Some effects – usually those in the Distortion category – will try to create new pixels in After Effects that should appear beyond the layer’s original boundaries. Sometimes, it’ll be okay – but sometimes, they’ll get clipped off by the layer’s boundaries:
Some effects – usually those in the Distortion category – will try to create new pixels in After Effects that should appear beyond the layer’s original boundaries. Sometimes, it’ll be okay – but sometimes, they’ll get clipped off by the layer’s boundaries:
The brute force workaround is to precompose the layer into a larger composition to give it some extra canvas to work with, and then apply the troublesome effect to resulting comp. But there’s a better way: Apply the Utility > Grow Bounds effect, and have it add on the additional pixels around the edges.
Related to this is a problem with Text, Shape, and other continuously rasterized layers where they will be cropped by the composition’s boundaries. Usually you don’t care what happens beyond those boundaries, but if you apply an effect such as Bevel Alpha that treats the layer based on its edges, again, you can run into problems. And again, Grow Bound can often fix it. In both cases, just make sure that Grow Bounds is the first effect in the chain, as it needs to expand the layer before any other effects work on it.
To see Grow Bounds in action curing the above problems, visit our After Effects Hidden Gems Weekly course on lynda.com – it will be available free to all for the week starting June 15 2015; after that it is only visible to their subscribers. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can get a 10-day free trial before your credit card is billed by using the link http://www.lynda.com/go/ChrisAndTrish. We’ll be adding a new gem each week; all of the previous gems will remain online for subscribers.