Adobe After Effects CS4 Classroom in a Book by Adobe Creative Team (): : Books
Since this intro for the DJ Quad Master reality series is very different from other reality series, the Cartoon effect will work perfectly here. The Cartoon effect performs best on systems with a video card that supports OpenGL. The Cartoon effect performs three operations on a layer. First, it smooths the layer, removing a great deal of detail. Therefore, it works best on video footage rather than a graphic layer, such as the background in this project.
Next, the Cartoon effect emphasizes the edges of shapes, based on their brightness values. Finally, it simplifies the color in the layer. These settings control how much detail is removed and how it is smoothed. Higher values remove more detail. These settings determine how color is reduced and how gradients are preserved. The layer becomes black and white temporarily. This makes the image even more cartoonish. The only thing missing is the title to identify the program.
Creating a self-animating shape Wiggle Paths turns a standard rectangle into a series of jagged peaks and valleys. Because the operation is self-animating, you only need to change a few properties and the entire shape will move on its own. Then change the Size to and the Detail to Adding text All you need to do is add the title of the program. In the Character panel, select a sans serif font, such as Arial Black, and specify a size of 60 pixels.
Adobe Bridge opens, displaying the animation presets that are available. After Effects applies the preset to the selected text. Press the spacebar to stop the preview. To use the Brainstorm feature, select the layer or properties you want to include, and then click the Brainstorm icon.
The Brainstorm dialog box displays multiple variations of your image, based on randomized settings. You can save one or more of the variants, apply one to a composition, or redo the Brainstorm operation.
The Brainstorm feature works especially well with animation presets. Soloing excludes all other layers of the same type from the Composition panel. You can also use the Brainstorm feature to experiment with one or more specific properties. To see all the variants in action, click the Play button. The feature randomizes the properties and displays variants.
When you select a group of layers to create an Encore button, After Effects precomposes the layers and names the precomposition according to the standards Encore uses for naming buttons. After Effects includes template projects with entire DVD menus for you to use as the basis of your own menus. Name the button to match its function, such as Play Movie or Scene Selection.
Then, use the menus to assign up to three highlight layers and one video thumbnail layer. Review answers 1 A shape layer is simply a layer that contains a vector graphic called a shape. To create a shape layer, draw a shape directly in the Composition panel using any of the drawing tools or the Pen tool. The Repeater path operation creates copies of all paths, strokes, and fills included in the layer. The feature makes it possible to explore numerous possibilities quickly and easily, and to save or apply them with a single click.
In this lesson, you will work on a more complex animation project. The project in this lesson is an animated portfolio for a professional illustrator that can be delivered on a CD or on the web, and it is meant to be a useful, real-world self-promotion. In fact, he has prepared an After Effects project that already contains this layered Photoshop file, as well as the video and audio clips that you will need later in the lesson.
You will animate an illustration of the artist driving a car on a city street. This is a complex animation. You will start by animating the background and some objects so that the virtual camera appears to move from left to right across the scene. Next, you will animate some passing traffic and buildings to add interest to the background.
Finally, you will animate the slide show of the artwork on the easel. You may delete the sample movie from your hard disk if you have limited storage space. Now, you will use it to synchronize the movement of the objects in three layers—the leaves, full skyline, and the FG foreground layers—with the BG background layer of the animation. Setting up parenting First, set up the parent-child relationship between the relevant layers in the Timeline panel.
BG from the pop-up menu. This establishes the three selected layers as child layers to the parent layer, which is layer 8, named BG the background. This, in turn, will animate the child layers in the same way.
This moves the background layer off to the left side of the scene, as if the camera had been moved. Then, type the desired time without punctuation as in for , and press Enter or Return.
After Effects automatically creates a second keyframe and shows you the motion path of the animation in the Composition panel. The background now moves across the composition, and because the leaves, full skyline, and FG layers are child layers to the BG parent layer, they also move horizontally from the same starting position.
You will animate it next. The bee is not visible at in the Composition panel. Then, click the stopwatch icon to create a Position keyframe. Trimming hiding footage at the beginning or end of a layer lets you change which frames are first or last in the composition. The first frame to appear is called the In point, and the last frame is called the Out point. You can trim footage by changing the In and Out points in the Layer panel or the Timeline panel, depending on what you want to change.
Previewing the animation A quick manual preview will show you how the elements in the scenery move. The animation of the background, leaves, bee, foreground objects, and the objects in the skyline makes it appear as if a camera is panning across the scene.
The red car is on the Artist layer. To edit the anchor point of the Artist layer, you need to work on the Artist layer in the Layer panel. This is a temporary position that lets you see the car onscreen while you mask the driver into place, which is your next task. Then, you will animate the car so that it drives across the composition. With the car positioned onscreen, you can add the driver. You will use a custom animation preset to create a mask from a shape layer. After Effects creates a new composition named GordonsHead based on the settings of the movie, and it opens the new composition in the Timeline and Composition panels.
You need to fix that now. After Effects adds a new shape layer to the composition. Adobe Bridge opens. You can close Adobe Bridge or leave it open to use later in this lesson. Constraining a layer with an alpha matte There are many ways to mask layers in After Effects. For example, you can use shape tools or the Pen tool to draw a mask. Artist from the Parent menu. When you animate the Position property, After Effects displays the movement as a motion path.
