Adobe® After Effects® CC Help
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iii Contents Chapter 1: What's new New features summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1 Chapter 2: Workspace and workflow Planning and setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
iv AFTER EFFECTS Contents Chapter 6: Views and previews Previewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180 Modifying and using views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
v AFTER EFFECTS Contents Effect list . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433 Audio effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
vi AFTER EFFECTS Contents Chapter 17: System Requirements System requirements for After Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 Chapter 1: What's new New features summary This document describes the new and updated features in the October 2014 release of After Effects CC. The latest features include the high-DPI support for Mac OS and Windows, CINEMA 4D R16 compatibility, Anywhere collaboration, and a refreshed interface design. Updates and enhancements | December 2014 The December 2014 release of After Effects provides important bug fixes and scripting improvements.
2 What's new Refined user interface with high-DPI support Refreshed interface design After Effects has a new darker design. You can change the brightness of the interface in Edit > Preferences > Appearance, though the slider range is more limited in that you can no longer change the appearance of the user interface to a completely light mode. There is some simplification to the panel functionality.
3 What's new If you want content to appear the same on HiDPI displays and non-HiDPI displays, set the zoom value of the HiDPI display to be twice that of the non-HiDPI display. Enhanced 3D pipeline with Maxon Cineware 2.0 plug-in and CINEMA 4D Lite R16 After Effects CC now includes Cineware 2.0, which adds CINEMA 4D R16 compatibility. Cineware 2.0 includes the new Reflectance Channel, enables you to work with 3D elements faster, and provides improved layer support.
4 What's new For example, use this command when you want to move expression-rigged layers from one composition to another but let the layers reference a control layer only in the same composition. Note: The expressions created using the Copy With Relative Property Links command are identical to those created using the expression pickwhip. Copy with Relative Property Links - thisComp.layer("control_layer").transform.position Copy with Property Links - This command specifically references the layer's source.
5 What's new In the latest release of After Effects CC, a color transformation is applied to the composition as a last step before the images are passed to Dynamic Link for use in Premiere Pro or Adobe Media Encoder. This transformation corrects the composition image to the color space used by Dynamic Link. This is similar to the View > Enable Display Color Management option in After Effects which corrects the image for your monitor. See the color management section for detailed information.
6 What's new • Use the new Browse Add-ons... command in the File menu to open the Adobe Add-ons page (formerly Adobe Exchange) in your web browser. • The new Adobe Color Themes replaces the previously named Adobe Kuler panel. Choose Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes to open this panel. See the Select a color with the Adobe Color Pickersection in the Color basics article to learn more about the Adobe Color panel.
7 Chapter 2: Workspace and workflow Planning and setup Planning your work Correct project settings, preparation of footage, and initial composition settings can help you to avoid errors and unexpected results when rendering your final output movie. Before you begin, think about what kind of work you’ll be doing in After Effects and what kind of output you intend to create.
8 Workspace and workflow If possible, use uncompressed footage or footage encoded with lossless compression. Lossless compression means better results for many operations, such as keying and motion tracking. Certain kinds of compression—such as the compression used in DV encoding—are especially bad for color keying, because they discard the subtle differences in color that you depend on for good bluescreen or greenscreen keying.
9 Workspace and workflow For more information, see Improve performanceand Memory & Multiprocessing preferences . Planning for playback on computer monitors and mobile devices When you create a movie for playback on a personal computer—whether downloaded from the Web or played from a CD-ROM—specify composition settings, render settings, and output module settings that keep file size low.
10 Workspace and workflow Cross-platform project considerations After Effects project files are compatible with Mac OS and Windows operating systems, but some factors—mostly regarding the locations and naming of footage files and support files—can affect the ease of working with the same project across platforms.
11 Workspace and workflow More Help topics Adobe Story workflow Composition settings Output modules and output module settings Render settings Plug-ins Fonts Setup and installation To submit a feature request or bug report about After Effects, choose Help > Send Feedback. Installing the software Before installing Adobe After Effects software, review the complete system requirements .
12 Workspace and workflow General user interface items Activate a tool The Tools panel can be displayed as a toolbar across the top of the application window or as a normal, dockable panel. Note: Controls related to some tools appear only when the tool is selected in the Tools panel. • Click the button for the tool. If the button has a small triangle at its lower-right corner, hold down the mouse button to view the hidden tools. Then, click the tool you want to activate.
13 Workspace and workflow Note: In general, the search and filter functions in the Project and Timeline panels only operate on the content of columns that are shown. • To reorder columns, select a column name and drag it to a new location. • To resize columns, drag the bar next to a column name. Some columns cannot be resized. • To sort footage items in the Project panel, click the column heading. Click once more to sort them in reverse order.
14 Workspace and workflow See this video on the Video2Brain website to learn about the new features for searching and filtering in panels. Examples of searches in the Project panel • To show only footage items for which the name or comment contains a specific string, start typing the string. • To show only footage items for which the source file is missing, type the entire word missing.
15 Workspace and workflow You can sequentially undo as many as 99 of the most recent changes made to the project. To avoid wasting time undoing accidental modifications, lock a layer when you want to see it but do not want to modify it. • To undo the most recent change, choose Edit > Undo [action] or Ctrl-Z • To undo a change and all changes after it, choose Edit > History, and select the first change that you want to undo. • To revert to the last saved version of the project, choose File > Revert.
16 Workspace and workflow Overview of general workflow in After Effects Whether you use Adobe After Effects to animate a simple title, create complex motion graphics, or composite realistic visual effects, you generally follow the same basic workflow, though you may repeat or skip some steps. For example, you may repeat the cycle of modifying layer properties, animating, and previewing until everything looks right.
17 Workspace and workflow Read Trish and Chris Meyer’s step-by-step introduction to creating a basic animation in a PDF excerpt from their book, The After Effects Apprentice. For an overview of After Effects project navigtion, see the video tutorial, “Walking Through A Mini Project,” by Jeff Sengstack and Infinite Skills. Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie This tutorial assumes that you have already started After Effects and have not modified the empty default project.
18 Workspace and workflow • Press the spacebar. Press the spacebar again to stop the preview. 11 Apply the Glow effect: • Choose Effect > Stylize > Glow. • Type glow in the search field at the top of the Effects & Presets panel to find the Glow effect. Double-click the effect name. 12 In the Render Queue panel, click the underlined text to the right of Output To. In the Output Movie To dialog box, choose a name and location for the output movie file, and then click Save.
19 Workspace and workflow Create a composition from clips in Adobe Premiere Pro You can replace selected clips in Adobe Premiere Pro with a dynamically linked After Effects composition based on those clips. The new composition inherits the sequence settings from Adobe Premiere Pro. 1 Open Premiere Pro and select the clips you want to replace. 2 Right-click any of the selected clips. 3 Select Replace With After Effects Composition.
20 Workspace and workflow 2 Change the composition in After Effects. Then, switch back to Adobe Premiere Pro to view your changes. The changes made in After Effects appear in Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro stops using any preview files rendered for the clip before the changes. Note: You can change the name of the composition in After Effects after creating a dynamic link to it from Adobe Premiere Pro. Adobe Premiere Pro does not update the linked composition name in the Project panel.
21 Workspace and workflow Note: A linked After Effects composition will not support Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing. See Improve performance by optimizing memory, cache, and multiprocessing settings.
22 Workspace and workflow Projects (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS New project Ctrl+Alt+N Command+Option+N Open project Ctrl+O Command+O Open most recent project Ctrl+Alt+Shift+P Command+Option+Shift+P New folder in Project panel Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N Command+Option+Shift+N Open Project Settings dialog box Ctrl+Alt+Shift+K Command+Option+Shift+K Find in Project panel Ctrl+F Command+F Cycle through color bit depths for project Alt-click bit-depth button at bottom of Project Optio
23 Workspace and workflow Result Windows Mac OS Switch to workspace Shift+F10, Shift+F11, or Shift+F12 Shift+F10, Shift+F11, or Shift+F12 Close active viewer or panel (closes content first) Ctrl+W Command+W Close active panel or all viewers of type of active viewer (closes content first). For example, if a Timeline panel is active, this command closes all Timeline panels.
24 Workspace and workflow Activate Rotation tool W W Activate Roto Brush tool Alt+W Option+W Activate and cycle through Camera tools (Unified Camera, Orbit Camera, Track XY Camera, and Track Z Camera) C C Activate Pan Behind tool Y Y Activate and cycle through mask and shape tools (Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, Star) Q Q Activate and cycle through Type tools (Horizontal and Vertical) Ctrl+T Command+T Activate and cycle between the Pen and Mask G Feather tools.
25 Workspace and workflow Time navigation (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS Go to specific time Alt+Shift+J Option+Shift+J Go to beginning or end of work area Shift+Home or Shift+End Shift+Home or Shift+End Go to previous or next visible item in time ruler (keyframe, layer marker, work area beginning or end) J or K J or K Go to beginning of composition, layer, or footage item Home or Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow Home or Command+Option+Left Arrow Go to end of composition, layer, or footage it
26 Workspace and workflow Manually preview (scrub) video Drag or Alt-drag current-time indicator, depending on Live Update setting Drag or Option-drag current-time indicator, depending on Live Update setting Manually preview (scrub) audio Ctrl-drag current-time indicator Command-drag current-time indicator RAM preview number of frames specified by Alt+0 on numeric keypad* Alternate RAM Preview preference (defaults to 5) Option+0 on numeric keypad* or Control+Option+0 (zero) on main keyboard Toggle
27 Workspace and workflow Zoom to 100% in Composition, Layer, or Footage panel / (on main keyboard) / (on main keyboard) Zoom to fit in Composition, Layer, or Footage panel Shift+/ (on main keyboard) Shift+/ (on main keyboard) Zoom up to 100% to fit in Composition, Layer, Alt+/ (on main keyboard) or Footage panel Option+/ (on main keyboard) Set resolution to Full, Half, or Custom in Composition panel Ctrl+J, Ctrl+Shift+J, Ctrl+Alt+J Command+J, Command+Shift+J, Command+Option+J Open View Options
28 Workspace and workflow Replace selected source footage for selected layers with footage item selected in Project panel Ctrl+Alt+/ (on main keyboard) Command+Option+/ (on main keyboard) Replace source for a selected layer Alt-drag footage item from Project panel onto Option-drag footage item from Project panel selected layer onto selected layer Delete a footage item without a warning Ctrl+Backspace Command+Delete Open Interpret Footage dialog box for selected footage item Ctrl+Alt+G Command+Opt
29 Workspace and workflow Deselect all layers Ctrl+Shift+A Command+Shift+A Scroll topmost selected layer to top of Timeline panel X X Show or hide Parent column Shift+F4 Shift+F4 Show or hide Layer Switches and Modes columns F4 F4 Setting the sampling method for selected layers (Best/Bilinear) Alt+B Option+B Setting the sampling method for selected layers (Best/Bicubic) Alt+Shift+B Option+Shift+B Turn off all other solo switches Alt-click solo switch Option-click solo switch Turn Video
30 Workspace and workflow Unlock all layers Ctrl+Shift+L Command+Shift+L Set Quality to Best, Draft, or Wireframe for selected layers Ctrl+U, Ctrl+Shift+U, or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+U Command+U, Command+Shift+U, Command+Option+Shift+U Cycle forward or backward through blending modes for selected layers Shift+ - (hyphen) or Shift+= (equal sign) on the main keyboard Shift+ - (hyphen) or Shift+= (equal sign) on the main keyboard Find in Timeline panel Ctrl+F Command+F Note: Some shortcuts are marked with
31 Workspace and workflow Result Windows Mac OS Show only audio waveform LL LL Show only properties with keyframes or expressions U U Show only selected properties and groups SS SS Hide property or group Alt+Shift-click property or group name Option+Shift-click property or group name Add or remove property or group from set that is shown Shift+property or group shortcut Shift+property or group shortcut Add or remove keyframe at current time Alt+Shift+property shortcut Option+property sh
32 Workspace and workflow Result Windows Mac OS Increase or decrease Rotation (Z Rotation) of selected layers by 10° Shift++ (plus) or Shift+- (minus) on numeric keypad Shift++ (plus) or Shift+- (minus) on numeric keypad Increase or decrease Opacity (or Intensity for light layers) of selected layers by 1% Ctrl+Alt++ (plus) or Ctrl+Alt+- (minus) on numeric keypad Control+Option++ (plus) or Control+Option+- (minus) on numeric keypad Increase or decrease Opacity (or Intensity for light layers) of sel
33 Workspace and workflow Move the camera and its point of interest to look at selected 3D layers Ctrl+Alt+Shift+\ Command+Option+Shift+\ With a camera tool selected, move the camera F and its point of interest to look at selected 3D layers F With a camera tool selected, move the camera Ctrl+Shift+F and its point of interest to look at all 3D layers Command+Shift+F Turn Casts Shadows property on or off for selected 3D layers Option+Shift+C Alt+Shift+C Keyframes and the Graph Editor (keyboard shor
34 Workspace and workflow Text (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS New text layer Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T Command+Option+Shift+T Align selected horizontal text left, center, or right Ctrl+Shift+L, Ctrl+Shift+C, or Ctrl+Shift+R Command+Shift+L, Command+Shift+C, or Command+Shift+R Align selected vertical text top, center, or bottom Ctrl+Shift+L, Ctrl+Shift+C, or Ctrl+Shift+R Command+Shift+L, Command+Shift+C, or Command+Shift+R Extend or reduce selection by one character to right or left in horizo
35 Workspace and workflow Result Windows Mac OS Auto leading for selected text Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A Command+Option+Shift+A Reset tracking to 0 for selected text Ctrl+Shift+Q Command+Shift+Control+Q Justify paragraph; left align last line Ctrl+Shift+J Command+Shift+J Justify paragraph; right align last line Ctrl+Alt+Shift+J Command+Option+Shift+J Justify paragraph; force last line Ctrl+Shift+F Command+Shift+F Decrease or increase font size of selected text Ctrl+Shift+, (comma) or Ctrl+Shift+.
