sections of your footage appearing to “melt” - this would indicate Timewarp is having trouble processing the footage properly. Better third-party solutions include RE:Vision Effects’ ReelSmart Motion Blur and The Foundry’s Kronos.
On the left is the original DV footage (courtesy Creative License Media Group); on the right is the same shot with 720 degrees of motion blur added courtesy of Timewarp.
Field Rendering
When you field-render a composition, the frame rate is effectively doubled. This in turn halves the duration of each frame. As a result, everything else being equal, the same Shutter Angle will produce half as long of a visible motion blur trail during field rendering than it will with progressive rendering. Oh - and RAM Previews in the Comp panel are always rendered progressively.
If you field-render a composition and the resulting blur looks too weak to you (or your client, who signed off on the low-res progressive-scan proof you emailed them), you might want to double your Shutter Angle just for field rendering. Once upon a time, you could override the Shutter Angle setting in the Render Settings dialog; no more - you will need to go back and manually change the angle in all of your comps (and effects!). Fortunately, Jeff Almasol of redefinery has created a script that makes it easier to change the motion blur settings of multiple comps at once.
Selective Echo
The Echo effect reaches back to the original source file when it renders its result. Also, Effects are calculated before Transformations. This means Echo will not echo any movement or other treatments created by keyframes animation or other effects.
Instead, do your treatments and animation in a precomp. This is represented in the figure at right, where a precomp that contains one baseball animating is fed into a second comp where Echo is then applied.
(Echo works fine on movie layers that capture movement that has already occurred.)
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week. These will give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 7 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 7 of CMG5 covers trimming, splitting, slipping and sequencing layers. Here are a few tips we extracted:
Trimming Tips & Shortcuts
You can trim the in or out point of a layer by dragging the end of the layer bar (the cursor will change to a double arrow, as in the figure at right). The layer bar becomes “empty” to denote the frames that have been trimmed. Add the Shift key as you drag, and the in or out point will snap to the current time indicator along with other events such as markers and keyframes.
The keyboard shortcuts for trimming with this method are so incredibly useful you’ll rarely drag the layer bar ends – plus the shortcuts work across multiple layers. The first shortcut is for Mac users (followed by the Windows shortcut in parentheses). Select the layer(s) you wish to trim, move the time indicator to the frame you want to trim them to, and type:
Trim IN point to current time: Option+[ (Alt+[)
Trim OUT point to current time: Option+] (Alt+])
Trim Comp to Work Area
Layers aren’t the only thing that can be trimmed! To trim the comp to equal the length of the work area, use Composition > Trim Comp to Work Area. This command is also available by right-clicking on the work area bar. (Note that while you can shorten the duration of a comp in Composition > Composition Settings, this always removes frames from the end of the comp. This shortcut allows you to remove excess frames from the beginning of the comp!)
Slip Editing
Keyframes applied to the layer are “attached” to specific frames of the layer, not the comp! (The necessity of this should be obvious: If you drag the layer bar in time, the keyframes often need to go along for the ride.) One of our favorite features in After Effects is slip editing. This allows you to move the content of a layer without moving its keyframes or in and out points in relation to the composition.
To see slip editing in action:
First trim a layer’s in and/or out points and add some keyframes (our example uses Opacity keyframes to fade up and down a layer). Make sure the keyframes are not selected (Shift+F2 is the shortcut to deselect keyframes while keeping a layer selected).
Place the time indicator at a point where this layer has faded all the way up. Now move the cursor somewhere over the “empty” portions of the layer bar (where the bar is grayer), just beyond its in or out points (see figure above). Notice how the cursor changes to a double-ended arrow with lines at the ends – this is the Slip Edit tool. Click and drag the empty layer bar left and right; the in and out points and the Opacity keyframes still happen at the same time in the comp, just a different portion of the clip is used.
There are occasions when you will want some of the keyframes applied to a layer to move in sync with its frames as you perform a slip edit. For example, when you spend a lot of time masking or rotoscoping a movie, you want those mask shapes to be tied to the frames they were created for. After Effects allows you to be selective about which keyframes move and which ones don’t. If you want the keyframes to move (and stay attached to the frames), then select the keyframes first and then use the slip edit technique.
If a layer is filling the entire comp, and you can’t see any “empty” portions of its layer bar, you can still use the slip edit technique. Of course, the layer must be longer than the comp and you also need to trim the excess frames by trimming the out point to the end of the comp (i.e., don’t just let the extra frames overhang the end of the comp). To use Slip Edit in this scenario, press and hold down the Y key to temporarily enable the Pan Behind tool: This will bring up the slip edit cursor regardless of where it is placed over the layer bar. Make your slip edit, and release the Y key to revert to the previously used tool. (If you accidentally changed tools, press V to return to the Selection tool when you are done.)
Sequence Layers Keyframe Assistant
The Sequence Layers Keyframe Assistant will organize layers end to end, in the order in which you select them. It can even add automatic crossfades. The layers can consist of movies or stills, and be different sizes and durations. Two common uses include arranging a number of still images in a sequence, and using it to try out different scene orders with a number of video clips.
To work with Sequence Layers, first set up the layer stack in the order in which you’d like the layers to sequence, either from the top down or the bottom up. Select the layer that will be the first layer in the sequence, then either Shift+click the last layer to select a range, or Command+click (Control+click) to make discontiguous selections. (If you did not pre-stack your layers in the desired order, Command- or Control-click on the layers in the desired order.)
Go to the Animation menu and select Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers; you can alternatively right-click on any layer and access the same command. If you don’t need any overlap between the layers, make sure the Overlap button is unchecked and press OK – the layers will be laid out sequentially along the timeline.
To apply an automatic crossfade (as in our figure above), turn on the Overlap button and set the overlap Duration. You then have the choice to crossfade the Front layer (best when layers completely cover each other, as is the case with full-frame footage), or both the Front and Back layers (best with footage that otherwise would not completely cover each other, such as objects or type). By front and back, After Effects is referring to the stacking order in the comp. Select all layers and press T to reveal the Opacity keyframes that are created.
Splitting Layers
You can split a layer at any point along the timeline, creating two separate layers from one. To see it in action, select any layer, preferably one with keyframes applied; make sure that you can see the keyframes (select the layer and type U if you can’t). Move the time indicator to where you’d like the in point of the second segment to begin, and use either Edit > Split Layer or Command+Shift+D (Control+Shift+D).
before:
after:
Splitting a layer is the equivalent of duplicating a layer, trimming the first layer’s out point, and trimming the second layer’s in point. Look at the In and Out values for the two segments after the split, and note that the second one starts one frame after the first one ends. (To expose the In and Out columns, right-click the top of any other column and enable them). Press U to reveal the keyframes for the new segment, and notice that the keyframes are identical for both layers.
So why and when would you split a layer? The most obvious reason is when you’d like a layer to change places in the stacking order in the middle of a 2D animation, which allows for an object to appear to go both behind another object and then in front of it. You might also need to split a layer when you want to use a transition movie as a track matte for just the beginning of the layer.
One consequence of splitting a layer is that both resulting layers will contain all the keyframes applied to the original layer. However, because these layers, after splitting, are now completely independent, their keyframes will not remain in sync with each other. If you make a change to one layer, you may have to copy and paste the keyframes to the other segment to avoid an animation glitch where the two segments join.
Advanced Technique: If the animation is constantly changing but you need to split the layer sooner rather than later, you might consider precomposing the layer before you split it. Select the layer and Layer > Pre-compose; in the Pre-compose dialog, select the second option (Move All Attributes), and press OK. Now all the animation keyframes will reside in the precomp. Split the layer (now a nested comp layer) in the original comp as many times as necessary. If you need to edit the animation, double-click the nested comp layer to open the precomp, and make your edits there. Any changes you make in the precomp will be updated automatically to all the split segments in the original comp.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (CMG).
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on PVC roughly every week. These give you a taste for the multitude of time-saving tips, not-obvious features, little gotchas, and other insider knowledge you will find in CMG.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects Hidden Gems: Chapter 6 - Layer Essentials
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/08
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 6 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We are in the process of going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5”) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter, including essential tips for new users as well as timesavers that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 6 of CMG5 covers managing multiple layers efficiently, including hot keying, comp and layer markers, and the layer switches. Here’s a small set of tips we extracted:
Option Paste for Current Time
Here’s one we bet most of you didn’t know (Chris actually forgot; Trish had to remind him): Pressing Option on Mac (Alt on Windows) when you select Paste a layer will place the layer’s in point at the current time, not the layer’s original start time. The shortcut is Command+Option+V on Mac (Control+Alt+V on Windows). If you forget to press Option (Alt) when you paste, just press [ (left square bracket) to move the layer’s in point to the current time.
Convert Footage to Layers
If you imported a layered Photoshop or Illustrator file as a single footage item using the Merged Layers option, but later decided you really wish you had access to those individual layers, you can later replace this item with a layered version without having to re-import. Either select the item in the Project panel and use File > Replace Footage > With Layered Comp, or select the layer in a comp and use Layer > Convert To Layered Comp.
Replace Source
Here’s one you won’t want to forget. You spend time animating a layer and are happy with the animation keyframes, effects, and other attributes. But then you decide the source material needs to be changed (you want to swap out the source while keeping everything else). This is called Replace Source, and for some reason it’s nowhere to be found in any menu! Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Select the layer (or multiple layers) you want to replace in the Composition or Timeline panel.
Step 2: In the Project panel, select the source you’d like to use instead.
Step 3: With the Option (Alt) key held down, drag and drop the new source into the Comp or Timeline panel. All the attributes of the previous layer(s) will be assigned to the new source. You can also select the replacement source in the Project panel and use the shortcut Command+Option+/ (Control+Alt+/).
Guide Layers
Guide Layers are layers that appear only in the current composition, but not in compositions further down a chain of nested comps, or (optionally) when you render. Great uses for Guide Layers include scratch audio tracks, grid or letterbox overlays, or FPO (For Position Only) templates such as a station ID bug that will be inserted live during broadcast - place a copy in your comp with Guide Layer enabled, and you’ll remember to leave space for it. You could even write a note to another animator with the Type tool directly in the Comp panel, making sure they can’t accidentally render it by making the text layer a guide layer!
To toggle whether or not a layer is a Guide Layer, select it, and choose Guide Layer from either the Layers menu or by right-clicking on it. A blue grid icon will appear to the left of its name in the Timeline panel when it is a Guide Layer.
In Render Settings, the Guide Layers popup defaults to All Off. You can render Guide Layers by changing this option to Current Settings; only guide layers that are visible will render.
Scroll Layer to Top
When many layers are twirled open and the vertical scroll bar is visible in the Timeline panel, you can select a layer and press X to scroll this layer to the top of the visible area. This does not reorder the layer in the stack; it merely auto-scrolls the panel for you.
If you want to actually move a layer up or down a position in the layer stack, hold Command on Mac (Control on Windows) and use the right and left square bracket keys ] and [ respectively. Add Shift to jump the layer all the way to the top or bottom of the layer stack.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects Hidden Gems: Chapter 5 - Animation Assistance
Chris and Trish Meyer | 01/01
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 5 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
We are in the process of going through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5”) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter, including essential tips for new users as well as timesavers that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 5 of CMG5 covers tricks you can do with keyframes including tips for copying and pasting them; auto-orient rotation; and Keyframe Assistants (such as Motion Sketch, Smoother, Time-Reverse Keyframes, and Exponential Scale) to help you manipulate keyframes. Below is just a sampler:
Things to Do With Keyframes
To expand or contract a group of selected keyframes, in the layer bar view, hold down Option on Mac (Alt on Windows) first, then drag the first or last keyframe, as shown at right.
In the Graph Editor, drag the edge of the selection rectangle that appears around them (right). All selected keyframes will move accordion-style.
Moving and Nudging Motion Paths
To move multiple keyframes (or a motion path) in the Comp panel, first select the keyframes you want to edit, then do one of the following:
Drag one of the selected keyframe icons in the Comp panel; the selected keyframes will move as a group.
Park the current time indicator on one of the keyframes and scrub the value in the Switches column of the Timeline panel. All selected keyframes will move relative to the current keyframe. Be sure the time indicator is parked on one of the selected keyframes; if it isn’t, you will instead just add a new keyframe at that point in time.
You can nudge a layer by using the up/down/left/right cursor keys to move a layer by one screen pixel at a time, or ten screen pixels with Shift pressed. To move a motion path, make sure you are parked on one of the selected keyframes.
Truncated Motion Paths
The Motion Path section of the Display Preferences controls how much of the motion path, or the number of keyframes, are visible at any point in time. The default is to show keyframes for 15 seconds around the current time indicator. However, if the motion path extends over a long duration, the motion path will be cut off – and you’ll have to move in time to see and edit the path. If there are a manageable number of keyframes, change the preference to All Keyframes (probably the most useful option) to avoid motion paths being truncated.
