This 5-part series looks at a selection of features that were in After Effects before CS5 but have been often overlooked. A total of 40 tips, tricks, workflow suggestions and general reminders are given covering topics including layout, masking, rendering and even using the interface. Part 3 looks at using the After Effects interface.
Adobe’s Todd Kopriva has pointed out that my description of the grave key is slightly inaccurate. In the video I say that the grave key maximises the currently selected panel, when in fact it maximises the panel underneath the mouse pointer. This is something I never noticed until he pointed it out! Thanks Todd…
I’ll add here an anecdote that I edited out of the video to keep it shorter. A few months ago I was working with someone who kept bumping the grave key by accident – I don’t think she was used to a Mac keyboard where the grave key is next to the z. Bumping the grave key would make one of the panels fullscreen, but not knowing what she’d down and how to fix it, she’d just quit After Effects and restart. When I realised she was re-starting After Effects for the 4th time in an hour I asked what was wrong and she explained that there seemed to be a ‘bug’, and I’m like ‘um that’s not a bug, it’s a feature’… hence the reason I included the grave key in this series!
(click the ‘full screen’ icon for best results)
After Effects Leftovers – Part 1
After Effects Leftovers – Part 2
After Effects Leftovers – Part 3
After Effects Leftovers – Part 4
After Effects Leftovers – Part 5