36 Workspace and workflow Result Windows Mac OS Invert selected mask Ctrl+Shift+I Command+Shift+I Open Mask Feather dialog box for selected mask Ctrl+Shift+F Command+Shift+F Open Mask Shape dialog box for selected mask Ctrl+Shift+M Command+Shift+M Paint tools (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS Swap paint background color and foreground X colors X Set paint foreground color to black and background color to white D D Set foreground color to the color currently under any paint tool
37 Workspace and workflow Shape layers (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS Group selected shapes Ctrl+G Command+G Ungroup selected shapes Ctrl+Shift+G Command+Shift+G Enter free-transform path editing mode Select Path property in Timeline panel and press Ctrl+T Select Path property in Timeline panel and press Command+T Increase star inner roundness Page Up when dragging to create shape Page Up when dragging to create shape Decrease star inner roundness Page Down when dragging to crea
38 Workspace and workflow Motion tracking (keyboard shortcuts) Result Windows Mac OS Move feature region, search region, and attach point 1 pixel at current magnification arrow key arrow key Move feature region, search region, and Shift+arrow key attach point 10 pixels at current magnification Shift+arrow key Move feature region and search region 1 pixel Alt+arrow key at current magnification Option+arrow key Move feature region and search region 10 pixels at current magnification Option+Shift+a
39 Workspace and workflow • To reveal a file in Adobe Bridge, select a file in the Project panel and choose File > Reveal In Bridge. • To use Adobe Bridge to browse for animation presets, choose Animation > Browse Presets. Adobe Bridge is part of the Creative Cloud suite of applications and can be downloaded and installed through Creative Cloud. See the help documentation and the Adobe Bridge CC product page for more information. See this video to get an overview of Adobe Bridge CC.
40 Workspace and workflow By creating your new PSD document from the Photoshop New File dialog box with a Film & Video preset, you can start with a document that is set up correctly for a specific video output type. If you are already working in After Effects, you can create a new PSD document that matches your composition and project settings by choosing File > New > Adobe Photoshop File. Exchanging movies You can also exchange video files, such as QuickTime movies, between Photoshop and After Effects.
41 Workspace and workflow • Richard Harrington and Marcus Geduld also provide "After Effects Essentials for Flash Users", another excerpt from their book After Effects for Flash | Flash for After Effects. In this chapter, Richard and Marcus explain After Effects in terms that a Flash user can understand. http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.
42 Workspace and workflow Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects Adobe Premiere Pro is designed to capture, import, and edit movies. After Effects is designed to create motion graphics, apply visual effects, composite visual elements, perform color correction, and perform other post-production tasks for movies.
43 Workspace and workflow If you edit an audio-only file (for example, a WAV file) in Adobe Audition, you change the original file. If you edit a layer that contains both audio and video (for example, an AVI file), you edit a copy of the source audio file. 1 Select the layer that contains the audio that you want to edit. The item must be of a type that is editable in Adobe Audition. 2 Choose Edit > Edit In Adobe Audition to open the clip in Edit view in Adobe Audition.
44 Workspace and workflow Workspaces and panels Adobe video and audio applications provide a consistent, customizable user interface. Although each application has its own set of panels, you move and group panels in the same way in each application. The main window of a program is the application window. Panels are organized in this window in an arrangement called a workspace. Each application includes several predefined workspaces that optimize the layout of panels for specific tasks.
45 Workspace and workflow Save, reset, or delete workspaces Save a custom workspace As you customize a workspace, the application tracks your changes, storing the most recent layout. To store a specific layout more permanently, save a custom workspace. Saved custom workspaces appear in the Workspace menu, where you can return to and reset them. ❖ Arrange the frames and panels as desired, and then choose Window > Workspace > New Workspace. Type a name for the workspace, and click OK.
46 Workspace and workflow Grouping zones exist in the middle of a panel or group, and along the tab area of panels. Dropping a panel on a grouping zone stacks it with other panels. Dock or group panels 1 If the panel you want to dock or group is not visible, choose it from the Window menu. 2 Do one of the following: • To move an individual panel, drag the gripper area in the upper-left corner of a panel’s tab onto the desired drop zone.
47 Workspace and workflow Undock a panel in a floating window When you undock a panel in a floating window, you can add panels to the window and modify it similarly to the application window. You can use floating windows to use a secondary monitor, or to create workspaces like the workspaces in earlier versions of Adobe applications.
48 Workspace and workflow When you close a panel group in the application window, the other groups resize to use the newly available space. When you close a floating window, the panels within it close, too. • To open or close a panel, choose the panel from the Window menu. • To close a panel or window, click its Close button . If you accidentally close a panel, choose the panel from the Window menu, and the panel will be displayed again. • To open or close a panel, use its keyboard shortcut.
49 Workspace and workflow Edit this, look at that (ETLAT) and locked Composition viewers If a Composition viewer is locked, the Timeline panel for another composition is active, and the Composition viewer for the active composition is not shown, then most commands that affect views and previews operate on the composition for which the viewer is shown.
50 Workspace and workflow The Preferences menu To open the Preferences menu, go to: • Edit > Preferences > [category name] (Windows) • After Effects > Preferences > [category name] (Mac OS) Use the following keyboard shortcuts to open the Preferences > General menu: • Ctrl+Alt+; (semicolon) (Windows) • Command+Option+; (semicolon) (Mac OS) Reset preferences To restore the default preference settings, press and hold the following keys while the application is starting.
51 Workspace and workflow To reveal the preferences in After Effects without searching on your hard drive, go to: • Edit > Preferences > General and click Reveal Preferences in Explorer button (Windows) • After Effects > Preferences > General and click Reveal Preferences in Finder button (Mac OS) It is recommended that you do not modify the files in this directory manually; use the Preferences dialog box to modify the preferences.
52 Workspace and workflow • Audio Preview Duration: Preview video and audio Display preferences • Motion Path: Motion paths • Disable Thumbnails In Project Panel: Composition thumbnail images • Show Rendering Progress In Info Panel And Flowchart: Preview video and audio • Hardware Accelerate Composition, Layer, And Footage Panels: Improve performance Import preferences • Still Footage: Create layers from footage items or change layer source • Sequence Footage: Import a single still image or a still-image
53 Workspace and workflow Auto-Save preferences Project links embedded in QuickTime, Video for Windows files Memory & Multiprocessing preferences Memory & Multiprocessing preferences Audio Hardware and Audio Output Mapping preferences Preview video and audio Sync Settings The Sync Settings feature enables you to synchronize preferences and settings through the Creative Cloud. For detailed information, see the Sync Settings article.
54 Workspace and workflow • Download Settings: Synchronize Settings from Creative Cloud to your computer; overwrite the local version with the Creative Cloud version of settings. • Upload Settings: Synchronize settings from this local computer to Creative Cloud. Progress and details about the synchronization is displayed in the Info panel (Window > Info). Restart After Effects to apply downloaded preferences after using Sync Settings .
55 Workspace and workflow To change the settings for the Sync Settings feature (Mac OS): • Click After Effects > [your Adobe ID] > Manage Sync Settings • Click After Effects > Preferences > Sync Settings You can change the following settings in the settings dialog: Automatically clear user profile on application quit Enable this option to clear the user profile when you quit After Effects. On next launch, preferences are fetched from the default Adobe ID used to license the product.
56 Workspace and workflow Modify keyboard shortcuts Sebastien Perier provides instructions on his website for assigning keyboard shortcuts to scripts so that you can run a script with a single keystroke. This technique relies on the KeyEd Up script. For a reference of keyboard shortcuts, see Keyboard shortcuts reference. Note: On Mac OS, some keyboard commands for interacting with the operating system conflict with keyboard commands for interacting with After Effects.
57 Chapter 3: Projects and compositions Projects About projects An After Effects project is a single file that stores compositions and references to all of the source files used by footage items in that project. Compositions are collections of layers. Many layers use footage items (such as movies or still images) as a source, though some layers—such as shape layers and text layers—contain graphics that you create within After Effects. A project file has the filename extension .aep or .aepx.
58 Projects and compositions Project links embedded in QuickTime, Video for Windows files When you render a movie and export it to a container format, you can embed a link to the After Effects project in the container file. To import the project, import the container file, and choose Project from the Import As menu in the Import File dialog box. If the container file contains a link to a project that has been moved, you can browse to locate the project.
59 Projects and compositions • To save a copy of a project as a template project, choose File > Save A Copy, and then rename the copy with the filename extension .aet. Save and back up projects in After Effects • To save a project, choose File > Save. • To save a copy of the project with a new automatically generated name, choose File > Increment And Save, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+S (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+S (Mac OS).
60 Projects and compositions • To customize the appearance of the flowchart, use the Flowchart panel menu and the buttons along the bottom of the panel. For tool tips identifying the buttons in the Flowchart panel, let your pointer hover over a button until the tool tip appears. • To delete elements, select them and press Delete. If the selected element is a footage item or composition, it is deleted from the project and no longer appears in the Timeline and Project panels.
61 Projects and compositions During rendering, the image data and other information can be said to flow from each nested composition into the composition that contains it. For this reason, nested compositions are sometimes referred to as being upstream of the compositions that contain them, and the containing compositions are said to be downstream of the nested compositions that they contain. A set of compositions connected through nesting is called a composition network.
62 Projects and compositions Online resources about precomposing and nesting Angie Taylor provides an extensive discussion and explanation of animation using nesting, parenting, expressions, and null object layers in a PDF excerpt from her book Creative After Effects 7: Workflow Techniques for Animation, Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics.
63 Projects and compositions Note: Double-clicking a precomposition layer when a paint tool or the Roto Brush tool is active opens the layer in the Layer panel. • To open the most recently active composition in the same composition network as the currently active composition, press Shift+Esc. • Use the Composition Navigator. • Use the Composition Mini-Flowchart.
64 Projects and compositions A Indicator that composition does not flow into other compositions B Flow direction C Active (current) composition D Upstream compositions E Indicators that other compositions flow into these compositions • Tap the Shift key when a Composition, Layer, or Timeline panel is active. Note: Do not hold the Shift key down; press it briefly.
65 Projects and compositions See this video tutorial on the Video2Brain website about how to save time with pre-rendering and proxies in After Effects. Note: An alternative to replacing the composition with the movie is to use the rendered movie as a proxy for the nested composition. Render order and collapsing transformations A composition consists of layers stacked on top of one another in the Timeline panel.
66 Projects and compositions If transformations are collapsed, the 3D properties of the layers in the nested composition are exposed to the containing composition. Thus, the nested composition can intersect with 3D layers, cast shadows on 3D layers, and receive shadows from 3D layers in the containing composition. The containing composition's camera and lights can also control the nested composition.
67 Projects and compositions You render a composition to create the frames of a final output movie, which is encoded and exported to any number of formats. (See Basics of rendering and exporting .) Simple projects may include only one composition; complex projects may include hundreds of compositions to organize large amounts of footage or many effects. In some places in the After Effects user interface, composition is abbreviated as comp. Each composition has an entry in the Project panel.
68 Projects and compositions Note: New compositions do not inherit the previous Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In Render Queue and Preserve Resolution When Nested settings. You can create a set of After Effects compositions tailored for a selected set of devices by using the File > New Document In > After Effects command in Adobe Device Central. See Create compositions for playback on mobile devices.
69 Projects and compositions Create compositions for playback on mobile devices Screen dimensions and video frame rates vary from one mobile device to another. For information on acquiring footage for playback on mobile devices, see Planning for playback on computer monitors and mobile devices. For a video tutorial about creating compositions for mobile devices, go to the Adobe TV website. 1 In Adobe Device Central, choose File > New Document In > After Effects. 2 Select one or more devices.
70 Projects and compositions A Current-time display B Current-time indicator (CTI) C Time ruler D Layer switches E Time graph Press the backslash (\) key to switch activation between the Composition panel and Timeline panel for the current composition. Composition settings You can enter composition settings manually, or you can use composition settings presets to automatically set frame size (width and height), pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for many common output formats.
71 Projects and compositions Basic composition settings Start Timecode or Start Frame Timecode or frame number assigned to the first frame of the composition. This value does not affect rendering; it merely specifies where to start counting from. Background Color Use the color swatch or eyedropper to pick a composition background color. (See Select a color or edit a gradient.
72 Projects and compositions The anti-aliasing filter controls the amount of blurriness. None gives the sharpest result but the edges of the projection catcher may look aliased, with Box blur, Triangle, and Cubic giving blurrier results. Note: Ray-traced 3D layers use Ray-tracing Quality to control the appearance of motion blur.Depth of field calculations in Ray-traced 3D are more accurate than they are in Classic 3D (and previously in Advanced 3D).
73 Projects and compositions You may want to see time values in feet plus frames format, for example, if you are preparing a movie for eventual output to film; or in simple frame numbers if you plan to use your movie in an animation program such as Flash. The format you choose applies to the current project only. Note: Changing the time display format does not alter the frame rate of your assets or output—it changes only how frames are numbered for display in After Effects.
74 Projects and compositions Source timecode Source timecode support file formats After Effects can read and use timecode for most formats including: QuickTime, DV, AVI, P2, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, h.264, AVCHD, RED, XDCAM EX, XDCAM HD, WAV and DPX image sequence importers. Project panel Source timecode is displayed in columns in the Project panel: Media Start, Media End, Media Duration and Tape Name. These refer to the source’s start, end and total duration.
75 Chapter 4: Importing footage Importing and interpreting footage items About imported files and footage items You import source files into a project as the basis for footage items and use them as sources for layers. The same file can be the source for multiple footage items, each with its own interpretation settings. Each footage item can be used as the source for one or more layers. You work with collections of layers in a composition. You primarily work with footage items in the Project panel.
76 Importing footage To replace all uses of selected footage items with another footage item, select footage items in the Project panel, and then Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the new footage item onto a selected footage item in the Project panel. When After Effects imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews.
77 Importing footage • EPS • GIF • JPEG (JPG, JPE) • Maya camera data (MA) • Maya IFF (IFF, TDI; 16 bpc) • OpenEXR (EXR, SXR, MXR; 32 bpc) • PICT (PCT) • Portable Network Graphics (PNG; 16 bpc) • Radiance (HDR, RGBE, XYZE; 32 bpc) • SGI (SGI, BW, RGB; 16 bpc) • Softimage (PIC) Note: 3D Channel effect plug-ins from fnord software are included with After Effects to provide access to multiple layers and channels of OpenEXR files. (See Using channels in OpenEXR files.
78 Importing footage • Adobe After Effects 6.0 and later binary projects in After Effects CS5 (AEP, AET) • Adobe After Effects 6.5 and later binary projects in After Effects CS5.5 and later (AEP, AET) • Adobe After Effects CS4 and later XML projects (AEPX) The Automatic Duck Pro Import AE plug-in is now bundled with the application, and called Pro Import After Effects.
79 Importing footage Note: SWF files are imported with an alpha channel. Audio is not retained. Interactive content and scripted animation are not retained. Animation defined by keyframes in the main, top-level movie is retained. • Video for Windows (AVI, WAV; requires QuickTime on Mac OS) • Windows Media File (WMV, WMA, ASF; Windows only) • XDCAM HD and XDCAM EX Note: After Effects can import Sony XDCAM HD assets if they were recorded to MXF files.