On another project, though, you might have hundreds of keyframes on a motion path that crosses over itself, which makes it difficult to distinguish and select individual keyframes easily. In this case, you might want to limit the number of keyframes, or the time period, to display keyframes only in an area immediately around the current time indicator.
Smoother KF Assistant
The Smoother keyframe assistant is designed to smooth out changes in a property’s values; it does this by replacing selected keyframes with a new set of keyframes, taking into account the Tolerance value. When it’s applied to a layer that was motion sketched (using Animation > Keyframe Assistant > Motion Sketch), it can leave behind a much more editable motion path; it can also be used to lend more of a “steadicam” after creating keyframes using a motion stabilizer. Smoother can be used on other keyframes as well, such as those generated by motion stabilization and tracking, or the Keyframe Assistant > Convert Audio to Keyframes.
Open Window > Smoother and select the keyframes you wish to smooth. Set Smoother to Spatial or Temporal keyframes. Position keyframes in the Comp panel (such as those created by Motion Sketch) are Spatial because their values are on the X and Y axes. Properties that change only over time, such as Opacity, would default to Temporal.
The meaning of the Tolerance value changes depending on what type of keyframes you are editing – for example, when you’re editing Position keyframes, it will define the number of pixels new Position keyframes are allowed to vary from the original path. Larger Tolerance values result in fewer keyframes and therefore generally smoother animation; make sure you don’t overdo it, though – a little goes a long way.
Enter a Tolerance value, click Apply, and RAM Preview the results. If the animation requires further smoothing, Undo and try again with a different setting. Indeed, Undo is your friend here: Even though Smoother is now built into Motion Sketch, we set its value to 0 during sketching in order to capture the maximum amount of data, then smooth after the fact by experimenting to see what value gives us the most desirable result.
Above is keyframes from a motion-sketched spiral before smoothing; below is the motion path after smoothing.
Auto-Orient Rotation
Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient allows you to have your layer rotate to always aim along its motion path. A problem with Auto-Orient is that there’s usually a slight hitch at the beginning and end of the motion path (the layer appears to do a little extra twist). Let’s see how to fix that:
Zoom into the Comp panel and select the first keyframe’s icon for your motion path. In this example, the spatial keyframes are all of the default Auto Bezier type, whose handles are represented by tiny dots that are not connected to the keyframe by handles; if you’ve already edited the path, you will see a handle connecting the keyframe and dot.
The problem is, the handle for the first keyframe may not align with the motion path (as is the case at right), so the layer orients itself at a slightly different angle for the first few frames. This results in a twisting motion for a few frames before the layer straightens itself out. The problem is even more obvious if you have motion blur enabled, as you will see additional blur during this sudden one-frame orientation.
To fix this, drag the handle dot. If it was an Auto Bezier keyframe, a direction line will appear (indicating this is now a Continuous Bezier keyframe). Align the direction line with the motion path. If you can’t see the handle dot, then press and hold down the G key (to temporarily switch to the Pen tool), then click-and-drag on the keyframe icon itself to pull out a new handle. Release the G key to toggle back to the Selection tool.
The motion should be smooth as it exits your first keyframe. Repeat this for your last keyframe as well.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects Hidden Gems: Chapter 4 - Keyframe Velocity
Chris and Trish Meyer | 12/25
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 4 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going to go through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
Chapter 4 of CMG5 helps you to improve your animations by focusing on the timing and speed changes of your movements, including working efficiently with the Graph Editor as well as using Auto-Bezier, Hold and Roving keyframes:
Graph Editor Set
Before you can use the Graph Editor (GE) productively, you have to check the leftmost two popups along the bottom of the GE panel. The first menu sets what properties are shown in the graph editor, and the second determines whether you are viewing the Speed or Value graphs for those properties (Auto-Select Graph Type is a good default).
The default for the first popup is to Show Selected Properties. This works well when you select one property at a time, but making careful selections gets a little unwieldy when you want to compare various properties across multiple layers. And toggling on Show Animated Properties can often display too much information for busy layers! So when you first open the Graph Editor, don’t be surprised if there are no graphs visible (because only the layer is selected and not a property), or there may be so many graphs overlapping each other (because Show Animated Properties is enabled) that you are overwhelmed!
>We think a smart solution is to use the default settings, but to also take advantage of Graph Editor Sets when you need to see multiple properties at once. To add properties to the GE set, toggle on the switch to the right of that property’s stopwatch. This allows you to quickly show and hide graphs without having to select the property – or even to select the layer!
Separate XYZ Dimensions
Normally, After Effects bundles the X, Y, and optionally Z Position values into a single keyframe. However, there are some types of movement – such as balls bouncing (where an object keeps a steady speed in X or Z but keeps changing speed and reversing direction in Y), camera crane + dolly moves (where again the Y movement may be totally independent of what is happening in X and Z), and others – that are much easier to animate if you can get independent access to these dimensions, which you can now do as of After Effects CS4.
Separating these dimensions requires a trip into the Graph Editor and clicking on the special Separate Dimensions button along the bottom of the GE (see figure above). Once they have been separated, you can edit the new independent keyframes in either the Graph Editor (witnessed by the independent red and green graphs above) or the normal timeline display. However, using Separate Dimensions does come with a price: You can no longer directly edit the motion path in the Comp panel; you have to craft your path in the Graph Editor.
Note that you can disable Separate Dimensions by selecting Position and then clicking the Separate Dimensions switch along the bottom of the Graph Editor; After Effects will then approximate your final animation using traditional bundled Position keyframes.
Hold Keyframes
If you don’t know how to make keyframes “hold,” you’re creating extra work for yourself! The Hold keyframe’s job is to not interpolate to the next keyframe. A Hold keyframe takes over the entire segment of time until the next keyframe is reached. At this point, the layer will then immediately jump to its new position or value. Of course, if you want to have a property pause on a value and then continue interpolating to another value, make sure the keyframe directly after the hold keyframe has the exact same value so there is no jump.
Hold keyframes are great for creating more rhythmic animations, and they can be used on any property or effect parameter. To make a keyframe hold in place, select any keyframe and invoke Animation > Toggle Hold Keyframe (shown above). The shortcut is to press Command+Option (Control+Alt) and click directly on a keyframe in the Timeline panel while in the layer (not Graph Editor) view.
Users who haven’t discovered Hold keyframes have devised all sorts of workarounds to make a property’s value hold in place. The most common one involves duplicating the prior keyframe and placing it one frame in time before the next keyframe (as shown at right). There is never (ever, ever) a need to do this! Just select the first keyframe and make it hold!
Simple Smoothing
While you can use the Graph Editor to make gradual and sophisticated velocity graphs, a quick and simple method for smoothing out a property’s motion is to toggle all keyframes from Linear to Auto Bezier (aka “smooth” keyframes). Auto Bezier automatically averages the incoming and outgoing speeds at the keyframe; that way you don’t perceive a drop in speed as the layer rolls through the keyframe.
To see the effect of changing default linear keyframes to Auto Bezier, you’ll need at least three keyframes. Hold down Command on Mac (Control on Windows) and click on one of the middle keyframes in the Timeline. It will change from a diamond to a circle. If the property in question has a motion path (Position, say) the spacing of the dots in the motion path will transition more evenly across that keyframe in the Comp panel. To change all keyframes to Auto Bezier, click on the name of the property in the Timeline panel and then Command (Control) click on one of them. (Note that the first and last keyframes won’t change their behavior but there’s no harm in including them.)
Of course, you can create Auto Bezier keyframes with the Graph Editor forward, and this way you also see a visual representation of what changes are occurring. Compare the following:
Linear keyframe interpolation means the speed of movement can be different entering and exiting a keyframe – thus the discontinuous break in the graph at the keyframe. Note that editing the Bezier handle on one side of a keyframe will have no effect on the other side, as the handles are “broken.”
Option+click (Alt+click) on a keyframe in the Graph Editor to convert it to Auto Bezier, smoothing the speed change through the keyframe. Another benefit is that the Bezier handles are now tied together (“continuous”); moving one side up or down will move the opposite handle.
Roving Keyframes
Because After Effects separates the motion path and path velocity for Position keyframes means that you can create a complex motion path and then create an overall speed across the entire motion path. This is made possible by employing roving keyframes.
To try this out, animate an object around the Comp panel using as many Position keyframes as you like (you need at least three, as the first and last keyframes cannot rove in time).
Open the Graph Editor, check that the second popup along the bottom is set to Auto-Select Graph Type (which displays the Speed Graph for Position). Click on the word Position twice to select all of its keyframes. Then click on the Edit Selected Keyframes button (the diamond icon) along the bottom of the Graph Editor and select Rove Across Time from the menu (you can also right-click on one of the keyframes to bring up the same menu).
Notice what happens to the motion path and the speed graph: The first and last keyframes kept their original timing, but all of the remaining keyframes in-between have changed to yellow dots and slid earlier or later in time as needed to flatten out the graph. RAM Preview and observe how the speed is now constant for the entire path.
Another way to think of roving keyframes is that the layer has various points in space in the Comp panel that it must hit as it travels along the motion path, but the timing of the first and last keyframes determine the time the layer arrives at the intermediate keyframes.
The intermediate keyframes will continue to “rove” in time as needed as you adjust the first and last keyframes. For example, press F9 to Easy Ease them (or click the Easy Ease button along the bottom of the Graph Editor) – now the entire speed graph will be one smooth arc; RAM Preview and the object will smoothly accelerate then decelerate during the course of the entire motion path. You can continue to tweak the Bezier handles on the first and last keyframes, as well as slide them earlier or later in time. For example, select just the last keyframe and slide it later in time, and the same animation will take more time.
Equally important is that you can tweak the motion path: The keyframes will continue to rove across time as needed to smooth out the layer’s velocity along the entire motion path. Try moving individual keyframes in the Comp panel while watching what happens in the Graph Editor.
To disable roving, simply click and drag any one of the roved keyframes, then right-click one and toggle off Rove Across Time from the popup menu. Note you can do this in either the Graph Editor or the normal layer bar view in the Timeline panel. Note that only properties that create a motion path in the Comp or Layer panels, such as Position, Anchor Point, and Effect Point, can be roved.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 3 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As you are probably aware by now, we’re going to go through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
The third chapter in CMG5 shows how to animate a layer’s transformations, as well as mastering motion paths:
Making Points Bigger
After Effects CS5 has a new preference to make keyframe icons and handles easier to select when you’re editing a motion path – especially useful on monitors with more pixels. Open Preferences > General and increase the value for Path Point Size, as shown at right. Note that this also affects the size of mask points and handles.
Temporary Tools
Every tool in the Tools panel has a shortcut to select it, such as G for the Pen tool and Z for the Zoom tool. If you use these shortcuts normally, you’ll find yourself constantly returning to the Selection tool (V) to continue working. So instead of tapping the shortcut key to switch tools, press and hold down the shortcut key to temporarily switch to it. When you release the key, the previous tool (usually the Selection tool) will be automatically reselected. This takes a little practice, but is well worth mastering especially for editing motion paths where you can press G whenever you need to quickly edit handles in the Comp panel with the Pen tool (see the figure at right).
Note that this is also useful for temporarily switching to the Selection tool when you are using any other tool; press and hold down the V key to use the Selection tool temporarily, then when you release the V key you will return to the tool previously in use. (Note: An exception is when you are creating text with the Type tool: pressing V will insert a string of “vvvvvv”s in your title! When using the Type tool, press the Command key to temporarily toggle to the Selection tool to move your text block.)
Sticky Shift
Pressing the Shift key after you start dragging the current time indicator makes it “stick” as it passes over keyframes, in and out points, comp and layer markers, and so on. This helps avoid a common beginner mistake where you might navigate to keyframes by dragging the current time indicator. If you miss by a frame, then edit the layer, you’ll have two keyframes one frame apart – and a likely glitch in your animation (see figure at right).
Another way to avoid this error is to use the left and right arrows in the Keyframe Navigator (circled in red) to navigate among keyframes. The state of the Keyframe Navigator indicates whether the current time indicator is positioned exactly on a keyframe (the keyframe icon is yellow) or between keyframes (icon is gray).
Editing Keyframes Numerically
To bring up a dialog to edit keyframes numerically, right-click on a value in the Timeline panel to get the Edit Value option or double-click an existing keyframe. For instance, the options dialog allows you to enter values using various criteria such as Pixels, % of Source, or % of Composition.
As an example, if you wish to set the anchor point back to the center of a layer, right-click on its value in the Timeline panel and select Edit Value. In the Anchor Point dialog, set the Units popup to % of Source, then set both the X and Y values to 50 (see figure at right).
What You See is Up to You!
When you are editing many layers and twirl down all their parameters in the Timeline panel, you’ll quickly find yourself running out of screen real estate and having to scroll up and down. To only reveal certain parameters, you can use the following shortcuts for selected layer(s):
Property shortcut key: The most-used properties have their own shortcut key to reveal them in the Timeline. For instance, select a group of layers and press P to reveal their Position properties. Inside After Effects, select Help > Keyboard Shortcuts, then scroll down to “Showing properties and groups in the Timeline panel.”