You can create a motion path for the position of the layer or for the anchor point of a layer. A position motion path appears in the Composition panel; an anchor-point motion path appears in the Layer panel. The motion path appears as a sequence of dots in which each dot marks the position of the layer at each frame. A box in the path marks the position of a keyframe. Dots close together indicate a slower speed; dots farther apart indicate a faster speed.
Then, click the stopwatch to set a Scale keyframe. After Effects adds a keyframe, and now the car pops a wheelie. The blur will be visible as the car drives offscreen, and it will be visible for the flying bee as well, because you applied motion blur to that layer earlier in the lesson.
Previewing your work Now that the keyframes are set for the moving car, preview the entire clip and make sure that the driver is framed to create a pleasant composition. Animating the passing traffic Perhaps you noticed in the preview you just watched that the blue car is tailgating the artist in his red hot rod.
The blue car is actually on a precomposed layer that also contains a yellow car. In this example, the vehicles layer contains one nested layer with a blue car and one nested layer with a yellow car. Press Shift after you start to drag to constrain the movement vertically. Animating the buildings Animated buildings? You bet. Notice that this composition has three layers: skyline, building, and buildings.
Press Shift after you start to drag to constrain the horizontal axis. Naturally jumping buildings? Aw, come on. This is fun. This adjusts the speed of change as the motion approaches and retreats from the keyframe. Do the same for the skyline layer. This applies motion blur to all of the nested layers.
Take a look at the animation from the beginning. The effect will animate some radio waves emitting from the Transamerica Pyramid building. Adding a solid-color layer You need to apply the radio wave effect on its own layer, which will be a solid-color layer.
About solid-color layers You can create solid images of any color or size up to 30, x 30, pixels in After Effects. After Effects treats solids as it does any other footage item: You can modify the mask, transform properties, and apply effects to a solid layer. If you change settings for a solid that is used by more than one layer, you can apply the changes to all layers that use the solid or to only the single occurrence of the solid.
Use solid layers to color a background or to create simple graphic images. In the Solid Settings dialog box, name the layer radio waves, and then click the Make Comp Size button. Then click OK to create the layer. By default, the radio waves layer lasts the duration of the composition. However, it needs to be only a few seconds long, to last the length of the effect. Then, in the Composition panel, click to set the producer point at the top of the pyramid.
Radio waves with the settings you specified will now emit from the top of the pyramid building. You just need to parent the radio waves layer to the full skyline layer so that the waves travel with the building across the composition. You may need to expand the Preview panel to see all the options. However, this slide-show technique could easily be adapted to other uses, such as presenting family photos or making a business presentation. To help you choose, use Adobe Bridge to preview them.
Then, Shift-click to select the five Studer images, and drag them onto the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the panel. When you click OK, After Effects opens the new composition, named for the Studer image at the top of the list in the Project panel, in the Composition and Timeline panels. Currently, the Artwork layer is set to start at You need to adjust the timing of the layer so that it appears at This drops out the pure white in each image and replaces it with the softer white of the canvas.
Fading in the first slide As it stands, the first slide instantly appears in the easel at That should do the trick. Each has unique tools to help you achieve different creative results.
SWF files are small files that are often used to deliver animated vector graphics such as cartoons , audio, and other data types over the Internet. When After Effects imports a SWF file, it preserves the keyframes in the root timeline, so you can continue to use them for timing other effects. Each SWF file imported into After Effects is flattened into a single continuously rasterized layer, with its alpha channel preserved. Continuous rasterization means that graphics stay sharp as they are scaled up.
This import method lets you use the root layer or object of your SWF file as a smoothly rendered element in After Effects, bringing together the best capabilities of each tool. The FLV and F4V formats are container formats, each of which is associated with a set of video and audio formats.
FLV files generally contain video data that is encoded using the On2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark codec and audio data encoded using an mp3 audio codec. F4V files generally contain video data that is encoded using an H. After Effects markers can be included as cue points in an output FLV file. Adobe Bridge lets you preview audio. Click the Pause button or press the spacebar to stop. Luckily, this music track has been composed to loop cleanly.
A Time Remap property appears for the layer in the Timeline panel, and two Time Remap keyframes appear for the layer in the time ruler. This sets the default expression for time remapping; it has no immediate effect in the Composition panel.
The audio is now set to loop in a cycle, repeating the clip endlessly. All you need to do is extend the Out point of the layer to the end of the composition. After Effects creates a new composition, named CarRide 2, and opens it in the Timeline and Composition panels. After Effects adds a keyframe, and for the rest of the composition, the slide show will be prominent and eye-catching.
Reviewers can open the file in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader and add notes that are attached to specific points in the timeline. If you want comments uploaded to an ftp site, enter the site information on the Others tab. Select both Export Video and Export Audio. After Effects opens the Render Queue panel. Click Save. After Effects renders and exports the file. You can send the resulting PDF file to reviewers, who can open the PDF file, add notes, click Export, and send a small file containing only the notes and the information about their location to you.
Imported comments appear as markers in the Timeline panel. If you double-click a marker, the Composition Marker dialog box opens to reveal the comments. Then, click Open. Review answers 1 When you animate the Position property, After Effects displays the movement as a motion path.