80 Importing footage • To import a rendered output file from the Render Queue panel, drag the corresponding output module from the Render Queue panel into the Project panel. Note: If you drag an output module from the Render Queue panel into the Project panel before rendering, After Effects creates a placeholder footage item. References to the placeholder footage item are automatically replaced when the output module is rendered; the placeholder footage item itself is not replaced.
81 Importing footage Interpret a proxy using the Interpret Footage dialog box ❖ Select the original footage item in the Project panel and do one of the following: • Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the Interpret Footage panel. button at the bottom of the Project • Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the footage item to the Interpret Footage button. • Choose File > Interpret Footage > Proxy.
82 Importing footage Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight Image files with alpha channels store transparency information in one of two ways: straight or premultiplied. Although the alpha channels are the same, the color channels differ. With straight (or unmatted) channels, transparency information is stored only in the alpha channel, not in any of the visible color channels.
83 Importing footage 4 In the Alpha section, select an interpretation method: Guess Attempts to determine the type of channels used in the image. If After Effects cannot guess confidently, it beeps. Ignore Disregards transparency information contained in the alpha channel. Straight - Unmatted Interprets the channels as straight. Premultiplied - Matted With Color Interprets channels as premultiplied.
84 Importing footage Conforming the frame rate of a footage item does not alter the original file, only the reference that After Effects uses. When conforming, After Effects changes the internal duration of frames but not the frame content. Afterward, the footage plays back at a different speed. For example, if you conform the frame rate from 15 fps to 30 fps, the footage plays back twice as fast.
85 Importing footage Note: Jeff Almasol provides a script on is redefinery website to set the frame rate and duration of the current composition and all compositions nested within it. Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio Pixel aspect ratio (PAR) is the ratio of width to height of one pixel in an image. Frame aspect ratio (sometimes called image aspect ratio or IAR) is the ratio of width to height of the image frame.
86 Importing footage If a footage item uses nonsquare pixels, After Effects displays the pixel aspect ratio next to the thumbnail image for the footage item in the Project panel. You can change the pixel aspect ratio interpretation for individual footage items in the Interpret Footage dialog box. By ensuring that all footage items are interpreted correctly, you can combine footage items with different pixel aspect ratios in the same composition.
87 Importing footage This discrepancy is limited to these older, standard-definition formats for which clean aperture differs from production aperture. This discrepancy doesn’t exist in newer formats. New projects and compositions created in After Effects CS4 and later use the correct pixel aspect ratio values by default. Projects and compositions created in After Effects CS3 or earlier are upgraded to use the correct pixel aspect ratios when these projects are opened in After Effects CS4 and later.
88 Importing footage Common pixel aspect ratios Pixel aspect ratio When to use Square pixels 1.0 Footage has a 640x480 or 648x486 frame size, is 1920x1080 HD (not HDV or DVCPRO HD), is 1280x720 HD or HDV, or was exported from an application that doesn’t support nonsquare pixels. This setting can also be appropriate for footage that was transferred from film or for customized projects. D1/DV NTSC 0.91 Footage has a 720x486 or 720x480 frame size, and the desired result is a 4:3 frame aspect ratio.
89 Importing footage Render settings Converting movies Importing and interpreting video and audio Interlaced video and separating fields Interlacing is a technique developed for transmitting television signals using limited bandwidth. In an interlaced system, only half the number of horizontal lines for each frame of video are transmitted at a time. Because of the speed of transmission, the afterglow of displays, and the persistence of vision, the viewer perceives each frame in full resolution.
90 Importing footage Separate video fields If you want to use interlaced or field-rendered footage (such as NTSC video) in an After Effects project, you get the best results if you separate the video fields when you import the footage. After Effects separates video fields by creating a full frame from each field, preserving all of the image data from the original footage. Separating fields is critical if you plan to make significant changes to the image.
91 Importing footage Some programs, including After Effects, label the field order when rendering interlaced video files. When you import a labeled video file, After Effects honors the field order label automatically. You can override this field order by applying different footage interpretation settings. If a file does not contain a field order label, you can match the original field order of your footage.
92 Importing footage When importing interlaced video that was originally transferred from film, you can remove the 3:2 pulldown that was applied during the transfer from film to video as you separate fields so that effects you apply in After Effects don’t appear distorted. It’s important to remove 3:2 pulldown from video footage that was originally film so that effects you add in After Effects synchronize perfectly with the original frame rate of film.
93 Importing footage Import assets in Panasonic P2 format A P2 card is a solid-state memory device that plugs into the PCMCIA slot of a Panasonic P2 video camera. The digital video and audio data from the video camera is recorded onto the card in a structured, codec-independent format known as MXF (Media eXchange Format). Specifically, Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects support the Panasonic Op-Atom variant of MXF, with video in AVC-Intra 50, AVC-Intra 100, DV, DVCPRO, DVCPRO50, and DVCPRO HD formats.
94 Importing footage You cannot import spanned clips from a shot that spans two different cards as a single footage item. Rather, you must select a single MXF file belonging to the shot from each card to create a separate footage item for the part of the shot recorded on each card. For example, if a group of spanned clips for a single shot itself spans two cards, you must select a spanned clip from the group on card 1 and another from the group on card 2.
95 Importing footage The camera is on the negative z axis, at (x,y)=(0,0). The point of interest for the camera is in the center of the composition. The camera zoom is set according to the field of view in the Vanishing Point scene. The 3D layers for the planes in the scene have a parent layer with its anchor point at the center of the composition, so the whole scene can be transformed together. Vanishing Point exchange only works well for images that have square pixels in Photoshop.
96 Importing footage Softimage PIC files have a corresponding ZPIC file that contains the z-depth channel information. Although you can’t import a ZPIC file, you can access the additional channel information as long as the ZPIC file is stored in the same folder as the imported PIC file. Similarly, Electric Image (EI) files can have associated EIZ files with z-depth channel data.
97 Importing footage Note: To create an RLA or RPF file with the camera data in 3D Studio Max, save your rendering in RPF format with Coverage, Z Depth, and Alpha Channels enabled. Dave Scotland provides a pair of tutorials on the CG Swot website in which he demonstrates how to create RPF files in a 3D application and how to use RPF files in After Effects. The first part explains the RPF format and how to create RPF files in 3DS Max.
98 Importing footage After Effects can read Maya locator nodes, which enable you to track objects from the Maya scene as it is translated into After Effects. After Effects creates a null layer and applies the relevant transformations to it if the name of a Maya locator node contains the word Null, NULL, or null. Avoid parenting locator nodes to each other in Maya; instead, parent the locator nodes to geometry. Note: After Effects doesn’t read World or Underworld coordinates in the LocatorShape.
99 Importing footage Create a folder ❖ Choose File > New > New Folder, or click the Create A New Folder icon at the bottom of the Project panel. Rename and sort items • To rename a composition, footage item, or folder, do one of the following: • Select the item in the Project panel, press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS), and enter the new name. • Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the item, choose Rename, and enter the new name.
100 Importing footage Trim footage items in the Footage panel You can use the Set In Point , Set Out Point , Ripple Insert Edit , and Overlay Edit controls in the Footage panel to trim a footage item and insert it into a composition. Trimming in the Footage panel can be more convenient than adding the footage item to a composition and then trimming its layer in the Timeline panel.
101 Importing footage If an expression in a selected composition refers to an element in a nonsubordinate composition, Reduce Project removes the nonsubordinate composition and the applied expression. A message appears after you choose Reduce Project to remind you of this possibility, so you can undo the command if needed. To avoid removing the expressions from a nonsubordinate composition, drag the nonsubordinate composition into the composition that refers to it.
102 Importing footage Work with proxies for footage items When you use a proxy, After Effects replaces the actual footage with the proxy in all compositions that use the actual footage item. When you finish working, you can switch back to the actual footage item in the project list. After Effects then replaces the proxy with the actual footage item in any composition. When you render your composition as a movie, you may choose to use either all the actual high-resolution footage items or their proxies.
103 Importing footage Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial with tips for working with proxies, output modules, and output module templates on the Video Copilot website. Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that creates, sets, and unsets proxies and placeholders. Charles Bordenave (nab) provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website with which you can create proxies for multiple selected items.
104 Importing footage Maxon CINEMA 4D Lite Maxon CINEMA 4D Lite R16 application gets installed along with After Effects. You can create, import, and edit Cinema 4D files. However, if you have another edition of CINEMA 4D, such as CINEMA 4D Prime, you can use it instead. The CINEMA 4D Lite application gives you the ability to edit, create, and work with native Cinema 4D files. The features in the Lite version are similar to CINEMA 4D Prime.
105 Importing footage Working with Cinema 4D files There are several options available to create, import, and edit Cinema 4D files from within After Effects. Import Cinema 4D files To import Cinema 4D files into After Effects, do the following: 1 Choose File > Import > File. 2 Select the Cinema 4D file and click Import. The file is placed in the Project panel as a footage item. You can place the footage item on an existing composition, or create a matching composition.
106 Importing footage Create Cinema 4D files You can create a Cinema 4D file from within After Effects. 1 Choose File > New > Maxon CINEMA 4D File or Layer > New > Maxon CINEMA 4D File. 2 Specify a name and location of the file. 3 The CINEMA 4D application opens. 4 Create a C4D scene and choose File > Save to save the file. For more information, see this video by Jeff Sengstack on Creating CINEMA 4D files.
107 Importing footage Apply to All Each CINEMA 4D layer has its own Render settings. Click Apply to All to set the current settings to all other instances of the C4D file in the composition. If you want different layers to have different settings, then don't use this option. If settings are mismatched when they should be the same, it can slow down the rendering and cause render mismatches. Note: The Apply to All option has been removed in the October 2014 release of (Cineware) After Effects CC.
108 Importing footage Defined Multi-Passes When enabled, adds the passes explicitly added in the .c4d file. This can include passes other than Image Layers. Add Image Layers Use this option to create multiple pass layers with proper blending modes depending on the setting of Defined Multi-Passes. When the Defined Multi-Passes option is enabled, Add Image Layers restricts you to just adding the passes defined in the Cinema 4D render settings rather than adding all supported types.
109 Importing footage Click Cineware Effect > Options and choose from the following settings: • Cinema 4D Render Path - Choose the version of Cinema 4D (R14, R15, or R16) for rendering in After Effects. For example, you can choose to use Cinema 4D Studio, Broadcast, Prime, or Visualize if you have it installed. • Cinema 4D Executable Path - Choose the version of Cinema 4D to use when opening a .c4d file with Edit Original or when creating a new Cinema 4D file from After Effects.
110 Importing footage 2 Select the new application 3 Exit After Effects 4 Launch After Effects 5 Click Edit > Purge > All Memory & Disk Cache for the new settings to take effect. If you experience a connection failure after switching the renderer, exit After Effects, wait for 20-30 seconds, and then relaunch the application again.
111 Importing footage Learn tutorial: Insert 3D objects Learn how to create photorealistic visual content by inserting 3D objects directly into After Effects compositions using the Live 3D Pipeline with the included Maxon Cinema 4D Lite. Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro Import an After Effects project You can import one After Effects project into another.
112 Importing footage Import an Adobe Premiere Pro project Note: Importing an Adobe Premiere Pro project into After Effects does not use Dynamic Link. After Effects can’t import a Premiere Pro project if one or more sequences in it are already dynamically linked to After Effects. (See Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects.
113 Importing footage Use Adobe Dynamic Link to create dynamic links, without rendering, between new or existing compositions in After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro. (See About Dynamic Link) Copy from After Effects to Adobe Premiere Pro You can copy a layer based on a footage item from an After Effects composition and paste it into an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence. Adobe Premiere Pro converts these layers to clips in the sequence and copies the source footage item to its Project panel.
114 Importing footage After Effects item Converted to in Adobe Premiere Pro Notes Time Stretch property Speed property Speed and time stretch have an inverse relationship. For example, 200% stretch in After Effects converts to 50% speed in Adobe Premiere Pro. Transform property values and keyframes Motion or Opacity values and keyframes The keyframe type—Bezier, Auto Bezier, Continuous Bezier, or Hold—is retained.
115 Importing footage Adobe Premiere Pro asset Converted to in After Effects Notes Speed property Time Stretch property Speed and time stretch have an inverse relationship. For example, 50% speed in Adobe Premiere Pro is converted to 200% stretch in After Effects.
116 Importing footage Note: Illustrator files can have fractional dimensions (for example, 216.5x275.5 pixels). When importing these files, After Effects compensates for the fractional dimensions by rounding up to the next whole number of pixels (for example, 217x278 pixels). This rounding results in a black line at the right (width) or bottom (height) edge of the imported image. When cropping in Illustrator, make sure that the dimensions of the cropped area are whole numbers of pixels.
117 Importing footage When importing a sequence of still images, you can use the Force Alphabetical Order option in the Import dialog box to import a sequence with gaps in its numbering (for example, Seq1, Seq2, Seq3, Seq5). If you import a sequence with gaps in its numbering without selecting this option, After Effects warns you of missing frames and replaces them with placeholders. After Effects uses settings of the first image in the sequence to determine how to interpret the images in the sequence.
118 Importing footage Import a still-image sequence as a composition When you import a Photoshop or Illustrator file as a composition, you have access to the individual layers, blending modes, adjustment layers, layer styles, masks, guides, and other features created in Photoshop or Illustrator. The imported composition and a folder containing each of its layers as footage items appears in the Project panel. 1 Choose File > Import > File. 2 Select any file in the sequence.
119 Importing footage Before you import a layered Photoshop file into After Effects, prepare it thoroughly to reduce preview and rendering time. Avoid problems importing and updating Photoshop layers by doing the following: • Organize and name layers. 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.
120 Importing footage If you import a layered Photoshop file as a merged file, After Effects merges the transparent areas and layer masks of all the layers into one alpha channel that is premultiplied with white. When you import a Photoshop file as a composition, vector masks are converted to After Effects masks. You can then modify and animate these masks within After Effects.
121 Importing footage Preparing and importing Illustrator files Note: For information and instructions that apply to all kinds of still image files, see Preparing still-image files for importingand Import a single still image or a still-image sequence. Before you save an Illustrator file for importing into After Effects, consider doing the following: • Create your document in Illustrator using one of the Video And Film document profiles.
122 Importing footage Richard Harrington and Ian Robinson provide a free sample chapter from their “Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques” book on the Peachpit Press website. This chapter shows how to prepare Illustrator and Photoshop files. Importing camera raw files with Camera Raw You can import sequences of camera raw files much as you import sequences of other kinds of still image files.