Über key: Pressing U for a selected layer, or layers, twirls down all properties that have their stopwatches set, while UU (two Us in quick succession) also twirls down properties that have changed from their default settings.
Solo Selected: To reduce the number of properties revealed in the Timeline for a particular layer, select just the parameters you wish to see and press SS (two Ss in quick succession) to solo them. This is especially useful when you wish to solo parameters that don’t have their own shortcuts, such as effect parameters.
Hide Parameters: To hide parameters in the Timeline panel, press Option+Shift on Mac (Alt+Shift on Windows) and click on their names. Again, this is very handy for hiding effect parameters that you don’t intend to edit. To reveal these hidden parameters, simply twirl up the effect and twirl it down again.
QuickSearch: The Timeline panel’s QuickSearch dialog (added in After Effects CS4) also enables you to reveal select parameters based on their name. For example, type “wigg” to reveal only those layers with a parameter called “wiggle” or “wiggly” applied, or type “Direction” to reveal all effects with a Direction parameter. Remove the search term to return to displaying all layers again.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 2 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
As we mentioned last week, we’re going to go through our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) and pulling out a few “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
The second chapter in CMG5 covers the layout of the Composition, Timeline and Layer panels, creating Solid layers, RAM Previewing, and shortcuts for navigating in time and space:
Get Snappy
When you add a new layer by drag-and-dropping it to the Composition panel, it will initially try to snap to the comp’s edges and center. To make an already-placed layer snap to the edges of a comp or its center, press Command+Shift on Mac (Control+Shift on Windows) after you start dragging it around in the Comp panel. New in CS5: The Align panel has added Align to Composition options to help you snap layers to the center and sides.
Add Layer Power Drag
You can drag footage from the Project panel to the left side of the Timeline panel; this allows you to place it anywhere in the layer stack. What’s not so obvious is that if you drag it to the timeline area under the ruler (see figure below), you can also choose to start it at any point in time by dragging it left and right. If you are adding a source that has a fixed duration (such as a movie or a precomp), the Info panel will update in real time showing the in point and duration. (Still images, solids, shape layers, and text layers have infinite duration by default.)
When dragging a new source to the Timeline panel, you can decide where it starts in time by carefully placing it along the timeline in the right side of the panel. You can also place it between existing layers: Note the black horizontal line, which indicates where the new source will be added in the stack. A second yellow time marker (circled in red) follows you as you drag, and the time display (also circled) updates to show the new layer’s in point.
Side-by-Side View
When you have multiple comps open and want to see them side by side, you can use this handy shortcut: Select the Comp panel and press Command+Option+Shift+N on Mac (Control+Alt+Shift+N on Windows). This splits the frame containing the active viewer and creates a new viewer on the right that is locked. Selecting a different tab in the Timeline panel will load that comp into the unlocked left viewer. This is particularly handy when working with a chain of nested comps, but you can also use the left viewer to display the Layer or Footage panels. The Always Preview This View button (where the cursor is pointing in the figure above) determines which comp renders when you RAM Preview.
RAM Preview Options
To initiate a RAM Preview, press 0 on the extended keypad or click on the RAM Preview button in the Preview panel. RAM Preview defaults to playing every frame at the comp’s frame rate, at its current resolution.
There is a second set of RAM Preview options available: Click on the RAM Preview Options popup menu and select Shift+RAM Preview Options to reveal them (see figure at above right). Hold down Shift when you press 0 or click on the RAM Preview button, and these alternate parameters will be used. It’s common to set up the Shift+RAM Preview Options for faster processing – for example, setting Skip to 1, which means After Effects will calculate and play back only every other frame, cutting your waiting time in half.
After Effects CS5 has added an Alternate Preview option. Pressing Option (Alt) when initiating a RAM Preview will play just the five frames before the current time indicator. This is handy if you just want to check “edge chatter” while keying or using the new Roto Brush, for example. The number of frames may be edited in Preferences > Previews.
Mac laptop users have recently been thwarted from taking advantage of these shortcuts, as newer laptops don’t have function key equivalents for the numeric keypad. CS5 fixed that too: You can now hold down Control (Mac only) and press 0 to initial a RAM preview. The Control key works for some other useful numeric keypad equivalents too - for example, Control+8 will place a marker (8 and * sharing the same key); Control + period will start an audio-only preview.
Option/Alt Button Clicks
Along the bottom of the Composition and Layer panels are buttons with drop-down menus offering various options. A couple of them have handy shortcuts:
For instance, you can Option+click (Alt+click) on the Choose Grid and Guide Options button to toggle the Title/Action Safe areas on/off (see figure at right).
Similarly, you can Option+click (Alt+click) on the Show Channel & Color Management button to toggle on/off the Alpha channel display.
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A selection of “hidden gems” from Chapter 1 of Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
Our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects 5th Edition (“CMG5” for short) is not a quick read: It contains 768 printed pages, plus another 160 pages of bonus chapters on the accompanying disc. Although we put a lot of effort into the Table of Content and Index, there will inevitably be a few tips, tricks, gotchas, factoids, and shortcuts you might have missed. Therefore, we’re going to go through CMG5 and pull out a few quick-to-read “hidden gems” from each chapter. These will include both essential tips for new users, as well as timesaving gems that experienced users may not be aware existed.
The first chapter in CMG5 is an overview of After Effects itself, so this first batch of tips will be focused on the user interface and working with source files:
Finding Missing Files
If you open a project that has missing footage, those items will be displayed in italics. To easily find the missing items in a busy Project panel with lots of folders, type “missing” into the QuickSearch field at the top of the Project panel (this field was introduced in After Effects CS4). Only missing items will be shown; double-click the first one to relink it to the file on your hard drive, and other missing items in the same location will also be relinked.
Importing & Merging Projects
You can import an entire project into the current project. After Effects will copy the links to the imported project’s source files as well. This is a handy way to duplicate a complex chain of nested comps, though you might want to apply File > Consolidate All Footage afterwards to remove the duplicate sources. You can also create a blank project and import any number of project files in order to render them as a batch; their respective Render Queues will be imported as well.
Maximize Frame
To expand the current panel or frame to fill the entire Application window, press ~ (the tilde key). This is useful for quickly expanding the Timeline when you are using the Graph Editor, or whenever you want a detailed view of a panel. Press ~ again to return to your previous arrangement.
Browse to Import
Instead of using the age-old File > Import menu option, use File > Browse, which launches Adobe Bridge where you can sort and rename images, as well as preview QuickTime movies. To import one or more files from Bridge into After Effects, select them and either press Enter or Return, or press Command+O on Mac (Control+O on Windows).
Close All Comps
To close multiple comps quickly, use “Close All Comps” from the popup menu at the top of the Composition panel. This also closes all the accompanying Timeline panel tabs. Don’t click the small “x” on the right side of the Composition panel’s tab to close all comps: This closes the Comp panel itself and collapses your workspace (same goes for closing the last tab in the Timeline panel).
Trish and Chris Meyer share seventeen-plus years of real-world film and video production experience inside their now-classic book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects.
The 5th edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the new features introduced in both After Effects CS4 and CS5. New chapters cover the revolutionary new Roto Brush feature, as well as mocha and mocha shape. The 3D section has been expanded to include working with 3D effects such as Digieffects FreeForm plus workflows including Adobe Repoussé, Vanishing Point Exchange, and 3D model import using Adobe Photoshop Extended. The print version is also accompanied by a DVD that contains project files and source materials for all the techniques demonstrated in the book, as well as over 160 pages of bonus chapters on subjects such as expressions, scripting, and effects.
We will be pulling a few “hidden gems” out of each chapter to share on ProVideoCoalition.com roughly every week.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
A linked list of the 12 installments in our series on Expressions in After Effects.
This year we’ve been taking the Bonus Chapter on Expressions from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects and serializing as a set of 12 articles. Now that all 12 parts have been posted, we though it would be useful to provide a central index to the whole series:
Other Useful Math Expressions - including rounding, absolute value, clamping, modulus, and sine and cosine (for moving in circles), plus a sidebar on converting between radians and degrees.
Deeper into Arrays - including a review of arrays and dimensions, more advanced vector and array math, plus the length and lookAt expressions.
Space Conversions - how to translate position values between layer, comp, and world spaces, which are especially useful for mixing parenting and expressions.
Comp, Footage, and Layer Attributes - techniques for automatically finding the size and frame rate of comps and layers, plus time conversions.
Managing Time - setting up delayed animations using valueAtTime, using indexing to change a layer’s values based on its index in the Timeline, finding the rate at which a value changes, and triggering animations based on markers.
Making Decisions - our most complex subject, including if/then/else statements for animation decisions and error checking, do/while loops to create “simulation” animations, and sidebars on equivalence tests, accumulating values inside loops, and formatting expressions.
Going for a Loop - causing animations or footage to loop by repeating already-placed keyframes or segments of time.
Wiggly World - exploring the wonderful wiggle expression method in detail, including how to control the amount of wiggle.
Random Numbers - creating random values, including the differences between random, gaussRandom, and noise, changing seed values, and freezing animations.
Dreaming in Color - including tricky RGB-to-HSL conversions, and some ideas for controlling master colors across entire projects.
Expressive Text - using expressions to control Source Text, plus explaining the text engine’s Expression Selector. We end with some suggestions for other resources including books on Expressions and JavaScript.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 12: Expressive Text
Chris Meyer | 11/28
In this final installment in our series, we’ll demonstrate several ways to manipulate numbers and text using expressions.
Finally, we’d like to demonstrate ways to use expressions to manipulate text created with the new Type tool. We’ll show how to display time and parameter values as text, both for diagnostic purposes and to create graphical elements. On the second page we’ll show to how to manipulate strings of text, including using the Buzz Words animation preset to cycle through words in a list. Then on the last page we’ll talk about the Expression Selector to animate text created with the Type tool.
We admittedly will just scratch the surface here; you can then go much further employing standard JavaScript text “string” methods such as toUpperCase (although you cannot use JavaScript text formatting methods such as .bold and .fontsize on Source Text – you will just see the resulting HTML code, rather than re-style the After Effects text).
Type Tool Overview
To use expressions with text, you need to have some familiarity with the Type tool (covered in Chapter 21 of the latest edition of our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects). As a starting point, you will need to create a text layer: Press Command+T on Mac (Control+T on Windows) to select the Type tool; adjust the Character and Paragraph panels for the font type, color, and size you want to use; click in the Comp panel; and type away. You can type anything right now for your text; we’ll be replacing it with expressions. Press Enter to accept what you’ve typed, and press V to revert to the normal Selection tool. (You can select the text layer any time later and change its formatting with the Character and Paragraph panels.)
Then twirl open the parameters for the text layer you’ve created in the Timeline panel, exposing Source Text (as shown below), which most of our examples here will be for. You can replace Source Text with a one-dimensional number, or with a “string of characters” (which need to be inside quotes to be recognized). If After Effects cannot process what you’ve created with your expression, it will display the word “undefined” in the Comp panel, or in some cases it will display the HTML code for what the JavaScript is trying to create.
Numbers to Text
One of the easiest things to do is have After Effects display a number you’ve generated, such as a Position or Rotation value. Aside from creating graphic displays, this provides an excellent tool for debugging expressions: It lets you display a value or string you are working on to see what your expression is really doing inside.
In our example below, we Option+clicked (Alt+clicked) on Source Text and dragged its pick whip to the value for Y Position. (Note that Source Text has one dimension, where Position has two dimensions – so you need to explicitly pick which dimension you want. See the third installment on arrays for a refresher course as to how and why.) Scrub the time indicator while watching the Position value in the Timeline panel and the result in the Comp panel. After Effects keeps a lot of internal precision when calculating values – and you get to see all that precision displayed, as seen below:
The purple value on the left shows the full numeric precision After Effects carries internally for Position; the green value on the right is the result of rounding it down to one decimal place.
Quite often, you want to display only some of this precision. When you’re using a plug-in like Effect > Text > Numbers, you get to choose how many decimal points you want to see. With expressions, you need to do a little more work: You need to multiply the value to get all the digits you want to keep to the left of the decimal point, use the Math.round method (as discussed in the first installment on useful math expressions) to get rid of the leftover digits, then divide the result by the same amount to move the original numbers back to their correct place to the right of the decimal point. To display just one digit to the left of the decimal point for Y Position, we needed to multiply the original value by 10, round it, then divide by 10, yielding the expression Math.round(position[1]*10) / 10.
For numeric displays, it is often good to use a font that keeps the same spacing per character, such as Courier or Monaco. Using fonts with proportional spacing will result in the displayed text changing width as the number being displayed changes.