The motion path appears as a sequence of dots, where each dot marks the position of the layer at each frame. After Effects treats solids as it does any other footage item: you can modify the mask, transform properties, and apply effects to the solid layer.
Use solid layers to color a background or create simple graphic images. Then, e-mail the resulting PDF file to reviewers, who can open it in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader, make comments, and export the comments in a small file for you.
When you receive the comments, import them into After Effects to view them. Adobe After Effects provides several tools and effects that let you simulate motion video using a layered Photoshop file. In this lesson, you will import a layered Photoshop file of the sun appearing through a window, and then you will animate it to simulate the motion of the sun rising through the panes of glass. This lesson provides more practice animating the layers of a Photoshop file, including dynamically remapping time.
You may delete the sample movies from your hard disk if you have limited storage space. Click Close to close the Welcome window. Importing the footage You need to import one source item for this lesson.
Before continuing, take a moment to study the layers of the file you just imported. Resize the Name column to make it wider and easier to read, if necessary.
Each of the elements that you will animate in After Effects—the shadows, birds, clouds, and sun—is on a separate layer. In addition, there is one layer representing the initial, predawn lighting conditions in the room Background , and a second layer that represents the final, bright daylight conditions in the room Background Lit.
Similarly, there are two layers for the two lighting conditions outside the window: Window and Window Lit. The Window Pane layer includes a Photoshop layer style that simulates a pane of glass.
After Effects preserves the layer order, transparency data, and layer styles from the source Photoshop document.
If you change a layer name in a Photoshop file after you have imported it into After Effects, After Effects retains the link to the original layer. However, if you delete an imported layer, After Effects will be unable to find the original layer and will list it as missing in the Project panel. About Photoshop layer styles Adobe Photoshop provides a variety of layer styles—such as shadows, glows, and bevels—that change the appearance of a layer. After Effects can preserve these layer styles when you import Photoshop layers.
You can also apply layer styles in After Effects. Though layer styles are referred to as effects in Photoshop, they behave more like blending modes in After Effects. Layer styles follow transformations in the standard render order, whereas effects precede transformations.
The layer style properties are available for the layer in the Timeline panel. Soloing the layers isolates them to speed animating, previewing, and rendering. Currently, the lit background is on top of the regular darker background, obscuring it and making the initial frame of the animation light. However, you want the animation to start dark, and then lighten. Now, when the animation begins, the Background Lit layer is transparent, which allows the dark Background layer to show through.
Make sure to leave the Opacity property for the Background Lit layer visible. The Window Pane layer has a Photoshop layer style that creates a bevel on the window. The interior of the room transitions gently from dimly to brightly lit. Duplicating an animation using the pick whip Now, you need to lighten the view through the window. You can use the pick whip to create expressions that link the values of one property or effect to another.
About expressions When you want to create and link complex animations, such as multiple car wheels spinning, but want to avoid creating tens or hundreds of keyframes by hand, you can use expressions instead. Expressions are based on the JavaScript language, but you do not need to know JavaScript to use them. You can create expressions by using simple examples and modifying them to suit your needs, or by chaining objects and methods together.
You work with expressions in the Timeline panel or the Effect Controls panel. You can use the pick whip to create expressions, or you can enter and edit expressions manually in the expression field, a text field in the time graph under the property.
For more about expressions, see After Effects Help. The words transform. When you release the mouse, the pick whip snaps, and the expression in the Window Lit layer time ruler now reads "thisComp.
Notice that the Opacity values for the two layers match. Notice that the sky outside the window lightens as the room inside the window does. The Polygon tool, in particular, gives you great flexibility. Drawing a polygon By default, the Polygon tool draws a shape using the settings of the last shape drawn with that tool.
However, by adjusting the points, position, rotation, outer radius, outer roundness, and other values, you can dramatically alter the initial shape. Select the Solid Color icon , and then click OK. We used RGB , , 0. Click OK. Twisting a shape The Twist path operation rotates a path more sharply in the center than at the edges. Positive values twist clockwise; negative values twist counterclockwise.
In this case, you want to affect only the Repeater. The first value represents the x axis. To move the shapes closer together, use a smaller value for the x axis; to move them farther apart, use a larger value.
Now the shapes are farther apart. To move all of the shapes, you need to move the entire shape layer. Change the Position to , The shape layer is now in the upper-left corner of the composition. Rotating shapes The suns should rotate on the background. This setting causes the shape to rotate three times in 10 seconds. You want the character in the main video file to be the focus of attention.
The value would apply to all the duplicates as well. Press Enter or Return again to accept the new name. Creating stars The Star tool is similar to the Polygon tool. A polygon is simply a star without an Inner Radius or Inner Roundness property; both tools create shapes called polystars. To draw a star, drag the Star tool in the Composition panel. We used RGB 75, , After Effects adds a shape layer named Shape Layer 1 to the Timeline panel. The radius values change the shape of the star.
Negative values pucker a shape; positive values bloat it. This star shape will go well in the background. Now you can duplicate and animate it. Duplicating shapes You want to have multiple stars in slightly different sizes rotating around the screen. Now there are six stars on the screen.