123 Importing footage After Effects provides three basic ways of working with the colors in Cineon footage items: • The easiest—and recommended—way is to enable color management and assign an input color profile to a Cineon footage item in the Color Management tab of the Interpret Footage dialog box, corresponding to the film stock on which the footage was recorded. If creating output for film, use the same profile as the output color profile so that the output file matches the film stock.
124 Chapter 5: Layers and properties Creating layers Layers overview Layers are the elements that make up a composition. Without layers, a composition is only an empty frame. Use as many layers as necessary to create your composition. Some compositions contain thousands of layers, whereas some compositions contain only one layer. Layers in After Effects are similar to tracks in Adobe Premiere Pro.
125 Layers and properties • Layer > New > Null Object • Layer > New > Shape Layer • Layer > New > Adjustment Layer • Layer > New > Adobe Photoshop File • Layer > New > MAXON CINEMA 4D File It is possible to match the duration of the new layer to the duration of the selected layer. Earlier versions of After Effects created new layers at the top of the stack by default.
126 Layers and properties The Still Footage preference setting (Preferences > Import) controls the default duration of layers that use still footage items as their sources. By default, when you create a layer with a still image as its source, the duration of the layer is the duration of the composition. You can change the duration of the layer after it’s created by trimming the layer. Note: By default, new layers begin at the beginning of the composition duration.
127 Layers and properties Also creates the new layer at the top of the layer stacking order, with the In point set at the current time in the Timeline panel, but splits all other layers. Newly created split layers are moved later in time so that their In points are at the same time as the Out point of the inserted layer.
128 Layers and properties If you want to apply an effect or transformation to a collection of layers, you can precompose the layers and then apply the effect or transformation to the precomposition layer. (See Precompose layers.) Use masks on an adjustment layer to apply an effect to only parts of the underlying layers. You can animate masks to follow moving subjects in the underlying layers.
129 Layers and properties Apply an effect or animation preset Creating masks Preparing and importing Photoshop files Working with Photoshop and After Effects Selecting and arranging layers Select layers Selected layers that also have properties selected are indicated with a hollow highlight in the Timeline panel. A selected layer that has no properties selected is indicated with a solid highlight. To scroll the topmost selected layer to the top of the Timeline panel, press X.
130 Layers and properties • To select all child layers assigned to a parent layer, select the parent layer and choose Select Children from the context menu in the Composition or Timeline panel. The child layers are added to the existing selection. • You can select multiple layers in the Composition panel . Drag with the Selection tool to create a selection box (marquee) around the layers to select them. Hold Shift while clicking or dragging to select additional layers or to deselect layers.
131 Layers and properties You can modify the zero point of the rulers, but you can’t modify the origin of layer space. If the zero point differs from the origin, X' and Y' coordinates appear in the Info panel below the X and Y coordinates, indicating coordinates based on the zero point of the rulers. When you move the pointer over the composition frame in the Composition panel, the Info panel displays coordinates in composition space.
132 Layers and properties Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually By default, each Position property has two or three components, with each holding the value for one of the spatial dimensions (axes). You can separate the components of a Position property into individual properties—X Position, Y Position, and (for 3D layers) Z Position. Separating dimensions allows you to modify or animate the position of a layer along the x axis, y axis, and z axis independently.
133 Layers and properties • When Selection is chosen in the Align Layers To menu, each alignment option aligns selected layers to the layer that most closely represents the new alignment. For example, for right-edge alignment, all selected layers align to the selected layer with the edge that is farthest to the right. • A distribution option evenly spaces selected layers between the two most extreme layers.
134 Layers and properties You can extend many kinds of layers for any duration, extending their In points and Out points out past their original times. This capability applies to time-remapped layers, shape layers, layers based on still-image footage items, camera layers, light layers, and text layers.
135 Layers and properties Remove part of the duration of a layer 1 In the Timeline panel, set the work area to include only the portion of the layers’ duration to remove: Move the current-time indicator to the time that the work area is to begin, and press B. Move the current-time indicator to the time at which the work area is to end, and press N. 2 Do one of the following: • Select the layers from which to remove a section.
136 Layers and properties Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website with which you can move selected layers as a group, aligning the group to a specific time in the composition. Arrange layers in time sequentially Use the Sequence Layers keyframe assistant to automatically arrange layers in a sequence.
137 Layers and properties When you paste layers, they are placed in the order in which you selected them before copying. The first layer selected is the last one to be placed, so it ends up on the top in the layer stacking order. If you select layers from the top first, they end up in the same stacking order when pasted. If you have a component of a layer—such as a mask or keyframe—selected when you copy, you copy only that component.
138 Layers and properties Character Independently enables per-character 3D properties for the text layer if they aren’t already enabled. (See Percharacter 3D text properties.) Orient Towards Point Of Interest The camera or light always points at its point of interest. This option is not available for layers other than cameras and lights. (See Cameras, lights, and points of interest .
139 Layers and properties Copy and paste keyframes 3D layers Motion paths Managing layers Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that renders and exports each of the selected layers separately. For example, use this script if layers represent different versions of an effect or different parts of an effect that you want to render as separate passes for flexibility in how they get composited.
140 Layers and properties The results of some layer switch settings depend on the settings of composition switches, which are in the upper right of the layer outline in the Timeline panel. Quickly change the state of a switch for multiple layers by clicking the switch for one layer and dragging up or down that column for the adjacent layers.
141 Layers and properties Identifies the layer as an adjustment layer. (See Adjustment layers.) 3D Layer Identifies the layer as a 3D layer. If the layer is a 3D layer with 3D sublayers—as is the case for a text layer with percharacter 3D properties—the switch uses this icon: . (See 3D layers overview and resources.
142 Layers and properties Color labels for layers, compositions, and footage items You can use labels (colored boxes in the Label column) in the Project panel and Timeline panel to organize and manage compositions, footage items, and layers. By default, different label colors indicate different kinds of footage items, but you can assign label colors to indicate whatever categories you choose. Rename label groups to help you to organize and categorize layers and footage items.
143 Layers and properties Layer image quality and subpixel positioning The quality setting of a layer determines how precisely it is rendered, as well as influencing the precision of other calculations involving the layer, such as motion tracking and the use of the layer as a control layer for a compound effect. The default quality of new layers is determined by the Create New Layers At Best Quality preference in the General preferences category.
144 Layers and properties When you apply an effect to a continuously rasterized layer, the results may differ from the results of applying the effect to a layer without continuous rasterization. This difference in results is because the default rendering order for the layer changes.
145 Layers and properties Layer properties in the Timeline panel Each layer has properties, many of which you can modify and animate. The basic group of properties that every layer has is the Transform group, which includes Position and Opacity properties. When you add certain features to a layer— for example, by adding masks or effects, or by converting the layer to a 3D layer—the layer gains additional properties, collected in property groups.
146 Layers and properties The SS shortcut is especially useful for working with paint strokes. Select the paint stroke in the Layer panel, and press SS to open the property group for that stroke in the Timeline panel. • To show only a specific property or property group, press its shortcut key or keys. (See Showing properties and groups in the Timeline panel (keyboard shortcuts).
147 Layers and properties Copy a value from a layer property that contains no keyframes You can copy the current value of a layer property to another layer, even when the original layer contains no keyframes. 1 In the Timeline panel, show the layer property containing the value you want to copy. 2 Click the name of the layer property to select it. 3 Choose Edit > Copy. 4 Select the layer into which you want to paste the value.
148 Layers and properties Layer anchor points Transformations, such as rotation and scale, occur around the anchor point (sometimes called transformation point or transformation center) of the layer. By default, the anchor point for most layer types is at the center of the layer. Though there are times when you’ll want to animate the anchor point, it’s most common to set the anchor point for a layer before you begin animating.
149 Layers and properties Reset a layer anchor point • To reset the anchor point to its default location in the layer, double-click the Pan Behind (Anchor Point) tool button in the Tools panel. • To reset the anchor point to its default location in the layer, Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the Pan Behind (Anchor Point) tool button.
150 Layers and properties Though it's not very well suited for movies, the content-aware scaling feature in Photoshop is very useful for extending and scaling still images. This feature can be useful when repurposing images for wide-screen formats that were created for standard-definition formats. For a list of plug-ins that provide high-quality scaling—including some designed to create high-definition images from standard-definition sources—go to the Toolfarm website.
151 Layers and properties Parent and child layers To synchronize changes to layers by assigning one layer’s transformations to another layer, use parenting. After a layer is made a parent to another layer, the other layer is called the child layer. When you assign a parent, the transform properties of the child layer become relative to the parent layer instead of to the composition.
152 Layers and properties • To make a child layer jump when a parent is assigned or removed, hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) as you assign or remove the parent. • To remove a parent from a layer (that is, set Parent to None), Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the parenting pick whip of the child layer in the Timeline panel. Alt+Ctrl-click (Windows) or Option+Command-click (Mac OS) the parenting pick whip of the child layer to remove the parent and cause the child layer to jump.
153 Layers and properties Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial on his Video Copilot website that demonstrates the use of a null object to animate a 3D stroke. Angie Taylor provides an extensive discussion and explanation of animation using parenting, expressions, and null object layers in a PDF excerpt from her book Creative After Effects 7: Workflow Techniques for Animation, Visual Effects, and Motion Graphics.
154 Layers and properties A Original composition (original in center tile when using Brainstorm on single numeric value) B Maximize Tile C Save As New Composition D Apply To Composition E Use In Next Brainstorm F Randomness control (Spread control when using Brainstorm on single numeric value) G Back and Forward to previous and next generations H Playback controls With Brainstorm, you can rapidly accomplish the following: • Compare the results of multiple values for a single property so that you can find
155 Layers and properties If you use Brainstorm on a single one-dimensional property (such as Opacity, but not Position), the Randomness value that controls the amount of variation (mutation) is replaced by a Spread value. The variants that are presented in the Brainstorm dialog box are then not random, but represent a range of values around the central value.
156 Layers and properties More Help topics Effect Controls panel Layers (keyboard shortcuts) Modifying layer properties (keyboard shortcuts) Keyframes and the Graph Editor (keyboard shortcuts) Showing properties and groups in the Timeline panel (keyboard shortcuts) Selecting and arranging layers Show or hide layer controls in the Composition panel Image size and resolution Preview video and audio Columns Expression Controls effects Render settings Blending modes and layer styles Work with layer blending m
157 Layers and properties Note: These shortcuts provide a convenient way to experiment with the appearance of various blending modes. • To apply a blending mode to selected layers, choose a blending mode from the menu in the Mode column in the Timeline panel or from the Layer > Blending Mode menu. • To show the Modes column in the Timeline panel, choose Columns > Modes from the panel menu, or click the at the lower-left corner of the Timeline panel.
158 Layers and properties Utility category Alpha Add, Luminescent Premul. These blending modes serve specialized utility functions. Blending mode descriptions In the following descriptions, these terms are used: • The source color is the color of the layer or paint stroke to which the blending mode is applied. • The underlying color is the color of the composited layers below the source layer or paint stroke in the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel.
159 Layers and properties Screen Multiplies the complements of the channel values, and then takes the complement of the result. The result color is never darker than either input color. Using the Screen mode is similar to projecting multiple photographic slides simultaneously onto a single screen. Color Dodge The result color is a lightening of the source color to reflect the underlying layer color by decreasing the contrast. If the source color is pure black, the result color is the underlying color.
160 Layers and properties Exclusion Creates a result similar to but lower in contrast than the Difference mode. If the source color is white, the result color is the complement of the underlying color. If the source color is black, the result color is the underlying color. Subtract Subtracts the source color from the underlying color. If the source color is black, the result color is the underlying color. Result color values can be less than 0 in 32-bpc projects.
161 Layers and properties You can copy and paste any layer style within After Effects, including layer styles imported into After Effects in PSD files. Richard Harrington provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows how to bring a library of layer styles from Photoshop into After Effects so that you can use, modify, copy, and paste the custom layer styles in After Effects.
162 Layers and properties You can apply a layer style to a 3D layer, but a layer with a layer style can’t intersect with other 3D layers or interact with other 3D layers for casting and receiving shadows. 3D layers on either side of a layer with a layer style can’t intersect one another or cast shadows on one another. When you use the Layer > Convert To Editable Text command on a text layer from a Photoshop file, any layer styles on that layer are also converted to editable layer styles.
163 Layers and properties Exclude channels from blending You can exclude one or more of the color channels of a layer from blending operations. The Blending Options property group is only included for a layer if the layer has had a layer style added to it. To add a Blending Options property group without a layer style, add an arbitrary layer style and then immediately delete it; the Blending Options property group and its containing Layer Styles property group remain.
164 Layers and properties By default, layers are at a depth (z-axis position) of 0. In After Effects, the origin of the coordinate system is at the upperleft corner; x (width) increases from left to right, y (height) increases from top to bottom, and z (depth) increases from near to far. Some video and 3D applications use a coordinate system that is rotated 180 degrees around the x axis; in these systems, y increases from bottom to top, and z increases from far to near.
165 Layers and properties If the axis that you want to manipulate is difficult to see, try a different setting in the Select View Layout menu at the bottom of the Composition panel. • To show or hide a set of persistent 3D reference axes, click the Grid And Guides Options button of the Composition panel, and choose 3D Reference Axes. at the bottom Chris and Trish Meyer provide a video tutorial on the ProVideo Coalition website that demonstrates the use of the 3D axis layer controls.
166 Layers and properties Shift-drag to constrain your manipulations to 45-degree increments. Rotate or orient a 3D layer in the Timeline panel 1 Select the 3D layer that you want to turn. 2 In the Timeline panel, modify the Rotation or Orientation property values. Press R to show Rotation and Orientation properties.
167 Layers and properties Just like 2D layers, other types of layers also prevent 3D layers on either side from intersecting or casting shadows on one another: • An adjustment layer • A 3D layer with a layer style applied • A 3D precomposition layer to which an effect, closed mask (with mask mode other than None), or track matte has been applied • A 3D precomposition layer without collapsed transformations A precomposition with collapsed transformations (Collapse Transformations switch selected) does not
168 Layers and properties Selecting and arranging layers Layer properties Coordinate systems: composition space and layer space Render order and collapsing transformations Precompose layers Continuously rasterize a layer containing vector graphics Preparing and importing Photoshop files Effects with a Comp Camera attribute 3D layers Cameras, lights, and points of interest Create a camera layer and change camera settings You can view 3D layers from any angle and distance using camera layers.
169 Layers and properties A Point of interest B Frame C Camera Note: If you import or open an After Effects 5.x project containing a 3D composition that used a default camera, After Effects adds an AE 5.x Default Camera to the composition. Create a camera layer ❖ Choose Layer > New > Camera, or press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C (Windows) or Command+Option+Shift+C (Mac OS). Note: By default, new layers begin at the beginning of the composition duration.