Timecode
After Effects includes as set of expression methods that can convert the current time in a comp to either a timecode or a feet+frame format that Source Text can display, as shown at left. These expression methods include:
timeToTimecode, which converts time (in seconds) to SMPTE timecode
timeToNTSCTimecode, with switches for Drop Frame and Non-Drop timecode
timeToFeetAndFrames, which converts time to this common film ¬display format
timeToCurrentFormat, which uses the format chosen in File >
Project Settings > Display Style
As with many advanced methods, there are a variable number of values that may be contained inside parentheses that follow the method’s name. You must include at least the first one, which is time. If you use the word time – as in timeToTimecode(time) – After Effects will use the comp’s current time. (All of the After Effects time conversion methods ignore the Start Timecode or Frame value in Composition Settings; this setting is used only for display purposes in the Comp and Timeline panels. Inside expressions, the first frame of the comp always equals 0.0 seconds, and frame number 0.)
In the methods timeToFeetAndFrames() and timeToCurrentFormat(), the second value is the frames per second (fps) rate; if you don’t enter it, After Effects will use the comp’s frame rate. In timeToTimecode(), the second value is the timecode’s timebase (24, 25, or 30); if you don’t enter it, After Effects will use 30 (not the setting in File > Project Settings). In timeToNTSCTimecode(), the second value asks whether you want to use the Drop Frame counting method: Enter true if you do, and false if you want to use Non-Drop counting (the default).
The method timeToFeetAndFrames() has a third value which represents the number of frames in a foot of film; it defaults to the 35mm value of 16. Finally, the last number for all of these methods helps After Effects decide how to round numbers: If it might be negative, enter true so After Effects will always round away from 0; don’t bother entering it if the value displayed is always a positive number.
The timecode methods, among other things, can be used to create your own “burn in” timecode or feet+frame numbers for footage – or just cool numeric readouts.
Note that in earlier versions, After Effects could sometimes get in a state where the result generated by timeToNTSCTimecode would go awry just before the one hour mark. This is apparently fixed now. If you still manage to experience this problem, open the Comp settings, change the frame rate to 30 fps, click OK, open the Comp settings again, and change it back to 29.97 fps.
Take advantage of those auto-generated low-resolution proxy files to speed up your work before rendering.
Many people like to shoot RED source footage these days, even if the final destination is lower-resolution video. I agree, it’s nice to have all of those extra pixels to play with - except when you have to actually read them off disk and process them in order to see a frame in a program like Adobe After Effects. Well, After Effects has a little-known feature called footage proxies that can speed up your workflow up until it’s time to render.
When the RED camera records, it saves a master .R3D media file(s), plus a set of .MOV files with _F, _H, _M, and _P appended to the end of the file name. These are QuickTime reference movies which point to the master .R3D file, and generate full, half, medium, and quarter (petite?) resolution versions on the fly.
In order to open and read these .MOV files, you need to first install the free RED QuickTime codec, which can be downloaded from RED’s website as part of the RED Final Cut Studio Installer. These lower-resolution proxy files can then be read and processed much faster than the full-resolution original.
To assign these proxies in After Effects CS5, first import the .R3D file into your project. Then, with this original file selected, select File > Set Proxy > File (you can also right-click the file and get a mini contextual menu with this option, as seen at the top of this page). Navigate to the same folder as contained the .R3D file, and select one of the .MOV files, such as the one that ends in _M for quarter resolution.
You will now see both the original and proxy files listed at the top of the Project panel; a small box will also appear to the left of the file’s name. When the box is filled in, After Effects will use the proxy instead of the original file. You can toggle this box on and off to switch between the proxy and original:
Although there is overhead involved in reading the original file and generating the proxy, in the case of the _M version After Effects will now have only 1/16 as many pixels to process (one quarter the pixels in the width times one quarter of the lines in the height), and in the case of a 4k source, you will still have 1k resolution to view while you work - akin to working with 1920x1080 HD at Half Resolution, which is common. The downsides are that the proxy has just 8 bit per channel (bpc) color resolution compared to 32 bpc, and while the proxy is enabled, the RED Settings in the Interpret Footage dialog will be ignored:
To access the RED R3D Source Settings for a RED clip, right-click the .R3D file in the Project panel, select Interpret Footage > Main, and click the More Options button near the bottom of the dialog that opens.
Footage courtesy of Alex Lindsay/Pixel Corps.
If you want to use the original, full-resolution, optionally-tweaked .R3D file when you render, open the Render Settings from the Render Queue for the composition in question, and set the Proxy Use popup to either Use No Proxies or Use Comp Proxies Only (the latter allows you to assign a pre-rendered movie to temporarily sit in for an entire composition - very handy for managing render-intensive comps):
Of course, you can always choose the Current Settings option, and keep a careful eye on the status of the proxy switch in the Project panel - but that’s just asking for trouble when you’re trying to set up a render at 2 AM so you can finally go home and catch oh-too-little sleep before the delivery deadline tomorrow (smile). Either way, remember you can save the Proxy Use setting for the template; just remember to set it for the templates you use under Edit > Templates > Render Settings.
This footage proxy feature has been around for ages, by the way - it was originally added as a way to handle film frames and other large source material back in the days when computers and hard drives were much slower. We would create compressed video-resolution QuickTimes from the film footage, and link to those as footage proxies to speed up the film workflow. It’s funny that the more things seem to change, the more they stay the same (or are just variations on the way things were before).
(By the way, this tip was first mentioned in a sidebar at the bottom of page 718 in our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects, 5th Edition. We also discuss working with RED footage in Chapter 26 on Color Management.)
Obligatory FTC disclosure: We have no connection whatsoever with RED. We’ve worked with After Effects since Day 0.9. Yes, Adobe takes care of us when it comes to software. No, they didn’t ask me to write this piece; I did it because Trish had some clients she was training last week who were looking for a more efficient workflow with their RED footage, and we thought others might benefit from this tip as well. Isn’t that what a blog is really supposed to be for?
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
This underutilized, recently-added feature provides numerous ways to enhance your footage.
As a motion graphics artist, one of our favorite tricks to enhance an uninspiring clip is not to use effects, but instead to combine it with other clips using Blend Modes (also known as Blending, Composite, or Transfer Modes). Modes provide simple, high-quality ways to drop out the black or white background in a clip, enhance its saturation and contrast, give it a tint, and add lighting effects or a filmic glow in post. I call it our “secret sauce” to create rich, layered imagery you don’t normally see created in an editing program.
Happily, Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 added support for Blend Modes, allowing editors to enjoy these sexy results without having to set them up first in After Effects. In this article, I will show you how to apply Blend Modes in Premiere Pro CS5, what sort of results are typical for different groups of modes, and give you some application ideas.
Applying Modes
Blend Modes contain different algorithms to combine the pixels of one clip in hopefully interesting ways with the pixels of one or more clips underneath.
The first trick to using Blend Modes in Premiere Pro is finding them, as they’re not accessed from the timeline as they are in After Effects or Final Cut Pro.
Select the clip you wish to set the mode for (remember: it must be the one in the upper video track), and open its Effect Controls panel. Click on the arrow to the left of Opacity to twirl open this section, and you will find the Blend Mode popup menu as seen at left. It defaults to Normal, which provides the typical Opacity blend you see during a crossfade.
Underneath the hood, when the Blend Mode is set to Normal the algorithm is “take my pixel color values, multiply them by my Opacity value, and add them to the color values of the corresponding pixels underneath multiplied by the opposite of my Opacity (i.e. 100% minus my opacity value).” Interesting things happen when you use a little more complex math to combine the images.
Below is the clip we wish to enhance. There’s certainly nothing wrong with it - it’s well-shot and nicely composed - but we can tell an even more interesting story with it if we added some mood lighting or filtering to it:
Next are four different clips we going to explore for providing the desired enhancement. Defocused, slow-moving footage with interesting lighting effects or shadows often provide excellent source material for mode tricks; the first two clips below are examples of these (full disclosure: the second clip is part of a collection I created for Artbeats), and is a concept to keep in the back of your mind when you’re out shooting B-roll. The third clip was selected to show off how modes treat blacks and whites. The fourth clip is a blurred version of the original: Applying a treated clip on top of itself using modes can create all sorts of interesting lens and filter effects, with the flexibility of creating them in post rather than in-camera (or on-lens) during the shoot.
In order: clips T307-07H, LAB128H, UM243H, and a copy of GU127H1 (with 60 pixels of blur applied to the original 1080p clip), all courtesy of Artbeats.
Opacity Blend (Normal Mode)
For reference, let’s start by looking at the result of the Normal Opacity blend you may be used to. In each of the figures below, the “enhancement” clip was placed above the original clip, and set to 50% Opacity:
Interesting…but note that in most cases, the result lacks contrast and clarity, and is otherwise missing the visual “pop” you might hope for. In the following pages, we’ll go in search of that “pop” by setting the enhancement clip’s Opacity back to 100%, and trying out different modes.
A Better Luma Key
Many special effects - such as lens flares, stock footage of explosions, and so forth - are shot against a black background. When presented with such a clip, many editors reflexively reach for the Luma Key effect to drop out the black. The result is often an unsightly black fringe around the desired portion of the shot. Fortunately, some Blend Modes provide an alternative to luma keying, often yielding cleaner and more interesting results.
Here are the two shots we wish to composite - a tank, and a fireworks explosion:
To its credit, Premiere Pro’s Luma Key effect provides better results than most straight out of the box; its result is shown below at left. A typical result I see out of other programs is shown below at right:
Now let’s try the same composite using Blend Modes. Linear Dodge (Add) - shown below at left - essentially adds the pixel values of the clip it is set for to the pixel values of the clip underneath. Since black has a pixel value of zero, these areas of the clip on top add nothing to the corresponding areas of the clip underneath, leaving it unchanged. The result is more akin to adding light to a scene, compared to just layering one clip on top of another. Notice the improved clarity, as well as the more realistic overexposed look of the result. The Blend Mode group that contains Linear Dodge contains other variations on this theme, including Color Dodge (below right):
If there is one thing I hope you take away from this article, it’s that you will no longer automatically reach for the Luma Key effect when presented with footage shot against black - you can often get a better result using a Blend Mode.
next page: Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Linear Light, and Vivid Light modes
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 11: Dreaming in Color
Chris Meyer | 11/07
Using expressions to choose, modify, or create master colors.
The next-to-last subject we’re going to cover is manipulating color inside expressions. This is powerful, as so much of graphics is about color, and also because it is very handy to set up a master color on one layer and then have a large number of other layers or effects look to this master – a great way to accommodate sweeping client changes at the last minute.
Ground Rules
One of the main points to know about color in expressions is that color swatches and pickers define color as RGB (red/green/blue) values. However, it is usually easier to manipulate color in the HSL (hue/saturation/lightness) domain. Fortunately, After Effects has a pair of color conversion methods: rgbToHsl and hslToRgb (which we’ll be discussing in greater detail in just a second).
Secondly, color is an array, akin to position or scale. To access the “R” value in RGB, you would use a statement similar to my_rgb[0]; to pick the “S” value in HSL, you would use a statement akin to my_hsl[1].
The third main point to understand is that color values inside expressions range between 0 and 1 rather than 0 to 255, or 0° to 359° for hue. A white color swatch would have a value of 1,1,1 inside expressions, not 255,255,255. Related to this is that the hue value cannot exceed 1; you cannot keep wrapping around the color wheel. Therefore, if you are going to be altering hue inside an expression, you will need to use the modulus math operator %mentioned at the start of this series to wrap it back in bounds. This usually requires just adding a line to your expression, akin to corrected_hue = my_hsl[0] % 1.
The final point – which can cause unexpected errors when you’re working with color expressions – is that both RGB and HSL value arrays have a fourth dimension: alpha (in other words, they are really RGBA and HSLA arrays). You cannot set the alpha strength with a color picker or swatch, but expressions will break if you don’t place at least a dummy number (a good number is 1, for a fully opaque alpha) in this fourth dimension of an array that holds a color value.
Mastering Color
Our first example employs an example of expressions that manipulate a master color for multiple layers in a comp. The layer master_color below has a Color Control expression controller applied to it. The text layers in this comp have been expressed to use the same Fill color as defined by this master color – we just used the pick whip to assign these:
Let’s say you and the client have agreed on a scheme in which the drop shadows for the text have a complementary color (a hue shift of 180°) at only 40% of the lightness of the text, as pictured at left. After enabling expressions for the Drop Shadow’s Shadow Color, setting up a variable called in_rgb, and dragging the pick whip to our master Color Control to assign it, we then added these lines:
The first line of this expression converts the RGB color to HSL.
The second line adds 0.5 to the hue value (the first dimension of our color array, or in_hsl[0]), and uses the modulus operator % to wrap around the resulting value to stay within the 0–1 range. We chose to add 0.5 because we wanted a 180° hue shift, and 180 ÷ 360 = 0.5.
The third line creates our new lightness value by grabbing its value out of our color array (in_hsl[2]) and multiplying it by 0.4 to scale it 40%.
The fourth line plugs our new hue and lightness values into a color array, while keeping the original saturation (in_hsl[1]) and alpha (in_hsl[3]) values intact.
The fifth line converts our modified color back to RGB, which is what the Shadow Color parameter expects.
After creating this expression for one layer, we copied and pasted the Fill and Drop Shadow effects - with expressions - to the other text layers. As a result, changing the Color Control will affect the fill and shadow of all the layers automatically.