When you change the Transform properties for the Repeater, the change is multiplied by the number of copies created. For example, if there are 10 copies of a shape and you change the Rotation value to 10 degrees, the first shape retains the original value of 0, the second shape rotates 10 degrees, the third shape rotates 20 degrees, and so on.
The same concept applies to each of the Transform properties. In this project, the anchor point for the layer differs from the position of the shapes, so the chain of stars begins to wrap in on itself. Each star is more transparent than the one before it. Each duplicate star will be smaller than the one before it.
Now you want to animate each star to rotate around its own axis. After you confirm that everything is rotating, collapse the layer. Incorporating video and audio layers The background is in place. Now you can add the video of the DJ and the audio track that accompanies it. Adding audio and video files You imported files at the beginning of the lesson.
The DJ. Trimming the work area The DJ. If you rendered this movie now, the DJ would disappear halfway through the movie. Then, only the first 5 seconds will render. You can drag the current-time indicator in the Timeline panel or click the Current Time box and then type in the Go To Time dialog box. Applying a Cartoon effect After Effects includes a new Cartoon effect, which makes it easy to create a stylized look to your video, so that it looks more like a cartoon.
Since this intro for the DJ Quad Master reality series is very different from other reality series, the Cartoon effect will work perfectly here. The Cartoon effect performs best on systems with a video card that supports OpenGL. The Cartoon effect performs three operations on a layer. First, it smooths the layer, removing a great deal of detail. Therefore, it works best on video footage rather than a graphic layer, such as the background in this project.
Next, the Cartoon effect emphasizes the edges of shapes, based on their brightness values. Finally, it simplifies the color in the layer. These settings control how much detail is removed and how it is smoothed. Higher values remove more detail. These settings determine how color is reduced and how gradients are preserved. The layer becomes black and white temporarily. This makes the image even more cartoonish.
The only thing missing is the title to identify the program. Creating a self-animating shape Wiggle Paths turns a standard rectangle into a series of jagged peaks and valleys. Because the operation is self-animating, you only need to change a few properties and the entire shape will move on its own. Then change the Size to and the Detail to Adding text All you need to do is add the title of the program. In the Character panel, select a sans serif font, such as Arial Black, and specify a size of 60 pixels.
Adobe Bridge opens, displaying the animation presets that are available. After Effects applies the preset to the selected text. Press the spacebar to stop the preview. To use the Brainstorm feature, select the layer or properties you want to include, and then click the Brainstorm icon.
The Brainstorm dialog box displays multiple variations of your image, based on randomized settings. You can save one or more of the variants, apply one to a composition, or redo the Brainstorm operation. The Brainstorm feature works especially well with animation presets. Soloing excludes all other layers of the same type from the Composition panel. You can also use the Brainstorm feature to experiment with one or more specific properties. To see all the variants in action, click the Play button.
The feature randomizes the properties and displays variants. When you select a group of layers to create an Encore button, After Effects precomposes the layers and names the precomposition according to the standards Encore uses for naming buttons. After Effects includes template projects with entire DVD menus for you to use as the basis of your own menus. Name the button to match its function, such as Play Movie or Scene Selection. Then, use the menus to assign up to three highlight layers and one video thumbnail layer.
Review answers 1 A shape layer is simply a layer that contains a vector graphic called a shape. To create a shape layer, draw a shape directly in the Composition panel using any of the drawing tools or the Pen tool. The Repeater path operation creates copies of all paths, strokes, and fills included in the layer. The feature makes it possible to explore numerous possibilities quickly and easily, and to save or apply them with a single click.
In this lesson, you will work on a more complex animation project. The project in this lesson is an animated portfolio for a professional illustrator that can be delivered on a CD or on the web, and it is meant to be a useful, real-world self-promotion. In fact, he has prepared an After Effects project that already contains this layered Photoshop file, as well as the video and audio clips that you will need later in the lesson.
You will animate an illustration of the artist driving a car on a city street. This is a complex animation. You will start by animating the background and some objects so that the virtual camera appears to move from left to right across the scene. Next, you will animate some passing traffic and buildings to add interest to the background.
Finally, you will animate the slide show of the artwork on the easel. You may delete the sample movie from your hard disk if you have limited storage space. Now, you will use it to synchronize the movement of the objects in three layers—the leaves, full skyline, and the FG foreground layers—with the BG background layer of the animation. Setting up parenting First, set up the parent-child relationship between the relevant layers in the Timeline panel.
BG from the pop-up menu. This establishes the three selected layers as child layers to the parent layer, which is layer 8, named BG the background. This, in turn, will animate the child layers in the same way. This moves the background layer off to the left side of the scene, as if the camera had been moved. Then, type the desired time without punctuation as in for , and press Enter or Return.
After Effects automatically creates a second keyframe and shows you the motion path of the animation in the Composition panel.
The background now moves across the composition, and because the leaves, full skyline, and FG layers are child layers to the BG parent layer, they also move horizontally from the same starting position. You will animate it next. The bee is not visible at in the Composition panel. Then, click the stopwatch icon to create a Position keyframe. Trimming hiding footage at the beginning or end of a layer lets you change which frames are first or last in the composition.
The first frame to appear is called the In point, and the last frame is called the Out point. You can trim footage by changing the In and Out points in the Layer panel or the Timeline panel, depending on what you want to change.