170 Layers and properties Name The name of the camera. By default, Camera 1 is the name of first camera that you create in a composition, and all subsequent cameras are numbered in ascending order. You should choose distinctive names for multiple cameras to make it easier to distinguish them. Preset The type of camera settings you want to use. The presets are named according to focal lengths. Each preset is meant to represent the behavior of a 35mm camera with a lens of a certain focal length.
171 Layers and properties Camera Commands After Effects has camera commands that can be used separately or with the Create Stereo 3D Rig function. To use the camera commands, select a camera layer, and then choose Layer > Camera. Link Focus Distance to Point of Interest Creates an expression on the selected camera layer’s Focus Distance property, setting the property’s value to the distance between the camera and its point of interest.
172 Layers and properties A Point of interest B Light icon You can specify which 3D layers a light affects by designating the light as an adjustment layer: place the light in the Timeline panel above the layers on which you want it to shine. Layers that are above a light adjustment layer in the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel do not receive the light, regardless of the positions of the layers in the Composition panel.
173 Layers and properties Note: Because the position in space of an Ambient light does not affect its influence on other layers, an Ambient light does not have an icon in the Composition panel. Intensity The brightness of the light. Negative values create nonlight. Nonlight subtracts color from a layer. For example, if a layer is already lit, creating a directional light with negative values also pointing at that layer darkens an area on the layer. Color The color of the light.
174 Layers and properties Adjust a 3D view or move a camera, light, or point of interest Camera layers and light layers each include a Point Of Interest property, which specifies the point in the composition at which the camera or light points. By default, the point of interest is at the center of the composition. You can move the point of interest at any time. A one-node camera ignores the point of interest. (See Camera settings.
175 Layers and properties Track Z Camera Adjusts the 3D view or camera along the line to the point of interest. If you are using an orthographic view, this tool adjusts the scale of the view. (To temporarily activate the Track Z Camera tool when the Unified Camera Tool is selected, hold the right mouse button.) 3 Drag in the Composition panel. You can continue a drag operation outside the panel after you’ve begun dragging within the panel.
176 Layers and properties Andrew Devis of Creative Cow has created a 3 tutorial series on Animating a Camera: • Animating a Camera 1: Camera Difficulties • Animating a Camera 2: Simple Rig • Animating a Camera 3: Controllers & Point of View This video from video2brain demonstrates the command to create a new camera orbit null. Material Options properties 3D layers have Material Options properties, which determine how a 3D layer interacts with light and shadow.
177 Layers and properties Specify resolution to use for rendering shadows The Advanced 3D rendering plug-in is used to render compositions containing intersecting 3D layers. To render shadows, the plug-in uses shadow maps, which are images rendered from the point of view of each light source. Normally, shadow resolution is computed automatically based on the composition resolution and the quality settings of the layers.
178 Layers and properties Note: Altering this value changes how deep the Stereo 3D appears to go into and out of the scene. It can cause eye strain if pushed too far, however. Altering this value changes how deep the Stereo 3D appears to go into and out of the scene. It can cause eye strain if pushed too far, however. Altering this value changes how deep the Stereo 3D appears to go into and out of the scene. It can cause eye strain if pushed too far, however.
179 Layers and properties Stereoscopic 3D tips • If you are working with3D stereoscopic footage in the Composition panel and you do not have a 3D television, you can work with the anaglyph format. Ordinary red and cyan anaglyph 3D glasses work best for this 3D stereoscopic workflow. • Increase or decrease Stereo Scene Depth to change how deep the 3D environment appears. • Turn on Converge Cameras and change the Convergence Z Offset to move different objects behind and in front of the screen.
180 Chapter 6: Views and previews Previewing Preview video and audio Though it is common to speak of rendering as if this term only applies to final output, the processes of creating previews to show in the Footage, Layer, and Composition panels are also kinds of rendering. You can preview all or part of your composition as you work, without rendering to final output. Many of the controls for previewing are in the Preview panel.
181 Views and previews 2 Do one of the following: • To preview using RAM Preview Options, click the RAM Preview button on the numeric keypad. in the Preview panel or press 0 (zero) • To preview using Shift+RAM Preview Options, Shift-click the RAM Preview button press Shift+0 (zero) on the numeric keypad. in the Preview panel or 3 To stop a RAM preview, do one of the following: • To leave the current-time indicator at the last-played frame, press the spacebar.
182 Views and previews Play Once Ping Pong Plays preview once. Repeatedly plays preview, alternating between backward and forward play. Preview only audio When you preview only audio, it plays immediately at real-time speed, unless you’ve applied Audio effects other than Stereo Mixer, in which case you may have to wait for audio to render before it plays.
183 Views and previews To view the VU meter and levels controls in more detail, increase the height of the Audio panel. Choose Options in the Audio panel menu to specify the following options: Units Choose whether to display audio levels in decibels or in percentages. 100% equals 0 decibels (0 dB). Slider Minimum The minimum audio level to display in the Audio panel.
184 Views and previews Move the current-time indicator (CTI) The most basic way of previewing frames is to manually preview by moving or dragging the current-time indicator (CTI). The time ruler visually represents the time dimension of a composition, a layer, or a footage item. In a Layer or Footage panel, the time ruler appears near the bottom of the panel. For a Composition panel, the time ruler appears in the corresponding Timeline panel.
185 Views and previews Jeff Almasol provides a script that creates a panel with controls for moving the current-time indicator to different times in the composition. The panel provides buttons for jumping a specific number of frames forward or back from the current time, as well as buttons for capturing different times and jumping to them easily. For more information, go to Jeff Almasol’s redefinery website. You can scroll and zoom in time in the Timeline, Footage, and Layer panels.
186 Views and previews Preview modes and Fast Previews preferences Each preview mode provides a different balance between quality and speed for playback and for updating of images during interactions, such as when you drag a layer in the Composition panel or modifying a property value in the Timeline panel. Draft 3D and Live Update modes apply to all views of a composition. Draft 3D Disables lights, shadows, and depth-of-field blur for cameras.
187 Views and previews Wireframe Useful for setting up and previewing complex compositions. • In Draft, Fast Draft, and Wireframe modes, the Current Renderer menu button's lightning bolt appears orange. In Adaptive Resolution, it appears orange when the composition is downsampled. In these modes, the name of the mode appears in the upper-right corner of the Composition view.
188 Views and previews Region of interest (ROI) The region of interest (ROI) is the area of the composition, layer, or footage item that is rendered for previews. Create a smaller region of interest to use less processing power and memory when previewing, thereby improving interaction speed and increasing RAM preview duration. By default, changing the region of interest does not affect file output.
189 Views and previews • To expand the work area to the size of the composition, double-click the center of the work area bar. • To show the duration of the work and the times of its beginning and end in the Info panel, click the work area bar. Snapshots When you want to compare one view to another in a Composition, Layer, or Footage panel, take a snapshot. For example, you may want to compare two frames at different times in a movie. Snapshots taken in one kind of panel can be displayed in another kind.
190 Views and previews 3 Choose Disable video output when in the Background option to prevent video frames from being sent to the external monitor when After Effects is not the foreground application. 4 Choose Video preview during render queue output option to send video frames to the external monitor when After Effects is rendering frames in the render queue. The video preview sent to an external monitor using Mercury Transmit is color-managed (treating the external video preview monitor as an HDTV Rec.
191 Views and previews The working 3D views include the custom views and the fixed orthographic views (Front, Left, Top, Back, Right, or Bottom). The orthographic views show layer positions in the composition but do not show perspective. The working 3D views are not associated with a camera layer. The working 3D views are useful for placing and previewing elements in a 3D scene. 3D layers appear in working 3D views; 2D layers do not appear in working 3D views.
192 Views and previews • To zoom in on or out from a specific point using the mouse scroll wheel, place the pointer over the panel and hold Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) as you move the scroll wheel. • To zoom in on a specific point using the Zoom tool , click the area in the panel you want to magnify. Each click additionally magnifies the image, centering the display on the point you click. You can also drag the tool to magnify a specific area.
193 Views and previews Half Renders one-quarter of the pixels contained in the full-resolution image—half the columns and half the rows. Third Renders one-ninth of the pixels contained in the full-resolution image. Quarter Renders one-sixteenth of the pixels contained in the full-resolution image. Custom Renders the image at the horizontal and vertical resolutions that you specify.
194 Views and previews • To reset exposure, click the Reset Exposure button. To return to the most recent nonzero setting, click the button again. Safe zones, grids, guides, and rulers In the Footage, Layer, and Composition panels, you can display safe zone margins, grids, rulers, and guide lines to align and arrange visual elements. After Effects preserves guides when importing Photoshop files saved with guides.
195 Views and previews Compositions with a frame aspect ratio equal to or near 16:9 have two additional center-cut safe-zone indicators. The center-cut indicators show which parts of a 16:9 composition may be cut off when the image is shown on a 4:3 display. Such cropping is a concern when creating images for high-definition displays that may also be shown on standarddefinition television sets. By default, the center-cut action-safe margin is 32.5% (16.
196 Views and previews Video preview using Mercury Transmit-based system In the June 2014 release of After Effects CC, the video preview system for external monitors has been replaced with the Mercury Transmit-based system. What is Mercury Transmit? Mercury Transmit is a software interface used by Adobe digital applications to send video frames to external video device.
197 Views and previews If you experience slow RAM preview frame rates when Mercury Transmit is enabled, try one or more of the following: •Reduce the resolution in the Composition or Preview panel • Reduce the RAM preview frame rate in the Preview panel • Reduce the project color depth to 16-bpc or 8-bpc • Disable color management (set the project’s working space to None). Also see Tim Kurkoski's blog about the new Mercury Transmit feature.
198 Chapter 7: Animation and Keyframes Animation basics About animation, keyframes, and expressions Animation is change over time. You animate a layer or an effect on a layer by making one or more of its properties change over time. For example, you can animate the Opacity property of a layer from 0% at time zero to 100% at time 1 second to make the layer fade in. Any property with a stopwatch button to the left of its name in the Timeline panel or Effect Controls panel can be animated.
199 Animation and Keyframes Note: When Auto-keyframe mode is on, the stopwatch is activated automatically for a property when it’s modified. (See Auto-keyframe mode.) If you deactivate the stopwatch, all keyframes for that layer property are deleted, and the constant value for the property becomes the value at the current time. Don’t deactivate the stopwatch unless you’re sure that you want to permanently delete all of the keyframes for that property.
200 Animation and Keyframes Two types of graphs are available in the Graph Editor: value graphs, which show property values; and speed graphs, which show rates of change of property values. For temporal properties, such as Opacity, the Graph Editor defaults to the value graph. For spatial properties, such as Position, the Graph Editor defaults to the speed graph. For information on viewing and editing keyframe values, see View or edit a keyframe value.
201 Animation and Keyframes Show Graph Editor Set Displays properties that have the Graph Editor switch selected. This switch is next to the stopwatch, to the left of the property name, when the stopwatch is active—that is, when the property has keyframes or expressions. Note: Aharon Rabinowitz provides tips for using this control and showing the audio waveform for a deselected layer on the Creative COW website.
202 Animation and Keyframes Toggles Auto Zoom Height mode, which automatically scales the height of the graph so that it fits the height of the Graph Editor. The horizontal zoom must still be adjusted manually. Fit Selection Adjusts the value (vertical) and time (horizontal) scale of the graph to fit the selected keyframes in the Graph Editor. Fit All Adjusts the value (vertical) and time (horizontal) scale of the graph to fit all of the graphs in the Graph Editor.
203 Animation and Keyframes Add a keyframe without changing a value ❖ Do one of the following: • Click the keyframe navigator button for the layer property. • Choose Animation > Add [x] Keyframe, where [x] is the name of the property you are animating. • Click a segment of the layer property’s graph in the Graph Editor with the Pen tool . Auto-keyframe mode The Auto-keyframe button is a switch located at the top of the Timeline panel, to the right of the composition switches.
204 Animation and Keyframes In Graph Editor mode, the appearance of a keyframe icon depends on whether the keyframe is selected, unselected, or semi-selected (another keyframe in the same property is selected). Selected keyframes are solid yellow. Unselected keyframes retain the color of their corresponding graph. Semi-selected keyframes are represented by a hollow yellow box. • To select a keyframe, click the keyframe icon.
205 Animation and Keyframes Easy Ease Out Automatically adjusts the influence out of a keyframe. Exponential Scale Converts the rate of change in scale from linear to exponential. RPF Camera Import Imports RPF camera data from third-party 3D modeling applications. Sequence Layers Opens the Sequence Layers assistant. Time-Reverse Keyframes Reverses selected keyframes in time. Delete or disable keyframes • To delete any number of keyframes, select them, and then press the Delete key.
206 Animation and Keyframes View or edit a keyframe value Before you change a keyframe, make sure that the current-time indicator is positioned at an existing keyframe. If you change a property value when the current-time indicator is not at an existing keyframe, After Effects adds a new keyframe. However, if you double-click a keyframe to modify it, the current-time indicator location is not relevant, nor is it relevant when you change the interpolation method of a keyframe.
207 Animation and Keyframes Edit keyframe values using a spreadsheet or text editor You can copy and paste keyframe data as tab-delimited text for use in a spreadsheet program (such as Microsoft Excel) or other text-editing program. You can use a spreadsheet program to perform numerical analysis on keyframe data or create or edit keyframe values. You can copy and paste most properties, including the Transform properties (such as Position and Opacity), Material Options properties, and motion trackers.
208 Animation and Keyframes You can also move selected keyframes in time (one frame earlier or later) by pressing the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key with the left arrow or right arrow key. Move a keyframe to a specific time 1 Move the current-time indicator to the desired time. 2 Do one of the following: • In layer bar mode, hold down Shift after you begin to drag a keyframe icon to the current-time indicator. • In Graph Editor mode, drag a keyframe to the current-time indicator.
209 Animation and Keyframes Mathias Möhl provides the KeyTweak script (available on the After Effects Extension page), with which you can modify many keyframes on a property simultaneously. With KeyTweak, you can modify a few keyframes manually, and the script modifies the remaining keyframes in between accordingly. KeyTweak is especially useful for Mask Path keyframes in a rotoscoping workflow. (See Rotoscoping introduction and resources.
210 Animation and Keyframes 1 Switch to the Graph Editor view and display the keyframes you want to adjust. 2 Using the Selection tool, do one of the following: • To select keyframes, Shift-click the keyframes or drag to draw a marquee around the keyframes. • To select all keyframes for a property, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) a segment between two keyframes. 3 Do any of the following: • To move keyframes in time or value, place the pointer inside the bounding box and drag.