If we wanted to be really clever, we could add Effect Controls to master_color to allow us to interactively set all of these color adjustments for Shadow Color. This is what we’ve done below:
A series of Expression Controls (each renamed to start with the word “set_”) provide a user interface for us to adjust how our shadow color is derived from our master color. We used the pick whip to connect the Fill effect for each text item to set_master, and to connect their Shadow Color to out_shadow color.
Yes, we know it would be easier to just precompose the title layers and apply one Drop Shadow effect to the group, but we’re trying to teach a concept here! Remember that you can use the pick whip to connect expressions across different comps. This means you can set up a set of master color controls in one comp, and wire all of your other comps to this master comp. Change the colors in this master comp, and all of your other wired comps will follow automatically. Just don’t tell the clients – they’ll take this as an opportunity to sit in your studio and play with different color combinations until you fall asleep!
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 10: Random Numbers
Chris Meyer | 10/02
How to gain finer control over randomness.
Last month, I discussed using the wonderful wiggle expression to add randomization to your animations. However, wiggle is but one specialized application of random number generation. For those who like take the lid off and truly get under the hood, After Effects also includes the methods random, gaussRandom, and noise. In this installment I’ll also discuss changing random seed values (patterns of randomness), and how to freeze randomness in its tracks.
Degrees of Randomness
The wiggle expression is good at adding some randomization to values or animations you’ve already created. But sometimes, you just need a random number all by itself to factor into an expression. That’s where the random and gaussRandom expression methods come in.
There are several variations on the random theme, depending on how you want to set the range of possible values. The simple random() expression (yes, you need to type the parentheses, even if you don’t want to enter a number) produces a different value between 0 and 1 on every frame. At the other end of the scale is random(min_val, max_val) where you can enter two sets of coordinates you want to randomize between – say, two different Position arrays. If you forget what variations of random are available, look under the Random Numbers submenu in the expression language menu for a reminder:
The random method produces truly random numbers. If you want numbers that are more closely clustered to a central value, try the gaussRandom method. Whereas random() produces any value between 0 and 1, gaussRandom() produces values that are generally closer to 0.5, but that can occasionally stray as far as –0.1 and 1.1.
Below is a simple example that demonstrates the difference between the two. This comp contains two Text > Numbers effects, with random(0,100) applied to the Value of one layer, and gaussRandom(0,100) applied to the Value of the other. If you were to step through through the comp, you would notice that the gaussRandom version would stay closer to 50, but would also occasionally go below 0 and above 100 - as shown in the example below (random is on top; gaussRandom is on bottom):
A special case of random numbers is the noise method: Rather than creating a stream of chaotic numbers as random or gaussRandom do, noise can create flowing streams of connected numbers using what’s known as Perlin noise (the same thing used to create fractal noise, automatic clouds, and so forth). However, it is a bit difficult to get your head wrapped around; for one, it doesn’t auto-animate - you have to drive it along its path at your desired rate.
The noise() method outputs a random number between –1 and +1 that changes based on the number inside the (). If you make very small incremental changes in the number inside () from frame to frame, the output of noise() will also change slowly, following a wandering path akin to the way wiggle() or the text engine’s Wiggly work. The faster the number changes inside (), the more chaotic (or “noisy”) the output will appear.
To the right is an image created using the Write-On effect plus the noise() method to draw two lines. The yellow line is a normal straight line; the red line has been offset by noise using the following expression:
noise_result = noise(time/2);
offset = noise_result * 75;
value + [offset, offset]
For a slowly changing number to feed noise, I decided to use time: the current time in the comp, in seconds. To slow down the rate of change even more, I divided time by 2. Using a larger number to divide by would mean the result of the time expression would change more slowly, resulting in a more slowly undulating line.
The second line of the expression boosts the –1 to +1 output from noise to a larger number so I can see its result; the third line adds this result to the normal value of Write-On’s Brush Position. As noise creates a one-dimensional result (i.e. only in the X dimension), and position values have two dimensions (X and Y), I added the noise result to both dimensions of Brush Position to get a more interesting line.
What makes noise even more interesting is that you can feed it a one-, two-, or three-dimension array to drive it along; changes in each dimension affect the answer noise gives you. Again, very small changes mean the results will be very similar; larger changes mean more chaotic results.
In the example at right, I created five lines using Write-On and noise, feeding noise a combination of time (as I did above) plus the Y position of the solid that holds the line (which increases with each lower line) - akin to changing the second line of the expression above to offset = noise([time/2, position[1]]). The result looks like the lines are waving in the breeze or wandering in 3D space.
Background courtesy Digital Vision/Music Mix
Freezing Chaos
The random number methods “seed” themselves to produce different results depending on the time, as well as internal information for a layer. Unlike the wiggle expression which self-randomizes based on its layer index, if you move a layer with a random method to a different index (layer number) in the Timeline panel, it will still produce the same numbers at the same times – you need to duplicate it (create a new layer object) to get a different set of numbers due to the fact that After Effects assigns a new internal layer ID that is different from the index.
Another way to provide a different seed to the random functions is to precede them with the seedRandom(n) method. Change the value of n to produce a different stream of numbers. For example, using seedRandom(index) varies the random number sequence depending on the layer’s number in the Timeline panel.
The seedRandom method has a second parameter – timeless – that decides whether the random or gaussRandom methods that follow change on every frame. Inserting seedRandom(10, false) or just seedRandom(10) before the normal random method produces a new number every frame; writing seedRandom(10, true) produces a single number that stays constant for every frame. To change the random number that is produced, change the seed – in this example, the number 10. You can replace the words true and false with the values 1 and 0, respectively.
This timeless parameter gives you a technique to control precisely when the random number methods produce a new value. Say you wanted the Opacity of a layer to change randomly between 25% and 100% every second. You could take the value time, and use a math function we discussed earlier in this series – Math.floor(time) – to round it down to the nearest whole second. That means its value would change only every second. Plug that in for the random seed, set the timeless flag to true, and you get an animation that blinks to a new value every second. That final expression (applied to Opacity) is:
seedRandom(Math.floor(time), true);
random(25,100)
A trio of spheres set to randomlize opacity using the expression above.
Background courtesy Digital Vision/Whacked Up Urban Funk
Another useful expression method is posterizeTime(fps). Make this the first line in your expression, and now the entire expression will only be executed at the rate defined by the frames per second value inside the (); the output of the expression will stay constant between changes.
Next Installment: Dreaming in Color
Enough with random numbers; time to turn our attention to the wonderful world of color. In the next installment I’ll unravel the tricky RGB-to-HSL conversions, plus discuss some ideas for controlling master colors across entire projects. Until then…
We’re in the process of serializing the Deeper Modes of Expression bonus chapter from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects into a set of 12 posts here on PVC.
The latest edition of Creating Motion Graphics - covering the updates introduced in After Effects CS4 and CS5 - is shipping now.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Adding imperfections can make graphics more compelling to watch.
Nothing is more boring that having to keyframe supposedly random movements. Fortunately, there’s a simple, powerful expression that can add randomization to virtually any parameter for you: wiggle. Here we’ll explain how to apply the basic wiggle expression, and then add finer degrees of control to it.
Wiggly World
Many users of After Effects (including those who have been avoiding expressions) may be familiar with the Wiggler keyframe assistant. Wiggler creates new keyframe values from scratch, which are variations on two or more originally-selected keyframes. By contrast, the wiggle expression creates offsets from the constant or keyframed values you have already set for a property.
A simple application of wiggle is demonstrated above. Here, a sphere has been keyframed to move slowly from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the comp; this is shown in the image on the left. However, with wiggle applied, the sphere instead follows a drunken path between corners, as shown in the figure at right. Below is the resulting Graph Editor display: the straight lines are the keyframed values; the undulating lines show wiggle added onto this path. By enabling the Post Expression Graph switch (where the cursor is pointing) in the figure below, the Comp panel and Graph Editor will display the result of the original keyframed animation plus the expression.
The expression to do this is wiggle(4,20). The two values in parentheses represent the number of wiggles per second, and the amplitude of the wiggles – in this case, 20 pixels.
Wiggle has other options you can set. You can optionally have up to five values inside its parentheses:
wiggle(freq, amp, oct, mult, time)
The third value is “octaves of noise” (how complex and nervous the wiggle path is), the fourth is the strength of the additional octaves of noise, and the fifth is a time offset - akin to the valueAtTime method we discussed earlier. You can enter two, three, four, or all five values; the ones you leave off the end take on default values. If you forget what these additional parameters are or their order, look under the Property submenu in the expression language menu – it will give you a shorthand reminder of what each value is for.
Wiggling Time
A variation on wiggle is temporalWiggle. Rather than offset a property’s values, temporalWiggle keeps a layer on its original path, but varies how fast or slow it interpolates between keyframes. You can think of it as wiggling the speed of an animation. You can see this by looking at the spacing between the dots in the first image below (each dot reflects where the object will be at each frame in time); the speed graph below that shows the variations in speed the sphere experiences along its path.
The temporalWiggle expression has the same parameter as the normal wiggle; since you are wiggling time – in seconds – you will find you need much smaller values for the second number inside the parentheses to get results that aren’t too jerky. The example above uses the expression temporalWiggle(4,0.2), which wiggles time by two-tenths of a second.
Controlling Wiggle
When the wiggle expression is applied to a property with more than one dimension – such as Position or Scale – all properties are wiggled independently. This may not be desirable for Scale, because quite often you want to keep the X and Y Scale values the same so as not to distort the original image.
To force both dimensions to be the same, you can set a variable equal to the result of the wiggle expression, then use just one dimension of this variable for both dimensions of Scale. The resulting expression below would be applied to the Scale parameter; remember that the “X” dimension is identified as parameter [0] in an array
tempwig = wiggle(4,30);
[tempwig[0], tempwig[0]]
Another issue with the wiggle expression is that it keeps wiggling, even when the layer is not keyframed to animate. This can be controlled by adding an Expression Controls > Slider Control to the layer being wiggled, selecting the amplitude value in the wiggle expression (the second number inside the parentheses), and dragging the pick whip to your new slider. Keyframe the Slider Control, and you’ve keyframed your wiggle amount. The result is shown in the Graph Editor display below: the slider “wiggle amp” is represented by the pink line; the resulting Scale values are represented by the red and green lines:
This technique comes in particularly handy when you are trying to add some humanization to motion control camera moves you are keyframing inside After Effects. The best approach is to keyframe the layer with your normal move, add the Distort > Transform effect, and add the wiggle expression to Transform’s Anchor Point to randomize the layer’s composite position. Add further Slider Controls as a user interface to keyframe or adjust the amount of wiggle, as we have at left. Note that the “wiggle” Animation Presets use a similar strategy.
Randomizing Wiggle
The wiggle expression randomizes itself, depending on the “index” (layer number in the Timeline panel) of the layer it is applied to. This means you can duplicate a layer with a wiggle expression multiple times, and each copy will behave slightly differently. The result can be observed in the figures below: Four layers have been given the exact same expression wiggle(3,20); they are offset from each other thanks to the wiggle’s auto-randomization. The top row shows the different offsets of the overlapping globes; the Graph Editor below that shows the resulting Position graphs.
You can insert null objects between layers to further randomize them from each other. If you want to make sure a layer always has the same wiggle pattern, place it in its own precomp where it is always layer 1.
This auto-randomization lends itself nicely to “flocking” behavior. In the next example, we’ve keyframed a gizmo to fly around the comp. We copied the gizmo’s animation to a tracking sensor object, and added a wiggle expression to the sensor. To add some humor to the chase, we added a time delay to the wiggle expressions, so it lagged behind the gizmo’s movements. We then duplicated this sensor twice, resulting in three sensors. Because they are on different layers, each of their wiggles are slightly different, giving us the swarming look we were after:
Gizmo courtesy Quiet Earth Design.
The core expression to cause this behavior would be wiggle(2,20,1,0.5,time–0.2), which says “wiggle twice a second, by 20 pixels, with 1 octave of noise, with any additional octaves scaled in at 50% strength” (these last two numbers are their defaults). The value time–0.2 says “lag 0.2 seconds behind the current time.”
The final expression we applied to the Position of each sensor layer is:
The code before the wiggle part of the expression is what tells us to use the Position of the “gizmo” layer as our original value to wiggle.
Next Installment: Random Numbers
We think the wiggle expression is one of the core tools to include in your expression toolkit. However, you should know that many basic wiggle moves are available as a set of Animation Presets (look in the Behaviors subcategory).
If you want to dive even deeper into random values, the next installment is for you. In it we’ll discuss the differences between random, gaussRandom, and noise, changing seed values, and freezing animations. Until then…
We’re in the process of serializing the Deeper Modes of Expression bonus chapter from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects into a set of 12 posts here on PVC.
The latest edition of Creating Motion Graphics - covering the updates introduced in After Effects CS4 and CS5 - is shipping now.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 8: Going for a Loop
Chris Meyer | 08/01
Causing animations or footage to loop by repeating already-placed keyframes or segments of time.