Previewing the animation A quick manual preview will show you how the elements in the scenery move. The animation of the background, leaves, bee, foreground objects, and the objects in the skyline makes it appear as if a camera is panning across the scene. The red car is on the Artist layer. To edit the anchor point of the Artist layer, you need to work on the Artist layer in the Layer panel. This is a temporary position that lets you see the car onscreen while you mask the driver into place, which is your next task.
Then, you will animate the car so that it drives across the composition. With the car positioned onscreen, you can add the driver. You will use a custom animation preset to create a mask from a shape layer. After Effects creates a new composition named GordonsHead based on the settings of the movie, and it opens the new composition in the Timeline and Composition panels.
You need to fix that now. After Effects adds a new shape layer to the composition. Adobe Bridge opens. You can close Adobe Bridge or leave it open to use later in this lesson. Constraining a layer with an alpha matte There are many ways to mask layers in After Effects.
For example, you can use shape tools or the Pen tool to draw a mask. Artist from the Parent menu. When you animate the Position property, After Effects displays the movement as a motion path.
You can create a motion path for the position of the layer or for the anchor point of a layer. A position motion path appears in the Composition panel; an anchor-point motion path appears in the Layer panel. The motion path appears as a sequence of dots in which each dot marks the position of the layer at each frame. A box in the path marks the position of a keyframe.
Dots close together indicate a slower speed; dots farther apart indicate a faster speed. Then, click the stopwatch to set a Scale keyframe.
After Effects adds a keyframe, and now the car pops a wheelie. The blur will be visible as the car drives offscreen, and it will be visible for the flying bee as well, because you applied motion blur to that layer earlier in the lesson.
Previewing your work Now that the keyframes are set for the moving car, preview the entire clip and make sure that the driver is framed to create a pleasant composition. Animating the passing traffic Perhaps you noticed in the preview you just watched that the blue car is tailgating the artist in his red hot rod.
The blue car is actually on a precomposed layer that also contains a yellow car. In this example, the vehicles layer contains one nested layer with a blue car and one nested layer with a yellow car. Press Shift after you start to drag to constrain the movement vertically. Animating the buildings Animated buildings? You bet. Notice that this composition has three layers: skyline, building, and buildings. Press Shift after you start to drag to constrain the horizontal axis. Naturally jumping buildings?
Aw, come on. This is fun. This adjusts the speed of change as the motion approaches and retreats from the keyframe. Do the same for the skyline layer. This applies motion blur to all of the nested layers. Take a look at the animation from the beginning. The effect will animate some radio waves emitting from the Transamerica Pyramid building. Adding a solid-color layer You need to apply the radio wave effect on its own layer, which will be a solid-color layer.
About solid-color layers You can create solid images of any color or size up to 30, x 30, pixels in After Effects. After Effects treats solids as it does any other footage item: You can modify the mask, transform properties, and apply effects to a solid layer. If you change settings for a solid that is used by more than one layer, you can apply the changes to all layers that use the solid or to only the single occurrence of the solid. Use solid layers to color a background or to create simple graphic images.
In the Solid Settings dialog box, name the layer radio waves, and then click the Make Comp Size button. Then click OK to create the layer. By default, the radio waves layer lasts the duration of the composition.
However, it needs to be only a few seconds long, to last the length of the effect. Then, in the Composition panel, click to set the producer point at the top of the pyramid. Radio waves with the settings you specified will now emit from the top of the pyramid building.
You just need to parent the radio waves layer to the full skyline layer so that the waves travel with the building across the composition. You may need to expand the Preview panel to see all the options. However, this slide-show technique could easily be adapted to other uses, such as presenting family photos or making a business presentation. To help you choose, use Adobe Bridge to preview them. Then, Shift-click to select the five Studer images, and drag them onto the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the panel.
When you click OK, After Effects opens the new composition, named for the Studer image at the top of the list in the Project panel, in the Composition and Timeline panels. Currently, the Artwork layer is set to start at You need to adjust the timing of the layer so that it appears at This drops out the pure white in each image and replaces it with the softer white of the canvas.
Fading in the first slide As it stands, the first slide instantly appears in the easel at That should do the trick. Each has unique tools to help you achieve different creative results. SWF files are small files that are often used to deliver animated vector graphics such as cartoons , audio, and other data types over the Internet. When After Effects imports a SWF file, it preserves the keyframes in the root timeline, so you can continue to use them for timing other effects.
Each SWF file imported into After Effects is flattened into a single continuously rasterized layer, with its alpha channel preserved. Continuous rasterization means that graphics stay sharp as they are scaled up. This import method lets you use the root layer or object of your SWF file as a smoothly rendered element in After Effects, bringing together the best capabilities of each tool. The FLV and F4V formats are container formats, each of which is associated with a set of video and audio formats.
FLV files generally contain video data that is encoded using the On2 VP6 or Sorenson Spark codec and audio data encoded using an mp3 audio codec. F4V files generally contain video data that is encoded using an H. After Effects markers can be included as cue points in an output FLV file. Adobe Bridge lets you preview audio. Click the Pause button or press the spacebar to stop. Luckily, this music track has been composed to loop cleanly.