211 Animation and Keyframes Assorted animation tools Motion paths When you animate spatial properties—including Position, Anchor Point, and effect control point properties—the motion is shown as a motion path. A motion path appears as a sequence of dots, where each dot marks the position of the layer at each frame. A box in the path marks the position of a keyframe.
212 Animation and Keyframes You can move multiple keyframes at one time by selecting them in the Timeline panel before you drag them in the Composition panel or Layer panel. To move the entire motion path, select all keyframes by clicking the property name in the Timeline panel before dragging a keyframe in the Composition panel. Add a keyframe to a motion path using the Pen tool 1 Display the motion path that you want to modify in the Composition panel or Layer panel.
213 Animation and Keyframes Sketch a motion path with Motion Sketch You can draw a path for the motion of a selected layer using Motion Sketch, which records the position of the layer and the speed at which you draw. As you draw, a Position keyframe is generated at each frame. Motion Sketch does not affect keyframes that you have set for other properties.
214 Animation and Keyframes By default, the duration of the pasted motion path is 2 seconds. You can adjust the duration by dragging the first or last keyframe in the Timeline panel. 1 Copy a path to the clipboard: • Select a Path property in the Timeline panel, and choose Edit > Copy. • Select a path in Illustrator or Photoshop, and choose Edit > Copy. 2 In the Timeline panel, select the property into which to paste the path.
215 Animation and Keyframes If you want to smooth live-action video to which you assigned a frame rate much lower or higher than the original, use frame blending, not motion blur. Motion blur settings in the Advanced tab of Composition Settings Samples Per Frame The minimum number of samples. This minimum is the number of samples used for frames for which After Effects is not able to determine an adaptive sampling rate based on layer motion. This sample rate is used for 3D layers and shape layers.
216 Animation and Keyframes Smooth motion and velocity by removing extra keyframes Smooth motion paths, value curves, and velocity curves to eliminate bumpiness or excess keyframes using the Smoother, which adds keyframes or removes unnecessary keyframes. You can also use the smooth expression method for this purpose, without removing keyframes. (See Property attributes and methods (expression reference).
217 Animation and Keyframes 3 For Apply To, select the type of curve you want the Wiggler to change. If you selected keyframes for a property that varies spatially, you can select Spatial Path to add deviations to the motion, or Temporal Graph to add deviations to the velocity. If you selected keyframes for a property that does not vary spatially, you can select only Temporal Graph.
218 Animation and Keyframes Nathan Gambles provides an expression on the Video Copilot website that ducks (reduces the volume of) audio on one layer when the volume of audio on another layer increases. This technique is useful, for example, for automatically decreasing the volume of a soundtrack when dialog occurs. This expression for the Stereo Mixer effect depends on the Convert Audio To Keyframes keyframe assistant having been applied to the other audio layer.
219 Animation and Keyframes Note: You can stabilize shaky footage a lot easier using the Warp Stabilizer. For more information, see Stabilize motion with the Warp Stabilizer effect . Uses for motion tracking and stabilization Motion tracking has many uses. Here are some examples: • Combining elements filmed separately, such as adding video to the side of a moving city bus or a star to the end of a sweeping wand.
220 Animation and Keyframes A Search region B Feature region C Attach point Feature region The feature region defines the element in the layer to be tracked. The feature region should surround a distinct visual element, preferably one object in the real world. After Effects must be able to clearly identify the tracked feature throughout the duration of the track, despite changes in light, background, and angle.
221 Animation and Keyframes Sean Kennedy provides a set of detailed tutorials on the SimplyCG website that demonstrate advanced motion tracking techniques: • Basic 2D tracking • Planar tracking • Motion tracking and compositing computer-generated elements into a scene • Screen tracking and replacement Sean Kennedy provides a free script, TrackerViz, that makes tracking motion and applying tracking data to masks easier. You can get TrackerViz and a series of detailed instructions on the SimplyCG website.
222 Animation and Keyframes Adobe TV has a mocha-AE channel, which includes several video tutorials about using mocha planar tracking and rotoscoping utilities. Chris and Trish Meyer provide a video tutorial that introduces mocha for After Effects on the Lynda.com website. Chris and Trish Meyer provide tips about mocha-AE and mocha shape, including tips about variable-width feather, in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website.
223 Animation and Keyframes Before you begin tracking, view the entire duration of the shot to determine the best features to track. What is clearly identifiable in the first frame may later blend into the background because the angle, lighting, or surrounding elements have changed. A tracked feature may disappear off the edge of the frame or be obscured by another element at some point in the scene.
224 Animation and Keyframes You can also set tracking options that determine such things as which color channels are compared to find a match to the feature region. Analyze You perform the actual motion tracking step by clicking one of the Analyze buttons in the Tracker panel. When tracking a tricky set of features, you may want to analyze a frame at a time. Repeat as necessary Because of the changing nature of an image in motion, automatic tracking is rarely perfect.
225 Animation and Keyframes After Effects calculates scale by comparing the distance between attach points on each frame with the distance between the attach points on the start frame. When you apply the tracking data to the target, After Effects creates keyframes for the Scale property.
226 Animation and Keyframes Motion tracking controls You set up, initiate, and apply motion tracking with the Tracker panel. Motion Source The layer that contains the motion to track. Note: Layers are available in the Motion Source menu if they have source footage items that can contain motion or if they are composition layers. You can precompose a layer to make it available in the Motion Source menu. Current Track The active tracker.
227 Animation and Keyframes Note: While analysis is in progress, the Analyze Backward and Analyze Forward buttons change to a Stop button, with which you can stop analysis when the track drifts or otherwise fails. Reset Restores the feature region, search region, and attach point to their default positions and deletes the tracking data from the currently selected track. Tracker control settings and keyframes already applied to the target layer remain unchanged.
228 Animation and Keyframes • Select Adapt Feature to use the original tracked feature until the confidence level falls below the specified threshold. At that point, After Effects adapts the tracked feature to be the contents of the feature region in the frame preceding the one that has low confidence and continues tracking.
229 Animation and Keyframes A Search region B Feature region C Keyframe marker D Attach point E Moves search region F Moves both regions G Moves entire track point H Moves attach point I Moves entire track point J Resizes region • To turn on or off feature region magnification, choose Magnify Feature When Dragging from the Tracker panel menu.
230 Animation and Keyframes Apply tracking data to a new target After you’ve tracked a motion source layer, you can apply the tracking data stored on that layer to any number of other target layers and effect control points. For example, you can apply the track to the position of a light bulb and to the effect control point of the Lens Flare effect. 1 In the Tracker panel, choose the tracked layer from the Motion Source menu.
231 Animation and Keyframes 3 If you are correcting the track for one frame, go to step 4. If you are correcting the track for several contiguous frames, adjust the feature region and search region if necessary, and click Analyze. Watch the tracking to make sure that it is accurate. If the tracking is not accurate, then click the button again to stop tracking, adjust the feature region, and begin again.
232 Animation and Keyframes Warp Stabilizer VFX / Warp Stabilizer settings Analyze There is no need to press this button when you first apply Warp Stabilizer, it is pressed for you automatically. The Analyze button remains dimmed until some change takes place. For example, if you adjust a layer’s In or Out points, or there is an upstream change to the layer source. Click the button to reanalyze the footage.
233 Animation and Keyframes Framing Controls how the edges appear in a stabilizing result. Framing can be set to one of the following: • Stabilize Only: Displays the entire frame, including the moving edges. Stabilize Only shows how much work is being done to stabilize the image. Using Stabilize Only allows you to crop the footage using other methods. When selected, the Auto-scale section and Crop Less <-> Smooth More property are disabled. • Stabilize, Crop: Crops the moving edges without scaling.
234 Animation and Keyframes Synthesis Edge Feather Selects the amount of feather for the synthesized pieces. It is enabled only when using the Stabilize, Synthesize Edges framing. Use the feather control to smooth over edges where the synthesized pixels join up with the original frame. Synthesis Edge Cropping Trims off the edges of each frame before it is used to combine with other frames when using the Stabilize, Synthesize Edges framing option.
235 Animation and Keyframes When Framing is set to one of the cropping options and the cropping gets extreme, a red banner appears saying, “To avoid extreme cropping set Framing to Stabilize Only or adjust other parameters”. In this situation, you can either set Framing to Stabilize Only, or Stabilize, Synthesize Edges. Other options include reducing the value of Crop Less <-> Smooth More, or reducing Smoothness. Or, if you are satisfied with the results, enable the Hide Warning Banner option.
236 Animation and Keyframes A Dots are close together, indicating lower speed (top); speed is constant (bottom). B Dots are far apart, indicating greater speed (top); speed is constant (bottom). C Inconsistent spacing of dots indicates changing speed (top); speed decreases and then increases (bottom). For information about keyframe interpolation, see Keyframe interpolation.
237 Animation and Keyframes Control speed between keyframes without using the speed graph • In the Composition or Layer panel, adjust the spatial distance between two keyframes on the motion path. Increase speed by moving one keyframe position farther away from the other, or decrease speed by moving one keyframe position closer to the other. • In layer bar mode or in the Graph Editor, adjust the time difference between two keyframes.
238 Animation and Keyframes • Apply the Easy Ease keyframe assistant, which automatically adjusts the speed of change as motion advances toward and retreats from a keyframe. About the speed graph You can fine-tune changes over time using the speed graph in the Graph Editor. The speed graph provides information about and control of the value and rate of change for all spatial and temporal values at any frame in a composition. In the speed graph, changes in the graph height indicate changes in speed.
239 Animation and Keyframes Note: If you want a handle to have influence over more than one keyframe, use roving keyframes. Control speed with the speed graph 1 In the Timeline panel, expand the outline for the keyframe you want to adjust. 2 Click the Graph Editor button and select Edit Speed Graph from the Graph Type And Options menu . 3 Using the Selection tool, click the keyframe you want to adjust.
240 Animation and Keyframes Start or stop change gradually Direction handles can create gradual starts and stops, such as a boat slowing to a stop and then starting again. When you use this technique, the speed graph resembles a smooth U shape. 1 In the Timeline panel, expand the outline for the keyframe you want to adjust. 2 Click the Graph Editor button and display the speed graph for the property.
241 Animation and Keyframes 5 To create a smooth transition by maintaining equal incoming and outgoing velocities, select Continuous. Note: By default, the proportions of the current Scale or Mask Feather values are preserved as you edit the values. If you don’t want to preserve proportions, click the link icon next to the property values in the Timeline panel to remove the icon.
242 Animation and Keyframes • Select the keyframes you want to rove and choose Animation > Keyframe Interpolation. Then choose Rove Across Time from the Roving menu. The intermediate keyframes adjust their positions on the timeline to smooth the speed curve between the beginning and ending keyframes. Revert to a nonroving keyframe • Select the roving keyframe option from the keyframe menu, or drag the roving keyframe left or right.
243 Animation and Keyframes Puppet Overlap tool Use this tool to place Overlap pins, which indicate which parts of an image should appear in front of others when distortion causes parts of the image to overlap one another. Puppet Starch tool Use this tool to place Starch pins, which stiffen parts of the image so that they are distorted less. When you place the first pin, the area within an outline is automatically divided into a mesh of triangles.
244 Animation and Keyframes Online resources for the Puppet tools Trish and Chris Meyer give tips for using the Puppet tools on the ProVideo Coalition website. Aharon Rabinowitz provides a tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows a creative way to use the Puppet tools with a particle generator to simulate airflow over a car. Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows how to duplicate an object using the Puppet Pin tool.
245 Animation and Keyframes 4 Go to another time in the composition, and move the position of one or more of the Deform pins by dragging them in the Composition or Layer panel with the Puppet Pin tool. Repeat this step until you have completed your animation. You can modify the motion paths of the Deform pins using the same techniques that you use to modify any other motion paths. Note: After Effects no longer draws the tinted fill for the original layer region when hovering using the Puppet Pin tool.
246 Animation and Keyframes • A shape path on a shape layer • A text character’s outline If a layer has no unlocked masks, shapes, or text characters on it when you apply the Puppet effect, it uses Auto-trace to create paths from the alpha channel. These paths are only used by the Puppet effect in the determination of outlines and do not appear as masks on the layer. If the layer is a raster layer with no alpha channel, the result is a single rectangular path around the bounds of the layer.
247 Animation and Keyframes • To select multiple pins, Shift-click them, or use the marquee-selection tool to drag a marquee-selection box around them. To activate the marquee-selection tool, place the pointer for a Puppet tool outside all meshes and outlines or hold the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key. • To select all pins of one kind (Deform, Starch, or Overlap), select one pin of that kind and press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS). • To delete selected pins, press the Delete key.
248 Animation and Keyframes Each Overlap pin has the following properties: In Front The apparent proximity to the viewer. The influence of Overlap pins is cumulative, meaning that the In Front values are added together for places on the mesh where extents overlap. You can use negative In Front values to cancel out the influence of another Overlap pin at a specific location. An area of the mesh that is not influenced by Overlap pins has an implicit In Front value of 0.
249 Animation and Keyframes Each Starch pin has the following properties: Amount The strength of the stiffening agent. The influence of Starch pins is cumulative, meaning that the Amount values are added together for places on the mesh where extents overlap. You can use negative Amount values to cancel out the influence of another Starch pin at a specific location. If you notice image tearing near a Deform pin, use a Starch pin with a very small Amount value (less than 0.1) near the Deform pin.
250 Animation and Keyframes Analyzing footage and extracting camera motion 1 With a footage layer selected, do one of the following: 1 Choose Animation > Track Camera, or choose Track Camera from the layer context menu. 2 Choose Effect > Perspective > 3D Camera Tracker. 3 In the Tracker panel, click the Track Camera button. The 3D Camera Tracker effect is applied. The analysis and solving phases occur in the background, with status appearing as a banner on the footage and next to the Cancel button.
251 Animation and Keyframes Resizing a target To resize a target, do one of the following: • Adjust the Target Size property. • Press Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) as you drag from the center of the target. When above the center of the target, a cursor with horizontal arrows allows you to resize the target. Selecting and deselecting track points To select track points, do one of the following: • Click a track point. • Click between three adjacent track points.
252 Animation and Keyframes Horizontal Angle of View Specifies the horizontal angle of view the solver uses. Enabled only when Shot Type is set to Specify Angle of View. Show Track Points Identifies detected features as 3D points with perspective hinting (3D Solved) or 2D points captured by the feature track (2D Source). Render Track Points Controls if the track points are rendered as part of the effect.