Our previous installment was about decision-making loops (if/then and while/do statements). This installment is about a different kind of loop: repeating an animation without having to loop footage or places copies of an animation end-to-end.
After Effects supports the ability to loop a number of keyframes in an animation, repeating their values and timing. There are four different looping methods, found under the Property submenu in the expression language menu:
looping(“type”, keyframes)
loopInDuration(“type”, time)
loopOut(“type”, keyframes)
loopOutDuration(“type”, time)
The two loopIn methods repeat the property’s animation from the first keyframe back to the trimmed in point of the layer. The two loopOut methods repeat the animation from the last keyframe to the trimmed out point.
The “type” is typically one of three words; each must be in parentheses:
The type “cycle” (parenthesis required) repeats the keyframed values, as if you copied and pasted them end to end.
The type “pingpong” loops these keyframes back and forth.
The type “offset” is a version of “cycle” that automatically offsets the value of the property so that when the expression loops back to the first keyframe, the animation proceeds smoothly rather than jumps in value.
The type of “continue” automatically increments or decrements the value based on the rate of change of that value at the specified keyframe.
You don’t need to include the comma and second value (keyframes or time); if you leave them off, After Effects will assume you want to loop as much as possible – for example, all the keyframes, the entire duration from the in point to the last keyframe (loopOutDuration), or the entire duration from the first keyframe to the out point (loopInDuration). Otherwise, you can specify the number of keyframes, or the length of time in seconds. Note that loopIn always hinges around the first keyframe, and loopOut always hinges around the last keyframe.
Spinning Wheel
That all sounds very abstract so far, so let’s look at a few examples. As before, we’re going to use the Graph Editor has it helps reveal both what the original keyframes are doing, and what the result of the expression will be:
In the example above, the layer has just two Rotation keyframes, going from 0° at time 0:00 to 140° at time 1:00 (shown as the solid portion of the line in the Graph Editor). But if you to play this animation, you will see that the tire rocks back and forth for the entire duration of the comp (represented by the dotted lines after 1:00 in the timeline). This is because Rotation has the expression loopOut(“pingpong”), which loops back and forth between these keyframes.
Note that if we were to slide the keyframes later in time, the tire would not rotate until the first keyframe is reached, but will keep rocking back and forth afterward. This because the method loopOut is concerned about what happens after the existing keyframes -not before.
Indeed, below is a second example, with a similar set of keyframes - except they start later in time. In this case, the tire layer would rock back and forth before the first keyframe is reached. This is because we used the expression loopIn(“pingpong”):
When you loop based on keyframes, After Effects tries to make the first and last keyframes exist at the same point in time. This is great if you have keyframed a seamless loop, but creates perhaps unexpected results if the first and last keyframes do not have the same value: As you move one frame beyond the last keyframe looped, you will see the same parameter value as one frame after the first keyframe – not the same as the first keyframe itself.
To illustrate this, in the next example we used the expression loopOut(“cycle”). As you can see from the resulting graph, the tire layer rotates forward from 0° to 140°, then on the next frame jumps to 0.5° – the same value as one frame after the first keyframe:
To have this animate smoothly, one solution would be to edit the expression text to change the type from “cycle” to “offset” and preview again: Now the motion is smooth, because the “offset” type resolves the difference between the first and last keyframe values:
The same concept applies to controlling Position or other properties.
The method loopOut(“cycle”) has the interesting characteristic where the value of the first keyframe exists at essentially the same time as the last keyframe. As you move one frame beyond the last keyframe looped, you will see the same parameter value as one frame after the first keyframe – not the same as the first keyframe itself.
Looping Time
The loop expressions can also be used to loop a footage item or a precomp. This is especially useful as there is otherwise no way to loop a comp other than to prerender it (and then loop the resulting footage item). To pull this off, apply the loop expressions to Time Remap keyframes.
In our final example, the layer [Ex.18_precomp] contains an animation that seamlessly loops, but only one copy of this loop is contained in the comp. This could be any looping animation you create.
In the master comp shown below, we applied Layer > Time > Enable Time Remapping to this layer, and dragged the layer’s out point to the end of the comp. We then added the expression loopOutDuration(“cycle”, 2.5) to Time Remap, where 2.5 equals the duration of the precomp in seconds. As a result, our animation loops seamlessly for the duration of its new comp:
Note that we did not use loopOut(“cycle”), which would rely on keyframes. There are many potential pitfalls in using this technique with Time Remapping, as you can get glitches around the last keyframe. As discussed in the sidebar “The Real Out Point” in the Frame Rate Manipulation chapter in our book Creating Motion Graphics, Time Remapping places its second keyframe on the frame after the end of the source. Additionally, loopOut assumes the first and last keyframe exist at the same point in time – all of which is difficult to untangle in the case of looping footage or a precomp.
By the way, you only need to use this trick if you are trying to loop a keyframed animation. You can loop footage directly in the Interpret Footage dialog for the desired clip.
Next Installment: Wiggly World
In the next installment, we’ll discuss one of the essential expression tools to add to your arsenal, regardless of your After Effects skill level: wiggle. Until then…
We’re in the process of serializing the Deeper Modes of Expression bonus chapter from our book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects into a set of 12 posts here on PVC.
The latest edition of Creating Motion Graphics - covering the updates introduced in After Effects CS4 and CS5 - is shipping now.
The content contained in Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects - as well as the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition - are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 7: Making Decisions
Chris Meyer | 07/04
Learning how to craft if/then/else statements plus do/while loops will open the door to a wide range of advanced techniques.
As your expressions become more complex, you will want to start making decisions in the middle of them – for example, if the current value is less than a certain number, do one thing; if it is greater than that number, do something different. Other decisions include “wait until the current time is past the next marker – then do this animation” or even “don’t freak out and give me an error message if you can’t find the marker, keyframe, or other layer you’re looking for.”
These sorts of decisions are often referred to as conditional statements, and expressions in After Effects supports them. The most common type of conditional is known as an if/then or if/then/else statement. If you are not familiar with JavaScript, their format may be a bit different from what you expect, but they are easy to learn.
A variation on this theme is a do/while loop, which is an essential tool for overcoming expressions’ inability to remember what happened beforehand. You can use these loops to walk through every frame of the animation – accumulating information – until you get to the current frame.
Bracket Etiquette
Before we dive in, we need to discuss a code formatting issue. Programmers may find the way we use curly brackets in our book and this blog to be a bit odd. For example, the open curly bracket would normally appear on the same line as the “if” question, and the close curly bracket would appear on a line by itself after the “then” statement, starting in the same column as the if. An example would be:
We personally find reading this unintuitive. Therefore, we tend to rearrange the curly brackets so that they appear on the same line, or at least in the same vertical column. For example:
...or…
These expressions will all work the same, despite the differences in formatting. We will use our own formatting throughout this series; we hope the real programmers out there can forgive us.
Note that if there is only one statement inside a conditional clause, brackets aren’t necessary; you could leave them out altogether in the examples above.
If/Then/Else
Setting up an if/then statement in After Effects consists of two main steps:
Asking the “if” question (inside parentheses like these, with no semicolon afterward)
Telling After Effects that if “if” proved to be true, what to do then {placed inside curly brackets like these}; followed by a semicolon
If the answer to the “if” questions proves to be false, the “then” part of the expression inside the curly brackets is ignored, and After Effects will jump ahead in the expression to the next line after the closing curly bracket. Optionally, you can place an “else” statement at this point, {again nested inside curly brackets like these}.
Let’s say you wanted a layer to stay invisible until the current time was later than the first marker in the layer. The if/then expression for Opacity would be
This is demonstrated in the figures below; pay attention to the red Opacity value (remember, red values mean they are determined by expressions). The way we wrote this expression is that first we set up a temporary value, then changed it only when a certain “if” test turned out to be true:
Another approach is the if/then/else statement, in which you make a test, give one answer if it was true, and another answer if it was false. This same expression, written as an if/then/else, would look like this:
It’s your choice if you use an if/then or an if/then/else statement; both do the same job. Quite often, it comes down to which you find clearer and easier to understand. Note that an if/then/else statement can have multiple “else” clauses (sometimes referred to as “else if” conditionals); just remember to use the curly brackets to keep your statements straight.
You may have noticed in the figures above that the layer becomes visible only after the current time is beyond the first layer marker. This is because we used the “greater than” symbol >. If you really wanted “greater than or equal to,” then you need to use the more complex symbol >=.
After Effects and JavaScript are picky about their order – you can’t use =>. If you don’t have a JavaScript reference handy, you can usually poke around and figure out which order is correct. As a default, start by putting the symbols in the same order you would normally say them – for example, greater than (>) or equal to (=).
next page: some more complex examples; performing automatic error checking
Using sound effects libraries to add spice to your music - as well as cover up problems.
A few years ago, I wrote an article for Virtual Instruments Magazine on how to use sound effects to help spice up sound tracks and underscores. These same techniques can be used to cover otherwise-awkward edits in soundtracks, and to help tie an otherwise generic piece of stock music more closely to the theme of your video. It has now been re-posted to the ProAudio Coalition channel; click here to view it.
The content contained in our books, videos, blogs, and articles for other sites are all copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.
Deeper Modes of Expression, Part 6: Managing Time, Layer Numbers, Speed, and Velocity
Chris Meyer | 06/06
Ways of manipulating time with expressions, including having one layer echo the movements of another with delay.
By default, expressions assume you are interested in values at the current time. If you need to know the current time, just use the keyword time in an expression, and After Effects will return the current time in seconds (not frames, as we discussed in the previous section).
However, expressions allow you to access values at different points in time. They also let you find out what time keyframes and markers are located at so you can have animations change as they approach or cross one of these keys, as well as reference what other layers are doing. In this installment, we’ll explore a couple of ways to exploit time.
Time Echoes
A common animation trick is to have a series of layers performing the same animation, but offset from each other in time. This is easy to accomplish by adding the valueAtTime(t) expression method to the end of an expression that grabs another layer’s values. This method resides in the Property submenu of the expression language menu.
The example below contains a pair of wheels rotating. The wheel on the right (red) is slightly behind the wheel on the left (blue).
An alternate way to visualize this is to look at the resulting values curves in the Graph Editor. The identical but offset curves show how one value is following the other, slightly delayed in time:
To make this happen, the red wheel has the following expression applied to its Rotation:
This says take wheel 1’s Rotation, but take its value at a time equal to the current time, minus 0.1 seconds. In other words, follow wheel 1’s animation, but delayed by 0.1 seconds.
It was very easy to create this expression: We just dragged the pick whip from wheel 2’s Rotation to wheel 1’s Rotation (which normally makes them exactly the same), then added .valueAtTime(time - 0.1) to the end.
If we wanted, we could replace the 0.1 with an Expression Control, allowing us to edit the time offset without having to edit the expression’s text. After you’ve set this up, remember that you can hold the Command (Control) key while you’re scrubbing the Slider Control’s value to go in smaller increments. We could also set a positive value for wheel 2’s animation to be ahead of, rather than behind, wheel 1.
The valueAtTime trick works for any property. For example, say you had a few words of text that needed to fade on and off, staggered from each other. Once you decide the timing for one word, you want the others to have the same timing, just delayed. You could copy and paste keyframes and slide either the keyframes or text layers later in the Timeline, or use an expression to automate the process (handy if you’re going to be changing the master’s timing later). We’ve done this in the example below:
To make this happen, the second word has the following expression attached to its Opacity property:
This adds a half-second delay to the way word 2’s Opacity follows word 1’s Opacity. To make the remaining words stagger behind the previous word by the same amount, we had to edit the expression for word 3 to be delayed by 1.0 seconds, and for word 4 to be delayed by 1.5 seconds. The resulting keyframes and expressions look like this:
To have a series of layers follow the same animation as a master layer, but staggered in time (A–C), you can add .valueAtTime(t) to the end of their expression value, then decide how much to stagger time by – for example, (time – 0.5) says to trail 0.5 seconds behind the current time.
next page: creating expressions based on the layer number
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The subject of transparency and reflections leads directly to a discussion of render quality. In short, ray-traced 3D objects in After Effects are capable of looking exceptional: You can keep zooming in and never see faceting. However, noise can appear in transparent and reflective areas at the default settings - especially with blurred reflections. You need to dive into Composition Settings > Advanced > Options (the shortcut is to Command or Ctrl-click on the Renderer indicator in the upper right corner of the Comp panel) and play with the number of rays per pixel until you are satisfied the noise is no longer visible or distracting. More rays take a lot longer to render: An array of 3x3 rays (shown below left) means just 9 calculations per pixel, but is often not good enough; an array of 9x9 (shown below right) means 81 calculations per pixel, but often looks quite nice. The number of rays also affects motion blur with ray-traced 3D layers, while the Anti-Aliasing Filter popup affects sharpness versus aliasing for 3D object edges. 