A Time Remap property appears for the layer in the Timeline panel, and two Time Remap keyframes appear for the layer in the time ruler. This sets the default expression for time remapping; it has no immediate effect in the Composition panel.
The audio is now set to loop in a cycle, repeating the clip endlessly. All you need to do is extend the Out point of the layer to the end of the composition. After Effects creates a new composition, named CarRide 2, and opens it in the Timeline and Composition panels. After Effects adds a keyframe, and for the rest of the composition, the slide show will be prominent and eye-catching.
Reviewers can open the file in Adobe Acrobat or Adobe Reader and add notes that are attached to specific points in the timeline. If you want comments uploaded to an ftp site, enter the site information on the Others tab. Select both Export Video and Export Audio. After Effects opens the Render Queue panel.
Click Save. After Effects renders and exports the file. You can send the resulting PDF file to reviewers, who can open the PDF file, add notes, click Export, and send a small file containing only the notes and the information about their location to you. Imported comments appear as markers in the Timeline panel. Just make sure you hit Ctrl-S alot in the chapters I've identified.
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Translate all reviews to English. When you add a footage item to a composition, the footage becomes the source for a new layer.
A composition can have any number of layers, and you can also include a composition as a layer in another composition, which is called nesting. Some of the assets are longer than others, but you want them all to appear only as long as the dancers are on the screen.
The Timeline panel displays the same duration for each of the layers. Without layers, a composition consists only of an empty frame. In general, the layer order in the Timeline panel corresponds to the stacking order in the Composition panel.
Some of these tools—the Selection tool and the Hand tool, for example—will be familiar to you if you use other Adobe applications, such as Photoshop. Others will be new. Selection B. Hand C. Zoom D. Rotation E. Camera tools F. Pan Behind G. Mask and Shape tools H. Pen tools I. Type tools J. Brush K. Clone Stamp L.
Eraser M. Roto Brush N. A small triangle in the lower-right corner of the button indicates that one or more additional tools are hidden behind it. Click and hold the button to display the hidden tools, and then select the tool you want to use. Then press Enter or Return again to accept the new name.
Notice that layer handles appear around the layer in the Composition panel. To return to the Composition panel, click the Composition tab. Dragging to change values is sometimes called scrubbing. The left and right values are x and y coordinates, respectively.
Center the blur at approximately , It simulates the result of modifying the exposure setting in f-stops of the camera that captured the image. This will make everything brighter in the layer to simulate an overexposed image. This keyboard shortcut displays only the Position property, which is the only property you want to change for this exercise. Leave the y coordinate at You will move this layer to the right. Now you can see the three waveforms—left, center, and right—in the Composition panel, hanging like a beaded light curtain.
To contrast the left and right waveforms with the center waveform, you will reduce their opacity. It all looks great, but how about some movement? For this exercise, you will animate the Position property of a text layer using keyframes, and then use an animation preset so that the letters appear to rain down on the screen. About the Timeline panel Use the Timeline panel to animate layer properties and set In and Out points for a layer. In and Out points are the points at which a layer begins and ends in the composition.
Many of the Timeline panel controls are organized in columns of related functions. Composition name B. Current time C. Time navigator start and end brackets B. Work area start and end brackets C. Time ruler D. Timeline panel menu E. Composition marker bin F. Time zoom slider G. Composition button Before delving too deeply into animation, it will help to understand at least some of these controls.
The duration of a composition, a layer, or a footage item is represented visually in the time graph. On the time ruler, the current-time indicator marks the frame you are viewing or editing, and the frame appears in the Composition panel. When you work on a composition, you may want to render only a portion of it by specifying a segment of the composition time ruler as a work area.
Two layers—Title Here and Background—appear in the Timeline panel. The Title Here layer contains placeholder text that was created in Photoshop. At the top of the Composition panel is the Composition Navigator bar, which displays the relationship between the main composition bgwtext 2 and the current composition bgwtext , which is nested within the main composition. You can nest multiple compositions within each other; the Composition Navigator bar displays the entire composition path. Before you can replace the text, you need to make the layer editable.
A T icon appears next to the layer name in the Timeline panel, indicating that it is now an editable text layer. The layer is also selected in the Composition panel, ready for you to edit. Then type AQUO. Then type bubble in the search box.
Easing into and out of animations keeps the motion from appearing to be too sudden or robotic. A keyframe marks the point in time where you specify a value, such as spatial position, opacity, or audio volume. Values between keyframes are interpolated. When you use keyframes to create a change over time, you must use at least two keyframes—one for the state at the beginning of the change, and one for the state at the end of the change. This is known as overscan. The amount of overscan is not consistent between television sets, so you should keep important parts of a video image, such as action or titles, within margins called safe zones.
Keep your text inside the inner blue guides to ensure that it is in the title-safe zone, and keep important scene elements inside the outer blue guides to ensure that they are in the action-safe zone. All three methods are accessible through the Preview panel, which appears on the right side of the application window in the Standard workspace.
Using standard preview Standard preview commonly called a spacebar preview plays the composition from the current-time indicator to the end of the composition. Standard previews usually play more slowly than real time. The number of frames played depends on the amount of RAM available to the application.