253 Animation and Keyframes 4 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the target and choose Set Ground Plane And Origin. This action does not have any visible result, but the reference plane and origin of the coordinate system are saved for this scene. Any items that you create from within this instance of the 3D Camera Tracker effect are created using this plane and origin.
254 Animation and Keyframes Time-stretch a layer Speeding up or slowing down an entire layer by the same factor throughout is known as time-stretching. When you time-stretch a layer, the audio and the original frames in the footage (and all keyframes that belong to the layer) are redistributed along the new duration. Use this command only when you want the layer and all layer keyframes to change to the new duration.
255 Animation and Keyframes Time-stretch a layer but not its keyframes When you time-stretch a layer, the positions of its keyframes stretch with it by default. You can circumvent this behavior by cutting and pasting keyframes. 1 Make a note of the time at which the first keyframe appears. (Placing a composition marker is a good way to mark the time.) 2 In the Timeline panel, click the name of one or more layer properties containing the keyframes you want to keep at the same times. 3 Choose Edit > Cut.
256 Animation and Keyframes When you apply time-remapping to a layer containing audio and video, the audio and video remain synchronized. You can remap audio files to gradually decrease or increase the pitch, play audio backward, or create a warbled or scratchy sound. Still-image layers cannot be time-remapped. You can remap time in either the Layer panel or the Graph Editor. Remapping video in one panel displays the results in both.
257 Animation and Keyframes When remapping time in the Graph Editor, use the values represented in the Time Remap graph to determine and control which frame of the movie plays at which point in time. Each Time Remap keyframe has a time value associated with it that corresponds to a specific frame in the layer; this value is represented vertically on the Time Remap value graph. When you enable time remapping for a layer, After Effects adds a Time Remap keyframe at the start and end points of the layer.
258 Animation and Keyframes Time-remapping is enabled, and a Hold keyframe is placed at the position of the current-time indicator to freeze the frame.If you previously enabled time-remapping on the layer, any keyframes you created are deleted when you apply the Freeze Frame command. Freeze the first frame without changing the speed 1 In a Composition or Timeline panel, select the layer that you want to remap. 2 Choose Layer > Time > Enable Time Remapping.
259 Animation and Keyframes • To slow the layer down, drag the keyframe down. (If the layer is playing in reverse, drag up.) • To speed the layer up, drag the keyframe up. (If the layer is playing in reverse, drag down.) • To play frames backward, drag the keyframe down to a value below the previous keyframe value. • To play frames forward, drag the keyframe up to a value above the previous keyframe value.
260 Animation and Keyframes 6 Move the remap-time marker on the upper time ruler to the frame you want to display at the time indicated on the lower time ruler: • To move the preceding portion of the layer forward, set the remap-time marker to a later time than the currenttime indicator. • To move the preceding portion of the layer backward, set the remap-time marker to an earlier time than the current-time indicator. • To freeze a frame, set the remap-time marker to the frame you want frozen.
261 Animation and Keyframes You can change the decibel Slider Minimum value in the Audio Options dialog box, which is available from the Audio panel menu. Online resources for time-remapping Aharon Rabinowitz provides a tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows how to use time-remapping to do lipsynching. This same basic concept can be used for many kinds of character animation.
262 Animation and Keyframes Regardless of the state of the layer switches, if frame blending is off for the composition, it is off for all layers in the composition. You set frame blending for the composition by choosing Enable Frame Blending from the Timeline panel at the top of the Timeline panel. menu, or clicking the Enable Frame Blending button Motion blur can make it harder for Pixel Motion to find discrete objects in each frame, which makes the calculation of motion vectors less reliable.
263 Animation and Keyframes To change the default to linear interpolation, choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and select Default Spatial Interpolation To Linear. Changing the preference setting does not affect keyframes that already exist or new keyframes on properties for which keyframes already exist.
264 Animation and Keyframes A Linear B Linear in, Hold out C Auto Bezier D Continuous Bezier or Bezier E Linear in, Bezier out All interpolation methods used by After Effects are based on the Bezier interpolation method, which provides direction handles so that you can control the transitions between keyframes. Interpolation methods that don’t use direction handles are constrained versions of Bezier interpolation and are convenient for certain tasks.
265 Animation and Keyframes Unlike other interpolation methods, Bezier interpolation lets you create any combination of curves and straight lines along the motion path. Because the two Bezier direction handles operate independently, a curving motion path can suddenly turn into a sharp corner at a Bezier keyframe. Bezier spatial interpolation is ideal for drawing a motion path that follows a complex shape, such as a map route or the outline of a logo.
266 Animation and Keyframes You can use Hold interpolation only for outgoing temporal interpolation (for the frames following a keyframe). If you create a keyframe following a Hold keyframe, the new keyframe uses incoming Hold interpolation. To apply or remove Hold interpolation as outgoing interpolation for a keyframe, select the keyframe in the Timeline panel, and choose Animation > Toggle Hold Keyframe.
267 Animation and Keyframes • If the keyframe uses Bezier, Continuous Bezier, or Auto Bezier interpolation, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the keyframe to change it to Linear. Change interpolation method in the Graph Editor • Click the keyframe with the Convert Vertex tool to toggle between linear and Auto Bezier interpolation. • Select one or more keyframes, and then click the Hold, Linear, or Auto Bezier button at the bottom of the screen to change the interpolation method.
268 Animation and Keyframes More Help topics Controlling speed between keyframes The Graph Editor Keyframes and the Graph Editor (keyboard shortcuts) Showing properties and groups in the Timeline panel (keyboard shortcuts) About animation, keyframes, and expressions Select keyframes Last updated 12/12/2014
269 Chapter 8: Color Color basics Color depth and high dynamic range color Color depth (or bit depth) is the number of bits per channel (bpc) used to represent the color of a pixel. The more bits for each RGB channel (red, green, and blue), the more colors each pixel can represent. In After Effects, you can work in 8-bpc, 16-bpc, or 32-bpc color.
270 Color Comparative advantages of each color depth The dynamic range (ratio between dark and bright regions) in the physical world far exceeds the range of human vision and of images that are printed on paper or displayed on a monitor. Low dynamic range 8-bpc and 16-bpc color values can represent RGB levels only from black to white, which is only a small segment of the dynamic range in the real world.
271 Color Additional resources about high dynamic range color Chris Meyer explains what floating-point, 32-bpc, HDR color is good for in a video overview on the Lynda.com website. Kert Gartner provides some visual examples and a brief explanation on his VFX Haiku website that demonstrate the benefits of working with 32-bpc color. Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial on his Video Copilot website in which he demonstrates the advantages of using 32-bpc color with motion blur.
272 Color Choose a color picker • To choose the system color, choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or AfterEffects > Preferences > General (Mac OS) and check the Use System Color Picker box. • To use the Adobe Color Picker, keep the Use System Color Picker box unchecked and select Window > Extensions > Adobe Color Themes. Jeff Almasol provides the PickerSwitcher script on his redefinery website, which toggles the Use System Color Picker setting.
273 Color 3 Enter the component values in the text boxes. Select the component you want to use to display the color spectrum: HSB For HSB, specify hue (H) as an angle, from 0° to 360°, that corresponds to a location on the color wheel. Specify saturation (S) and brightness (B) as percentages (0–100). H Displays all hues in the color slider.
274 Color Edit a gradient A gradient is defined by color stops and opacity stops. Each stop has a location along the gradient and a value for color or opacity. The values between stops are interpolated. By default, the interpolation is linear, but you can drag the opacity midpoint or color midpoint between two stops to alter the interpolation. • To add a color stop or opacity stop, click below or above the gradient bar in the Gradient Editor dialog box.
275 Color Jorrit Schulte provides a tutorial on the AETUTS+ website that demonstrates how to make an animation preset for importing and working with Kuler color swatches. Color correction, color grading, and color adjustment When you assemble a composition, you often need to adjust or correct the colors of one or more of the layers. Such adjustments can be for any of several reasons.
276 Color Rich Young collects tutorials and presets for bleach bypass, cross-process, and other looks in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website. Using histograms to adjust color A histogram is a representation of the number of pixels at each luminance value in an image. A histogram that has nonzero values for each luminance value indicates an image that takes advantage of the full tonal range. A histogram that doesn’t use the full tonal range corresponds to a dull image that lacks contrast.
277 Color Resources for Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse The Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse plug-in included with After Effects includes excellent color-correction tools. Synthetic Aperture provides tutorials and additional information about using Color Finesse on their website. Color Finesse installs its documentation in the plug-in’s subfolder in the Plug-ins folder. After Effects CC and CS6 include Synthetic Aperture Color Finesse 3. (See Plug-ins.
278 Color If you have enabled color management (by specifying a working color space), you can perform all color operations in linear light by linearizing the working color space. A linearized color space uses the same primaries and white point as the nonlinear version; the tone response curve is just made into a straight line. Many compositing operations, such as combining colors with blending modes, benefit from being performed in a linear color space.
279 Color QuickTime and gamma in non-color-managed projects After Effects 7.0 and earlier used QuickTime codecs to decode several kinds of media, and the gamma adjustments performed by QuickTime on Windows were different from the gamma adjustments performed on Mac OS. The gamma adjustments performed by After Effects CS3 and later differ from the gamma adjustments performed by these QuickTime codecs.
280 Color 2 After Effects performs all of its color operations in the working color space. You assign a working color space (project working space) in the Project Settings dialog box. (See Choose a working color space and enable color management.) 3 Colors are converted from the working color space to the color space of your computer monitor through the monitor profile.
281 Color When you are ready to output your composition, you can use color management to transform your colors into the space appropriate for your output media. At this stage, you are preserving the appearance of colors as you intend them to look. Color profiles The file format for color profiles is standardized by the ICC (International Color Consortium), and the files that contain them usually end with the .icc filename extension.
282 Color Calibrate and profile your monitor When you calibrate your monitor, the profiling utility lets you save a color profile that describes the color behavior of the monitor. This profile contains information about what colors can be reproduced on the monitor and how the color values in an image must be converted so that colors are displayed accurately.
283 Color • sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is a good choice if you’re making a movie for the Web, especially cartoons. The color spaces available in After Effects vary based on the color profiles installed on your computer. (See Color profiles.) 1 Choose File > Project Settings. 2 Choose a working color space from the Working Space menu. Color management and Mercury Transmit In earlier versions of After Effects, previews sent to an external video monitor were not color managed.
284 Color If you want to use a linearized working color space, do so when you set up the project, instead of switching later. Otherwise, colors chosen in the color picker will change when you switch to a linear working color space, because colors inside After Effects are interpreted to be in the working color space. Note: A linearized working color space works best with higher color depths—16 bpc and 32 bpc—and is not recommended for 8-bpc color.
285 Color If you don’t assign an input color profile, and After Effects doesn’t have a rule in the interpretation rules file with which to make an interpretation, the colors of the footage item are assumed to be in the working color space of the project. When color management is enabled, the input color profile for a footage item is shown in the information area at the top of the Project panel.
286 Color 2 In the Color Management tab of the Output Module Settings dialog box, choose a value from the Output Profile menu: sRGB IEC61966-2.1 For display in web browsers and other web-based environments. SDTV NTSC or SDTV PAL For display on standard-definition television. If the codec that you are using does not adjust luma levels, choose a 16-235 profile to compress luma levels. Kodak 5218/7218 Printing Density For film-out corresponding to the scene capture of Kodak 5218 camera negative film.
287 Color For example, when you are creating a movie using a computer monitor and a high-definition video monitor, you may need to see how the movie will look when transferred to a specific film stock and projected under standard theater viewing conditions. In such situations, you’ll want to preview how colors will appear when they’re displayed on a device other than your computer monitor. Output simulation requires display color management.
288 Color Note: Output simulation relies on display color management, which is on by default. If display color management is off, choose View > Use Display Color Management. No Output Simulation Display color management is on, but no conversion is performed to simulate an output type. Legacy Macintosh RGB (Gamma 1.8) Show how colors will appear when displayed by a non–color managed application on a Macintosh computer with a gamma of 1.8—the value used by Mac OS before Mac OS X 10.6.
289 Color Output Profile The color space of the output medium; for example HDTV (Rec. 709) Intent Relative Colorimetric To enable and disable this type of output simulation, you can turn the adjustment layer on and off by selecting and deselecting its Video switch in the Timeline panel. Broadcast-safe colors Analog video signal amplitude is expressed in IRE units (or volts in PAL video). Values between 7.
290 Color Color models and color spaces Color depth and high dynamic range color Blending modes and layer styles Interpret footage items Output modules and output module settings Render and export a movie using the render queue Viewers Previewing Last updated 12/12/2014
291 Chapter 9: Drawing, painting, and paths Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser Paint tools and paint strokes The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer. Each paint tool applies brush marks that modify the color or transparency of an area of a layer without modifying the layer source.
292 Drawing, painting, and paths • To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes. To momentarily activate the Selection tool, press and hold V. • To show only selected paint strokes in the Timeline panel, select paint strokes and press SS.
293 Drawing, painting, and paths Create and manage preset brushes • To create a new preset brush, specify the desired settings in the Brushes panel, and then choose New Brush from the Brushes panel menu or click the Save Current Settings As New Brush button . • To rename a preset brush, select the brush and choose Rename Brush from the panel menu. • To delete a preset brush, choose Delete Brush from the panel menu or click the Delete Brush button .
294 Drawing, painting, and paths Spacing The distance between the brush marks in a stroke, measured as a percentage of the brush diameter. When this option is deselected, the speed at which you drag to create the stroke determines the spacing. Brush Dynamics These settings determine how the features of a pressure-sensitive digitizing tablet—such as a Wacom pen tablet—control and affect brush marks.
295 Drawing, painting, and paths 2 Choose settings and a brush in the Paint panel and Brushes panel. 3 In the Layer panel, drag with the Brush tool to paint on the layer. Each time you release the mouse button, you stop drawing a stroke. When you drag again, you create a new stroke. Shift-drag to resume drawing the previous stroke.
296 Drawing, painting, and paths You can identify what result a stroke will have before you make it by using the clone source overlay, a semi-transparent image of the source layer. A Clone source overlay B Current stroke point C Current sample point Note: To specify settings for a paint stroke before you apply it, use the Paint and Brushes panels. To change and animate properties for a paint stroke after you’ve applied it, work with the properties of the stroke in the Timeline panel.
297 Drawing, painting, and paths 2 Open the source layer in a Layer panel and move the current-time indicator to the frame from which to begin sampling. Note: You can manually manipulate the time and coordinates from which sampling begins by modifying the Offset, Source Time Shift, Source Position, or Source Time values in the Paint panel. You can reset them to zero with the Reset button.