To create standalone title elements while still referring to the clips that will lie underneath them, select the clips of interest in the Premiere Pro Project panel, Copy, open a new project in After Effects, select the Project panel, and Paste. This will create links to those original clips without duplicating them on your drive. Then in After Effects, drag these clips to the New Composition icon at the bottom of its Project panel. If you have multiple clips selected, a dialog will open; select the Multiple Compositions choice under the Create section (as shown here). This will create a dedicated composition for each clip, fitted to the dimensions, frame rates, and full unedited duration of each clip, with the same name as the clip itself. This gives you the maximum duration to work with later in Premiere Pro.
Once you have your source clip in an After Effects composition, right-click that clip in either the Timeline or Composition panels and select Guide Layer; an icon representing trimming guide lines will appear next to this layer’s name in the Timeline panel (as shown here). This means the clip will be visible only while you design your lower third inside After Effects; it will not appear when you use Dynamic Link to bring the lower third back into Premiere Pro.
Next, use Shape Layers in After Effects to create your lower third bar. Shape Layers include a powerful gradient editor so you can create a nice, subtle, refined (or gaudy, loud, outlandish) look. You can then optionally apply a combination of Effects and Layer Styles to add further polish. This procedure is demonstrated in the second and third movies on the next page, focusing on a more understated look.
Once you’ve finished creating your titles, switch back to Premiere Pro. Choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition. In the dialog box that appears, select your After Effects project in the left pane, and then the composition(s) with your lower thirds in the right pane. Click OK, and these will be added to the Premiere Pro Project panel just like a regular footage clip. 
This menu item looks for duplicates of footage in a project, and removes the duplicates. If a comp used one of the duplicates, these layers will be relinked to use the single copy of the footage item that remains. This feature comes in handy when you’ve imported multiple projects or folders or source materials, and there are overlaps in the sources. (Note that if footage doesn’t consolidate, chances are that the interpret footage settings are set differently for each item.)
This command looks at the comps you have selected in the Project panel, keeps these comps, any precomps and source material used by those comps, then deletes the unselected comps and all other unused footage. This is good for reducing a complex project just to the comp or comps a coworker may need to work on. The one occasion when this function can trip you up is if an expression in a comp you kept referenced a comp you did not select before running Reduce Project: The referenced comp will still get deleted. (Tip: Before using Reduce Project, be sure to save the project to a different name. This will save you from overwriting your master project file if you accidentally hit Save after you’ve reduced the project down!)
The File > Collect Files command has several uses. Its primary job is to take a project that may reference source items spread out across several folders and drives, and consolidate all of this footage into a single new folder, complete with a new copy of the project file that links to these copied sources. This is handy for archiving, or moving a job and all of its assets to another computer. 
Proxies are prerendered stand-ins for footage files or entire compositions. They are usually created either to save time (by prerendering an otherwise time-consuming composition that will need to be rendered time and time again), or as lower-resolution placeholders for footage items to make the program more responsive while you’re animating. 
This Render Settings popup allows you to override the project’s color depth setting at the time you render. This is handy for two reasons: You cannot otherwise set color depth on a per-comp basis, and it is often more efficient to work at a lower bit depth (such as 8 bits per channel) in the name of speed and then render at a higher bit depth (such as 16 bits per channel) while you eat or sleep. 
The deceptively named “Color” popup in the Output Module dialog does not have color choices. Instead, it determines how the RGB channels should be rendered if there are also transparent areas in the alpha channel. The alpha type choices are Straight (in which the color information extends, full strength, past the edges of the alpha) or Premultiplied (in which the color information extends only as far as the alpha).
In the standard definition world, the picture is less clear (no pun intended). All DV is lower field first; all non-DV PAL is upper field first; NTSC is usually lower field first, but there are upper field NTSC sources out there - such as from the Aurora cards, the first D1 Avid systems, and some earlier uncompressed capture devices.
Film usually runs at 24 fps. When film is transferred to NTSC video, it is slowed down by 0.1% to 23.976 fps, and every four frames of film are distributed across five frames (ten fields) of video through a process known as pulldown. 
3D Channel effects work only with specific file formats. The most flexible ones are RLA and RPF, which should contain color, alpha, and a large number of additional channels of information in one file. These files should be identified with the suffix .rla or .rpf. 
These files behave as normal color plus alpha footage items until you apply one of the 3D Channel effects to them. At that point, highlighting the effect in the Effect Controls panel allows you to click on their image in the Comp or Layer panels and have the additional channel information displayed in the Info pane. An example of Z Depth being displayed is shown at right.
If you want to keep your normal render and your oversampled 3D channel render together and treat them as one file, there is a procedure to do so using proxies. First, import your oversampled 3D Channel render. With this file selected in the Project panel, select File > Set Proxy > File. Choose your normal render as the Proxy. Files with proxies applied will have two entries along the top of the Project panel when selected, as shown here.
Fog is another effect that relies on Z-depth information embedded in or linked to by a 3D render. In short, what it does is take a color of your choice and blend it into the 3D image with increasing strength as the Z-depth values increase in the file.
After Effects can recognize transparency in a SWF file; you just have to make sure you set up your project in Flash to have transparent areas. To do this, you need to create a custom background color in Flash: In the Color panel, create a new color with Alpha set to 0%. Then bring the Swatches panel forward, and click along its bottom to add this color to your palette. It will be identified with a graph paper pattern. Then in the Properties Inspector, select this transparent swatch for the Stage color. 
After Effects CS4 and later has the ability to export an After Effects composition as an XFL format project, which can then be opened by Adobe Flash Professional CS4 or later. Open the composition you wish to export, and then select File > Export > Adobe Flash Professional (XFL). You may then open the resulting file in Flash Professional and trim, transform, or add interactivity to them within Flash; you may also insert new symbols in-between these layers in Flash.
You can start a menu design in Encore (Adobe’s disc authoring program), then use its command Menu > Create After Effects Composition. Encore will save a layered PSD file of the menu elements and create an After Effects project that has these layers already imported and arranged in a composition. You can then modify or create buttons from scratch in After Effects, and save each button as a layered PSD file to import back into Encore.
The most powerful way to import a layered Photoshop file is as a composition. This gives you additional choices on how to handle Photoshop Layer Styles and Photoshop 3D layers, plus whether or not to pre-crop the layers (Retain Layer Sizes). The result is a folder containing the layers, and a composition with them properly stacked and arranged. 
But did you know that if you merged a layered Photoshop or Illustrator file when you import it, you can change your mind and convert it to a layered comp without having to re-import it? You can either right-click on the footage in the Project panel and select Replace Footage > With Layered Comp, or if the merged footage item is selected from inside a comp, use the Layer menu and choose Convert To Layered Comp. The layer will be replaced with a precomp that contains the component layers, and the precomp will replace the original layer in the main comp. 
In addition to 
Bonus Chapter 37B is called Deeper Modes of Expression, and contains 64 pages of more advanced explanations of everything from useful math expressions (such as how to round off numbers or move in circles) to arrays and space conversions to managing time to making decisions to random numbers (and far, far more). 
So far, there has been just one book dedicated to the subject of expressions: 
Expressions are indeed based on JavaScript. Once you go beyond simple pick whip constructions and want to start coding your own bits of animation automation, it’s a good idea to have a desk reference on the language at hand. My personal favorite is 
If you’d rather just use finished, polished scripts than learn to write them, then your one-stop shop is 
And finally, as promised, 
Many of the audio effects feature a pair of parameters called Dry Out and Wet Out. This is because many of the processings sound best if you mix together the unprocessed sound (“dry”) with the processed version (“wet”). Think of this as a sort of Blend With Original, but with more control. Many effects - like Reverb - sound more realistic with relatively high Dry and low Wet amounts; some - like Flange/Chorus - work better set closer to a 50/50 mix. 
The Flange & Chorus effect is often used to add some “motion” to otherwise dull, lifeless sounds. The secret to making this effect sound good is setting a small amount of Modulation Depth and Rate. This causes the Voice Separation Time to wander (modulate), resulting in a slightly watery, unstable sound. Modulation Rate values of under 1.0 are most common; higher values produce more watery or even drunken effects. A touch of this effect will help add depth (or even a touch of magic) to some sound effects such as cymbal crashes and jet engine takeoffs; some also like to use it on vocals to make one voice sound like several. 
For serious equalization (manipulation of the frequency components of a sound), we use a serious tool like Adobe Audition. But a lot of simple corrective work can be done with the simple tools inside After Effects.
Our next-most-used audio effect it High-Low Pass. Rather than subtly emphasizing or deemphasizing the extremes of the frequency range like Bass & Treble does, High-Low Pass aims to cut them out completely.
Previewing Audio
Following on from the last tip above, if you have a busy composition that makes it hard to see the Puppet Pin paths, double-click the layer to open its Layer panel and edit the path there. Remember to set the View popup to Puppet and enable the Render checkbox along the bottom right of the Layer panel to see the Puppet effect.
Overlapping Limbs
Mesh Expansion Issues
However, the answer isn’t to just blindly increase the Mesh Expansion value. The more you do so, the higher the risk you run of joining together sections of your original layer which you would prefer remain separated so that you could animate them individually. Note in the figure at right how the arms are dangerously close to being stitched to the body, and that legs have been meshed together as one blob - meaning you would not be able to warp and therefore animate them separately.
Multiple Shapes in a Mesh
Once you’ve made these broad definitions, then you go down to a smaller brush size and paint in smaller details, such as the area around the man’s ear in the image at right.
In reality, though, creating the base frame only gives Roto Brush part of the information it needs - your next step is telling Roto Brush how to propagate this information outward from the base frame before you make additional corrective strokes. This is where the Propagation section of the Roto Brush effect (pictured at right) comes in: Step about 2-3 frames away from your base frame, and adjust these parameters to minimize any tracking errors you see. If nothing else, try out the different choices for the Edge Detection popup: The Favor Current Edges option puts an emphasis on edges found in the current frame in isolation, which may be more accurate if the image changes a lot from frame to frame. The Favor Predicted Edges option tries to predict where the edge should be based on the location of those edges in adjacent frames (which helps when the footage is noisy, or the foreground and background are very similar). Balanced considers both equally. 
Good news: You can click the Freeze button in the lower right corner of the Layer panel (shown here) to lock the Segmentation Boundary in place, save it with your project, and prevent time-consuming recalculations later. Just remember to unfreeze if you want to make a correction to the segmentation! 
Keyboard Shortcuts
Some users are also unaware of the keyboard shortcuts for interactively resizing both the brush Size and the amount of feather, otherwise known as Hardness. Hold Command (Control) and drag in the Layer panel to set the Size, then without releasing the mouse button (or equivalent on your tablet’s stylus), release the Command (Control) key and scrub to set the size of a smaller circle inside your brush size circle. The difference between these two circles is the amount of feather for your brush.
Write On
Since Paint (and Roto Brush, for that matter) is actually an effect applied to a layer, perform your keying or roto work first, then select the Brush tool. Set the Channels popup in the Paint panel to Alpha; the Foreground and Background colors will automatically change to black and white. Select white (the Background) to add to an alpha channel; select black to remove areas from it (no, you don’t need to use the Erase tool). Use X to quickly toggle back and forth between the two, and don’t forget to alter the Hardness (feather) of your brush to create soft-edged corrections, such as painting in motion blur.
You then go off and do something else, come back to your shape layer…and no gradient handles. The secret is that you must explicitly select the shape group that contains the gradient in the Timeline panel - just selecting the shape layer itself is not enough. So twirl open the shape layer, then Contents, then select the group (such as “Rectangle 1” as shown at right). 
Dashed Lines
Shape Effect Order
Project Information
Adjusting the Tracking Regions Without Moving the Attach Point
Multipart Tracks
Effect Track
The User Interface
As you move the cursor around the boxes to different target areas, the cursor will change to reflect what you are about to move, as shown in the chart at right. 
Essential Options
To pick up a track at a later point in time, move the time indicator to the last track keyframe you want to keep (above), press Option (Alt) and carefully move your regions without moving the Attach Point (the cursor will change to a white arrow), then continue your track. At right we’ve moved the time indicator back to the point where we picked up the track, showing the discontinuous jump in the track path - but note that the Attach Point remained close to the original track region (the tail light).
You can enter a value for New Duration, or a value for Stretch Factor in % (higher numbers being slower). Notice that when you change the Duration, the Stretch Factor updates accordingly, and vice versa. The Hold In Place option sets the point in time around which the stretching occurs (the layer’s in point, current frame, or out point). Hold In Place defaults to Layer In-point, which is often the most useful.
Once a layer is reversed, keyframes will appear to be off by one frame in the timeline: Because keyframes are normally attached to the beginning of a frame in time, after reversal they will now be attached to the end of a frame, which makes them appear to be one frame late. As a result, you may find it less confusing to reverse your footage in a precomp, and then do any editing or keyframing in the next comp up. 