In the Timeline panel, RAM preview plays either the span of time you specify as the work area, or from the beginning of the time ruler. Before you preview, check which frames are designated as the work area. When all of the frames in the work area are cached, the RAM preview plays back in real time.
It provides fast screen previewing of a composition without degrading resolution, which makes it a desirable preview option for many situations. When OpenGL does not support a feature, it simply creates a preview without using that feature. For example, if your layers contain shadows and your OpenGL hardware does not support shadows, the preview will not contain shadows. Complex compositions can require a large amount of memory to render, and the rendered movies can take a large amount of disk space to store.
The Paint and Brushes panels open. The Composition panel is replaced by the Layer panel, for easy access to the tools and controls you need to paint in your compositions.
Saving a custom workspace You can save any workspace, at any time, as a custom workspace. You can click Default to restore the default brightness setting. You can narrow the results to view only Adobe Help and support documents. You can easily obtain these updates through Adobe Application Manager, as long as you have an active Internet connection.
Adobe Application Manager automatically checks for updates available for your Adobe software. Click Done to accept the new settings. Compositions include one or more layers—video, audio, still images—arranged in the Composition panel and in the Timeline panel. A standard preview plays your composition from the current-time indicator to the end of the composition, usually more slowly than real time. A RAM preview allocates enough RAM to play the preview with audio as fast as the system allows, up to the frame rate of the composition.
You can use them to create great-looking animations quickly and easily. You will animate the travel show ID so that it fades to become a watermark that can appear in the lower-right corner of the screen during other TV programs. In this exercise, you will jump to Adobe Bridge to import the still image that will serve as the background of your composition. If you receive a message about adding an extension to Adobe Bridge, click OK.
Adobe Bridge opens, displaying a collection of panels, menus, and buttons. Click the arrows to open nested folders. You can also double-click folder thumbnail icons in the Content panel. The Content panel updates interactively. In Lesson 1, you created the composition based on footage items that were selected in the Project panel. You can also create an empty composition, and then add your footage items to it. This preset automatically sets the width, height, pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for the composition to NTSC standards.
Importing the foreground element Your background is now in place. You should now see both the background image and the logo in the Composition panel and in the Timeline panel. The composition opens in its own Timeline and Composition panels. Leave all other options in the Character panel at their defaults. Leave all other options in the Paragraph panel at their defaults. Show Grid to make the nonprinting grid visible to help you position objects.
Then click the triangle next to Stylize to expand the category. The text appears, letter by letter, until the words travel Europe are fully onscreen at Precomposing is a way to nest layers within a composition. Precomposing moves the layers to a new composition. This new composition takes the place of the selected layers.
When you want to change the order in which layer components are rendered, precomposing is a quick way to create intermediate levels of nesting in an existing hierarchy. Then click OK. This new, precomposed layer contains the three layers that you selected in step 1. Press the spacebar to stop playback at any time. Adding transparency Many TV stations display logos semi-transparently in the corner of the frame to emphasize the brand.
Click the stopwatch icon to set an Opacity keyframe at this location. When you place your composition in the render queue, it becomes a render item that uses the render settings assigned to it. You will prepare this animation for two formats so that it can be used for broadcast purposes as well as on a website. The Render Queue panel opens automatically. The SWF format is a widely used vector graphics and animation format for the web—a compact, binary format that can contain audio and vector objects.
Before exporting to SWF, you need to adjust the composition a bit for online display. So you need to reposition and resize the layers for the new output medium, including moving the logo to the top of the composition. Leave all other settings at their defaults, and then click OK. Nested layers are rasterized. Precomposing moves the layers to a new composition, which takes the place of the selected layers.
This lesson will take approximately 2 hours to complete. You can animate text layers by manually creating keyframes in the Timeline panel, using animation presets, or using expressions.
You can even animate individual characters or words in a text layer. Importing the footage You need to import two footage items to begin this lesson. Arrange the layers so that compass. You can create and edit text directly on the screen in the Composition panel, and quickly change the font, style, size, and color of the text.
You can add horizontal or vertical text anywhere in a composition. The Tools, Character, and Paragraph panels contain a wide range of text controls. Use point text to enter a single word or a line of characters; use paragraph text to enter and format text as one or more paragraphs.
As with layers imported from Illustrator, text layers are continuously rasterized, so when you scale the layer or resize the text, it retains crisp, resolution-independent edges.
The text you enter appears in a new text layer. The small line through the I-beam marks the position of the text baseline. Then press Enter on the numeric keypad to exit text-editing mode and to select the text layer in the Composition panel. Or, you can select the layer name to exit text-editing mode. Animating Text Using the Character panel The Character panel provides options for formatting characters.
If no text is highlighted and no text layers are selected, the changes you make in the Character panel become the new defaults for the next text entry. If a type layer is selected, the text in the Composition panel takes on the newly selected font.
Using the Paragraph panel Use the Paragraph panel to set options that apply to an entire paragraph, such as alignment, indentation, and leading. For point text, each line is a separate paragraph. You can use the Paragraph panel to set formatting options for a single paragraph, multiple paragraphs, or all paragraphs in a text layer.