Stretch versus Conform
Extract
Color Difference Key
Refine Matte
Poor Man’s Spill Suppression
Changing the Default Profile
In some cases - such as when the profile is embedded, or when After Effects can’t guess - you have the option to change the profile used in the Interpret Footage dialog, under the Color Management tab. This will come in handy if you feel a footage item has been mis-tagged, or After Effects fell back on the default sRGB profile for an unusual codec or file format.
However, After Effects can be stubborn about video footage items, not allowing you to change its codec-based guesses. In this case, you will need to add the footage item to a composition, and then apply Effect > Utility > Color Profile Converter to the resulting layer. 
To apply your preset to another layer, select it and type I to locate to its in point. This is important, because when you apply a preset that has keyframes, the timing of the keyframes is relative to the placement of the time indicator when you apply the preset. 
One of our favorite categories of presets is Behaviors. These use a combination of effects and expressions to automatically animate a layer without the need for keyframes – instead, you set general values such as “move the layer in this direction at this speed.” Here’s a few of our favorites, as well as suggestions on how to preview them.
Some behaviors can be combined. For example, double-click Behaviors > Fade In+Out – frames to add it to your currently-selected layer. RAM Preview; the layer will fade in and out at the ends of the layer without having to set any opacity keyframes. You can edit the Fade In and Fade Out Durations in the Effect Controls panel.
Turbulent Displace
Distressing Edges
The solution to both of these problems is Effect > Channel > CC Composite (pictured at left). Apply it after any effect, and its Opacity parameter will blend between the processed image and the original, unaltered image, no matter how many effects you have applied. As a nice bonus, its Composite Original popup has a long list of blending modes to create different types of looks. 
For any text animation you create, you can have the characters animate in a random order instead of the usual Start to End. To randomize the order in which they appear, twirl down the Advanced section of Range Selector 1. Click on the Randomize Order value to toggle it from Off to On, and RAM Preview. The characters still animate in the same manner over the same period of time, but they do so in a random order. The Random Seed parameter “shuffles the deck.”
4) The Collapse Transformations switch for the layer in the Timeline panel is set to Off (it appears empty), which is the default setting. Time for some magic: Turn on the Collapse switch in Comp 2 for the nested Comp 1 layer. The lost resolution returns, as the Transform values applied in the first comp are combined with the values applied to each layer in Comp 1. A calculator will tell you that 10% times 1000% equals the original value of 100%, which yields a final composite as sharp as the original:
Move All Attributes
Leave All Attributes
Fixing a Clipped Layer
Check the Preserve Frame Rate switch in the Advanced tab of Composition Settings to force this comp to be sampled at its frame rate no matter what frame rate it is eventually rendered at.
Preserve Frame Rate can also be used for locking effects that randomize, such as Numbers, to a different frame rate than the comp they’re nested into. Here we’ve created random numbers with the Numbers effect, and set this precomp to 10 fps with Preserve Frame Rate turned on. When this is nested in the Main Comp, it can be duplicated and time-stretched to create many other frame rates. 
A parent’s transformations can be thought of as a reality distortion field cast over any attached children. If a parent has been scaled nonuniformly (where the X and Y axes have different Scale amounts), and a child is then attached, the child will now be nonuniformly scaled as well. As a result, the child’s shape will skew when it’s rotated, as seen at right.
Displacement Mapping with FreeForm
A light’s Intensity value is only one part of the equation for how much light a layer receives. A non-ambient light (such as a spot, point, or parallel light) actually illuminates a layer twice: an overall lighting referred to as the Diffuse property (the top left image in the simple example below), and the “hot spot” which is referred to as the Specular property (top right). Ambient lights provide a third way to illuminate a layer (lower left). All three are added together to create the final lighting effect for each individual layer. The mix between these properties are controlled by each layer’s Material Options (seen at right), revealed by selecting a 3D layer and typing AA - two As in quick succession. The Shininess parameter controls the size of the Specular highlight - increase its value to make the “hot spot” tighter. 
3D Lights normally illuminate all 3D layers in a composition, regardless of the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel. However, if you enable the Adjustment Layer switch for a light, it will only illuminate the 3D layers underneath it in the timeline stack. And since you can create a light with a negative Intensity value, you can even use an adjustment light to darken layers below. 
View Options 
Another trick involves having a camera auto-orient along an animation path. It can be hard to set up sweeping motions that don’t appear to drift; this option points the camera for you. With the camera still selected, open its Auto-Orientation dialog, choose Orient Along Path, and click OK. You can also set the middle keyframes for the Camera’s Position property to rove in time (see Chapter 4) so that the speed will be fairly constant. 
3D layers have four – count ’em, four – Rotation parameters: Orientation, X Rotation, Y Rotation, and Z Rotation (this last value being the same as 2D Rotation). This may seem like overkill, but each has its purpose.
Along the right edge of the Tools panel are three small icons: These select the coordinate system for the axes. Left to right, they are: Local Axis Mode, World Axis Mode, and View Axis Mode. 
We’ll start with a tip that becomes obvious all too quickly when using Stencils: You can’t combine a stencil and a full-frame background layer in the same composition. Stencils cut out everything underneath them in the layer stack. This is great for filling an alpha channel of, say, text or a client’s logo with a composite of multiple layers, but if you then want to place that result over a full-frame background, the background will get cut out too! Instead, you will need to perform the stenciling in one composition, and then nest that composite over the desired background in a second composition. Once nested, you can also add edge effects such as a drop shadow or glow.
While we’re on the subject of unusual transparency tricks, the almost-as-mysterious Alpha Add mode works great with stencils.
To fix this, select the top layer, and select the Alpha Add mode from near the bottom of the Modes column, as show above. The complementary alpha channels are now added together – as opposed to compositing on top of each other – and the seam disappears. The resulting composite is shown at right. 
Instead, you want to pick the color channel in the matte layer that has the best contrast. To do this, turn on the Video and Solo switches for the matte layer to see it in isolation. Then use the Show Channel popup along the bottom of the Composition panel to audition the various color channels to see which works best. 
Multiple Mattes from One Source
To create a RotoBezier mask, select a layer, then select the Pen tool. Along the Tools panel to the right the word RotoBezier will appear; enable it by checking its box (see figure).
You can adjust the otherwise-automatic tension of RotoBezier masks either after they’re created or while you are drawing. Hold down Command+Option (Control+Alt) and click on a mask point to change it to a hard corner; doing so again returns its tension to 25%. Clicking and dragging with these modifier keys held allows you to adjust the tension of the imaginary Bezier handles running through the mask point; the Info panel updates the value between 0% and 100% as you drag. Note that these commands also work on all selected points, so be aware of what you have selected!
When you select all points on a mask, have you noticed that one point is a bit larger than all the others? This is the First Vertex Point, and it controls how mask points interpolate. The First Vertex Point at one keyframe always interpolates to the First Vertex Point on the next keyframe – all the other points around the path follow their lead. When you’re interpolating from very different shapes, you may need to manually change this “leader” point to create the best match from shape to shape. To do so, select the mask point you want to use as the First Vertex, right-click on it, and select Mask > Set First Vertex.
When you’re working with multiple masks, you can lock a mask to protect it from accidentally being edited. Just click the Lock box associated with each mask group in the A/V Features column. Masks will still appear in the Comp and Layer panels, but you won’t be able to edit them or change any keyframes.
Setting the Amount and Quality of Blur
Faux Motion Blur
Selective Echo
Trimming Tips & Shortcuts
If a layer is filling the entire comp, and you can’t see any “empty” portions of its layer bar, you can still use the slip edit technique. Of course, the layer must be longer than the comp and you also need to trim the excess frames by trimming the out point to the end of the comp (i.e., don’t just let the extra frames overhang the end of the comp). To use Slip Edit in this scenario, press and hold down the Y key to temporarily enable the Pan Behind tool: This will bring up the slip edit cursor regardless of where it is placed over the layer bar. Make your slip edit, and release the Y key to revert to the previously used tool. (If you accidentally changed tools, press V to return to the Selection tool when you are done.)
Sequence Layers Keyframe Assistant
To toggle whether or not a layer is a Guide Layer, select it, and choose Guide Layer from either the Layers menu or by right-clicking on it. A blue grid icon will appear to the left of its name in the Timeline panel when it is a Guide Layer. 
Things to Do With Keyframes
In the Graph Editor, drag the edge of the selection rectangle that appears around them (right). All selected keyframes will move accordion-style.
Open Window > Smoother and select the keyframes you wish to smooth. Set Smoother to Spatial or Temporal keyframes. Position keyframes in the Comp panel (such as those created by Motion Sketch) are Spatial because their values are on the X and Y axes. Properties that change only over time, such as Opacity, would default to Temporal.
Zoom into the Comp panel and select the first keyframe’s icon for your motion path. In this example, the spatial keyframes are all of the default Auto Bezier type, whose handles are represented by tiny dots that are not connected to the keyframe by handles; if you’ve already edited the path, you will see a handle connecting the keyframe and dot. 
To fix this, drag the handle dot. If it was an Auto Bezier keyframe, a direction line will appear (indicating this is now a Continuous Bezier keyframe). Align the direction line with the motion path. If you can’t see the handle dot, then press and hold down the G key (to temporarily switch to the Pen tool), then click-and-drag on the keyframe icon itself to pull out a new handle. Release the G key to toggle back to the Selection tool.
The default for the first popup is to Show Selected Properties. This works well when you select one property at a time, but making careful selections gets a little unwieldy when you want to compare various properties across multiple layers. And toggling on Show Animated Properties can often display too much information for busy layers! So when you first open the Graph Editor, don’t be surprised if there are no graphs visible (because only the layer is selected and not a property), or there may be so many graphs overlapping each other (because Show Animated Properties is enabled) that you are overwhelmed!
>We think a smart solution is to use the default settings, but to also take advantage of Graph Editor Sets when you need to see multiple properties at once. To add properties to the GE set, toggle on the switch to the right of that property’s stopwatch. This allows you to quickly show and hide graphs without having to select the property – or even to select the layer! 
Hold Keyframes
Users who haven’t discovered Hold keyframes have devised all sorts of workarounds to make a property’s value hold in place. The most common one involves duplicating the prior keyframe and placing it one frame in time before the next keyframe (as shown at right). There is never (ever, ever) a need to do this! Just select the first keyframe and make it hold!
To see the effect of changing default linear keyframes to Auto Bezier, you’ll need at least three keyframes. Hold down Command on Mac (Control on Windows) and click on one of the middle keyframes in the Timeline. It will change from a diamond to a circle. If the property in question has a motion path (Position, say) the spacing of the dots in the motion path will transition more evenly across that keyframe in the Comp panel. To change all keyframes to Auto Bezier, click on the name of the property in the Timeline panel and then Command (Control) click on one of them. (Note that the first and last keyframes won’t change their behavior but there’s no harm in including them.)
Linear keyframe interpolation means the speed of movement can be different entering and exiting a keyframe – thus the discontinuous break in the graph at the keyframe. Note that editing the Bezier handle on one side of a keyframe will have no effect on the other side, as the handles are “broken.”
Option+click (Alt+click) on a keyframe in the Graph Editor to convert it to Auto Bezier, smoothing the speed change through the keyframe. Another benefit is that the Bezier handles are now tied together (“continuous”); moving one side up or down will move the opposite handle.
Making Points Bigger
Temporary Tools
Sticky Shift
Editing Keyframes Numerically
RAM Preview Options
Option/Alt Button Clicks
Finding Missing Files
Close All Comps
Other Useful Math Expressions
Interpolation Methods
Deeper into Arrays
Space Conversions
Comp, Footage, and Layer Attributes
Managing Time
Making Decisions
Going for a Loop
Wiggly World
Random Numbers
Dreaming in Color
Expressive Text
To use expressions with text, you need to have some familiarity with the Type tool (covered in Chapter 21 of the latest edition of our book 
After Effects includes as set of expression methods that can convert the current time in a comp to either a timecode or a feet+frame format that Source Text can display, as shown at left. These expression methods include: 
When the RED camera records, it saves a master .R3D media file(s), plus a set of .MOV files with _F, _H, _M, and _P appended to the end of the file name. These are QuickTime reference movies which point to the master .R3D file, and generate full, half, medium, and quarter (petite?) resolution versions on the fly. 
The first trick to using Blend Modes in Premiere Pro is finding them, as they’re not accessed from the timeline as they are in After Effects or Final Cut Pro. 
Let’s say you and the client have agreed on a scheme in which the drop shadows for the text have a complementary color (a hue shift of 180°) at only 40% of the lightness of the text, as pictured at left. After enabling expressions for the Drop Shadow’s Shadow Color, setting up a variable called 
To the right is an image created using the Write-On effect plus the 
This technique comes in particularly handy when you are trying to add some humanization to motion control camera moves you are keyframing inside After Effects. The best approach is to keyframe the layer with your normal move, add the Distort > Transform effect, and add the wiggle expression to Transform’s Anchor Point to randomize the layer’s composite position. Add further Slider Controls as a user interface to keyframe or adjust the amount of wiggle, as we have at left. Note that the “wiggle” Animation Presets use a similar strategy.