This aligns horizontal text to the center of the layer, not to the center of the composition. Now you can position the text layer using a grid. Press Shift after you start dragging to constrain the movement and help you position the text. After applying an animation preset, you can customize it and save it to use again in other projects. To help you choose the right animation preset for your projects, you can preview them in Adobe Bridge. Adobe Bridge plays a sample of the animation in the Preview panel.
Nothing appears to change in the composition. Previewing a range of frames Now, preview the animation. The letters appear to evaporate into the background.
It looks great—but you want the letters to fade in and remain onscreen, not disappear. So you will customize the preset to suit your needs. Customizing an animation preset After you apply an animation preset to a layer, all of its properties and keyframes are listed in the Timeline panel.
The letters now fade into rather than disappear from the composition. Previewing the scale animation Now, preview the change. The scale animation ends shortly before The movie title fades in and then scales to a smaller size. In nature, nothing comes to an absolute stop. Instead, objects ease into and out of starting and stopping points.
The keyframe becomes a leftpointing icon. The keyframe becomes a right-pointing icon. Animating using parenting The next task is to make it appear as if the virtual camera is zooming away from the composition.
The text scale animation you just applied gets you halfway there, but you need to animate the scale of the compass as well. Road Trip. This sets the Road Trip text layer as the parent of the compass layer, which in turn becomes the child layer. As the child layer, the compass layer inherits the Scale keyframes of its parent layer Road Trip.
Not only is this a quick way to animate the compass, but it also ensures that the compass scales at the same rate and by the same amount as the text layer. Road Trip because Road Trip is now the second layer.
Alternatively, you can select the compass layer in the Timeline panel and press P to reveal its Position property. Then enter , Both the text and the compass scale down in size, so that it appears that the camera is moving away from the scene.
If you entered Position values for the compass, select the compass layer, and press P to hide the Position property, too. Creating a parenting relationship between layers synchronizes the changes in the parent layer with the corresponding transformation values of the child layers, except opacity.
For example, if a parent layer moves 5 pixels to the right of its starting position, then the child layer also moves 5 pixels to the right of its starting position. A layer can have only one parent, but a layer can be a parent to any number of 2D or 3D layers within the same composition.
Parenting layers is useful for creating complex animations such as linking the movements of a marionette or depicting the orbits of planets in the solar system. Animating imported Photoshop text If all text animations involved just two short words, such as Road Trip, life would be easy. But in the real world, you may often have to work with longer blocks of text, and they can be tedious to enter manually. Because you imported the credits. Click OK if you see a warning about missing fonts.
Then change the k to a c in documentary. This is because the original layer name was created in Photoshop. We used Myriad Pro. Leave all other settings as they are. Then select layer 2 again. Then, in the Text Color dialog box, select a green color. The easiest way to do this is to use another text animation preset. You should see two keyframes for Range Selector 1 Start: one at , and one at These presets also provide placeholder text with formatting when you apply them, so in this exercise, you will enter and format your text after you apply the animation preset.
The text on the path is obscured by the movie title. Customizing the preset path First, you need to change the placeholder word pipes to directed by. By animating tracking, you can make words appear to expand outward as they appear onscreen from a central point. Before you animate it, change it to your own name. Performing Color Correction Lesson overview Getting started Importing the footage Creating the composition Adjusting color balance Replacing the background Keying out an area with the Color Range effect Adding a new background Color-correcting the clouds Removing unwanted elements Correcting a range of colors Warming colors with the Photo Filter effect Review questions Review answers Using 3D Features Lesson overview Getting started Animating 3D objects Adding reflections to 3D objects Creating a simple reflection Adding an adjustment layer Animating a camera Adjusting layer timing Using 3D lights Creating a light layer Positioning the spotlight Adding an ambient light Animating lights Adding effects Adjusting the Material Options properties Adding a transition effect Adjusting the timing of the layers Adding motion blur Previewing the entire animation Review questions Review answers Advanced Editing Techniques Lesson overview Getting started Using motion stabilization Setting up the project Importing the footage Creating the composition Positioning the track points Analyzing and applying stabilization Scaling the layer Using single-point motion tracking Setting up the project Importing the footage Creating the composition Creating a shape layer Positioning the track point Analyzing and applying tracking Using multipoint tracking Setting up the project Importing the footage Creating the composition Positioning the track points Applying the multipoint tracker Creating a particle simulation Setting up the project Creating the composition Creating a particle system Customizing the particle effect Creating the sun Lighting the darkness Adding a lens flare Retiming playback using the Timewarp effect Setting up the project Importing the footage and creating the composition Using Timewarp Review questions Review answers Rendering and Outputting Lesson overview Getting started Creating templates for the rendering process Creating a render-settings template for full resolution Creating a render-settings template for test renderings Creating templates for output modules Creating an output-module template for broadcast renderings Creating a low-resolution output-module template Exporting to different output media Preparing to output a test movie Working with multiple output modules Preparing the composition for full-resolution output Using pixel aspect ratio correction Rendering the final movie for broadcast Review questions Review answers Color Management in After Effects CS4 Contributors Show and hide more.
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Page 80 Using a text animation preset Before continuing, take a moment to study the layers of the file you just imported. The organization of the lessons is also design-oriented rather than feature-oriented. Others will be new. To specify 10 minutes, type Because the operation is self-animating, you only need to change a few properties and the entire shape will move on its own.❿
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