298 Drawing, painting, and paths Eraser tool If you use the Eraser tool in Layer Source & Paint or Paint Only mode, it creates Eraser strokes that can be modified and animated. In contrast, using the Eraser tool in Last Stroke Only mode only affects the last paint stroke drawn and does not create an Eraser stroke. To temporarily use the Eraser tool in Last Stroke Only mode, Ctrl+Shift-drag (Windows) or Command+Shift-drag (Mac OS). 1 Select the Eraser tool from the Tools panel.
299 Drawing, painting, and paths As you paint, your movements are recorded in real time and determine the rate at which the resulting stroke is drawn to the screen for output. Recording begins when you click within the layer in Layer panel. When you release the mouse button, the current time returns to the time at which you started painting; this behavior is so that you can record more paint strokes for animated playback starting from the same time.
300 Drawing, painting, and paths Overview of shape layers, paths, and vector graphics About vector graphics and raster images Vector graphics are made up of lines and curves defined by mathematical objects called vectors, which describe an image according to its geometric characteristics. Examples of vector graphics elements within After Effects include mask paths, shapes on shape layers, and text on text layers.
301 Drawing, painting, and paths You change the shape of a path by dragging its vertices, the direction handles at the end of the direction lines (or tangents) of each vertex, or the path segment itself. As a path exits a vertex, the angle and length of the outgoing direction line for that vertex determine the path. As the path approaches the next vertex, the path is less influenced by the outgoing direction line of the previous vertex and more influenced by the incoming direction line of the next vertex.
302 Drawing, painting, and paths When you use the shape tools (Rectangle, Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Polygon, or Star) to draw a shape path on a shape layer, you can create one of two kinds of paths: a parametric shape path or a Bezier shape path. (See About shapes and shape layers.) You can link mask paths, paint stroke paths, and Bezier shape paths using expressions.
303 Drawing, painting, and paths Online resources for shape layers For a video tutorial creating shape layers from vector layers, visit the learn tutorials page. Trish and Chris Meyer provide an introduction to shape layers in a PDF excerpt from the “Shape Layers” chapter of their book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (5th Edition).
304 Drawing, painting, and paths A Two shapes in a group B Two paths in a compound shape C Circle path with Wiggle Paths applied D One stroke applied to all paths above it E Star path in a group by itself F One fill applied to all paths above it G One path with two strokes Render order for shapes within a shape layer The rules for rendering a shape layer are similar to the rules for rendering a composition that contains nested compositions: • Within a group, the shape at the bottom of the Timeline panel
305 Drawing, painting, and paths Transform properties for shape groups and shape paths Each group has its own Transform property group. This Transform property group is represented in the Timeline panel with a property group named Transform: [group name] and in the Composition panel as a dashed box with handles. You can group a path by itself and transform only the path using its new Transform property group.
306 Drawing, painting, and paths Creating masks You can create one or more masks for each layer in a composition using any of the following methods: • Draw a path using the shape tools or Pen tool. Drawing a mask path is similar to drawing a shape path. (See Create a shape or mask by dragging with shape toolsand Create a Bezier shape or mask using the Pen tool.) • Specify the dimensions of the mask path numerically in the Mask Shape dialog box. (See Create a rectangular or elliptical mask numerically.
307 Drawing, painting, and paths 3 Choose Layer > Mask > Mask Shape. 4 Select Reset To, choose Rectangle or Ellipse from the Shape menu, and specify the size and location of the bounding box for the mask. Create a mask from channel values with Auto-trace 1 You can convert the alpha, red, green, blue, or luminance channel of a layer to one or more masks by using the Auto- trace command. 2 Auto-trace creates as many Bezier masks as necessary to outline the specified channel values in the layer.
308 Drawing, painting, and paths Creating shapes and shape layers You create a shape layer by drawing in the Composition panel with a shape tool or the Pen tool. You can then add shape attributes to existing shapes or create new shapes within that shape layer. By default, if you draw in the Composition panel when a shape layer is selected, you create a new shape within that shape layer, above the selected shapes or group of shapes.
309 Drawing, painting, and paths • The menu command works on a single selected layer at a time. • If you import an Illustrator file as a composition (i.e., several layers), you cannot convert all of those layers in one pass. However, you can import the file as footage, and then use the command to convert the single footage layer to shapes. In this video by Todd Kopriva and video2brain, see how to quickly convert vector graphics from Illustrator to shape layers and animate the paths in After Effects CS6.
310 Drawing, painting, and paths 3 Release the mouse button to finish drawing. If drawing a square or rounded square, release the Shift key after releasing the mouse button. Note: Squares are created to be square according to the pixel aspect ratio of the composition. If the pixel aspect ratio of the composition is not 1, then squares only appear square in the Composition panel if the Toggle Pixel Aspect Ratio button is selected at the bottom of the Composition panel.
311 Drawing, painting, and paths To reposition a vertex after you’ve clicked to place it but before you’ve released the mouse button, hold the spacebar while dragging. The last vertex that you add appears as a solid square, indicating that it is selected. Previously added vertices become hollow, and deselected, as you add more vertices. 3 Repeat step 2 until you are ready to complete the path.
312 Drawing, painting, and paths 3 Place the Pen tool where you want the curved segment to end, and do one of the following: • To create a C-shaped curve, drag in the direction opposite from the direction that you dragged the previous direction line, and then release the mouse button.
313 Drawing, painting, and paths Create shapes from text 1 Select the text to convert to shapes: • To create shapes for all characters in a text layer, select the text layer in the Timeline panel or Composition panel. • To create shapes for specific characters, select the characters in the Composition panel. 2 Do one of the following: • Choose Layer > Create Shapes From Text. • Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the layer or text and choose Create Shapes From Text from the context menu.
314 Drawing, painting, and paths 1 In Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks, select an entire path, and then choose Edit > Copy. 2 In After Effects, do one of the following to define a target for the paste operation: • To create a new mask, select a layer. • To replace an existing mask path or shape path, select its Path property. Note: To paste a path as a shape path, you must select the Path property of an existing shape in a shape layer.
315 Drawing, painting, and paths Note: When copying between a mask path to a motion path, keep in mind that the mask path’s values are expressed in the coordinate system of the layer (layer space), whereas the motion path’s values are expressed in the coordinate system of the composition (composition space). This difference may cause the pasted path to be offset, requiring you to reposition the path after pasting it. (See Coordinate systems: composition space and layer space.
316 Drawing, painting, and paths Duplicate a shape group while transforming When a shape group is selected in group selection mode, you can duplicate the group while moving, rotating, or scaling it in the Composition panel. • Hold the Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) key as you drag to transform a group. The pointer changes to a duplication pointer ( transform box.
317 Drawing, painting, and paths Note: After Effects includes the Roto Brush and Refine Edge tools, which can be used to accomplish many of the same tasks as conventional rotoscoping, but in far less time. For information about using the Roto Brush tool, see Roto Brush, Refine Edge, and Refine Matte effects | CC. If a background or foreground object is a consistent, distinct color, you can use color keying instead of rotoscoping to remove the background or object.
318 Drawing, painting, and paths Mathias Möhl provides the KeyTweak script on his website, with which you can modify many keyframes on a property simultaneously. With KeyTweak, you can modify a few keyframes manually, and the script modifies the remaining keyframes in between accordingly. KeyTweak is especially useful for Mask Path keyframes in a rotoscoping workflow. Rich Young provides several resources for rotoscoping on his After Effects Portal website.
319 Drawing, painting, and paths A Layer selection B Group selection C Free-transform D Path editing For information on selecting masks, see Select masks, segments, and vertices. Press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS) with a shape vertex selected to select all vertices on that path. Press again to select all shapes. Press again to select all layers. Select a shape layer • Click the layer name or layer duration bar in the Timeline panel.
320 Drawing, painting, and paths • To select an entire path, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) a segment or vertex of the path with the Selection tool, or select any portion of the path and press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS). • To select vertices by dragging, select a path or portion of a path to enter path-editing mode, and then drag with the marquee-selection tool to draw a marquee-selection box around the vertices to select.
321 Drawing, painting, and paths 3 Do any of the following: • To select one mask, click its name. • To select a contiguous range of masks, Shift-click the names of the first and last masks in the range. • To select discontiguous masks together, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the names of any masks you want to include. Note: You can select only whole masks in the Timeline panel. To select individual vertices on a mask, use the Composition or Layer panel.
322 Drawing, painting, and paths 4 Do any combination of the following: • To move the path or selected vertices, position the pointer inside the bounding box and drag. • To scale the path or selected vertices, position the pointer on a bounding box handle and, when the pointer changes to a straight, double-sided arrow , drag to a new size. Hold down Shift as you drag to constrain the scale. Hold down Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) as you drag to scale around the anchor point of the bounding box.
323 Drawing, painting, and paths Adjust a path segment ❖ Do one of the following with the Selection tool: • Drag a vertex. • Drag the direction handles extending from an adjoining smooth vertex. • Drag a curved segment. Dragging a curved segment on a RotoBezier mask also moves the vertices. Toggle a vertex between a smooth point and a corner point ❖ Click the vertex with the Convert Vertex tool .
324 Drawing, painting, and paths Some shape path operations, such as Trim Paths, also use the first vertex as input to determine how to modify the path. Note: By default, when you add a vertex to a path, the new vertex appears on the path throughout the duration of the path but reshapes the path only at the time at which it was added. When you delete a vertex from a path at a specific point in time, the vertex is deleted from the path throughout the duration of the path.
325 Drawing, painting, and paths Quality Specifies how strictly Smart Mask Interpolation matches vertices from one keyframe to another. A value of 0 specifies that a particular vertex in the first keyframe matches only the same-numbered vertex in the second keyframe. For example, the tenth vertex in the first keyframe must match the tenth vertex in the second keyframe. A value of 100 means that a vertex in the first keyframe can potentially match any vertex in the second keyframe.
326 Drawing, painting, and paths When you use the Pan Behind (Anchor Point) tool to pan a layer behind a mask, the position of the mask remains constant in the Composition panel but changes in the Layer panel. The Position values of the masked layer change in relation to the composition. As you pan past the edges of the layer frame, the Mask Path values on the layer also change.
327 Drawing, painting, and paths Shape attributes, paint operations, and path operations for shape layers Adding attributes to shape layers After a shape layer has been created, you can add attributes—paths, paint operations, and path operations—by using the Add menu in the Tools panel or in the Timeline panel. By default, the new attributes are inserted into the selected shape group or groups according to the following rules: • New paths are added below existing paths and groups.
328 Drawing, painting, and paths Linear gradient The fill or stroke consists of colors and opacity values defined by a linear gradient and then mapped onto the composition along a single axis from the Start Point to the End Point. Radial gradient The fill or stroke consists of colors and opacity values defined by a linear gradient, which are mapped onto the composition along a radius extending outward from the Start Point at the center to the End Point at the circumference of a circle.
329 Drawing, painting, and paths A Highlight control point B Start Point C End Point 1 Select the group in which the gradient is contained. 2 With the Selection tool active, drag the Start Point, End Point, or Highlight controls in the Composition panel. The Selection tool turns to a gradient control pointer or when placed over a gradient control.
330 Drawing, painting, and paths Line Join options for strokes The Line Join property for a stroke determines the appearance of the stroke where the path suddenly changes direction (turns a corner). Miter Join A pointed connection. The Miter Limit value determines the conditions under which a beveled join is used instead of a miter join. If the miter limit is 4, then when the length of the point reaches four times the stroke weight, a bevel join is used instead. A miter limit of 1 causes a bevel join.
331 Drawing, painting, and paths Alter shapes with path operations Path operations are similar to effects. These live operations act nondestructively on a shape’s path to create a modified path that other shape operations (such as fills and strokes) can apply to. The original path is not modified. Because path operations are live, you can modify or remove them at any time.
332 Drawing, painting, and paths transformations are auto-animated, meaning that they change over time without the need to set any keyframes or add expressions. The Wiggle Transform operation is especially useful following a Repeater operation, because it allows you to randomize the transformations of each repeated shape separately. (See Using the Repeater to replicate shapes.
333 Drawing, painting, and paths Aharon Rabinowitz provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website that shows how to combine multiple paths into a single compound shape using the Merge Paths path operation. The Merge Paths path operation has the following options, each of which performs different calculations to determine the output path: Merge Merges all input paths into a single compound path.
334 Drawing, painting, and paths The Offset property value is used to offset the transformations by a specific number of copies. For example, if the Copies value is 10 and the Offset value is 3, then the original shape is transformed by 3 times the amount specified in the Transform property group, and the last copy is transformed by 12 times the amount specified in the Transform property group. Animating the Offset property is a good way to easily create interesting results.
335 Drawing, painting, and paths To use the mask tracker, select a mask and click the Mask Path setting under the mask. Right-click the selected mask and select Track Mask to begin tracking a mask. When a mask is selected, the Tracker panel switches to mask tracking mode, and displays the following controls: • Track forward either one frame at a time or until the end of the layer. • Track backward either one frame at a time or until the end of the layer.
336 Drawing, painting, and paths How to use the Track Mask effect (Learn tutorial) Watch this tutorial to learn how to use the Track Mask effect in After Effects to add and shape mask elements that move accurately through your Premiere Pro sequence. How to use the Rigid Mask Tracker (Learn tutorial) See this tutorial to learn how to use the rigid mask tracker in After Effects.
337 Drawing, painting, and paths The Blend With Original controls group lets you precisely apply any effect to a particular area of an image by masking the desired area. For more information, see the Blend effecteffect section. About Mask Reference Use the new Mask Reference option to restrict the area of effects that is applied to a layer. The Mask Reference property is found under the Compositing Options under each effect in the Timeline panel.
338 Drawing, painting, and paths Effect masks and layer masks An effect mask cannot be used to modify the alpha channel of a layer. Hence an effect mask cannot be used as a layer mask. For more information about layer masks, see the Preparing and importing Photoshop filessection. Learn tutorial Watch this tutorial to learn how to limit an effect to a specific area using a mask on the layer, and change properties on a per-mask basis.
339 Chapter 10: Text Live Text Templates About Live Text Templates You can create text template compositions in After Effects wherein the source text can be edited in Premiere Pro. Any composition with text layers can be used as a text template, and unlocked text layers in that composition can be edited in Premiere Pro. Using Live Text Templates in After Effects 1 Create an After Effects composition with one or more text layers.
340 Text Learn tutorial Watch this tutorial to learn how to create live text templates in After Effects that are editable in Premiere Pro. Creating and editing text layers About text layers You can add text to a composition using text layers. Text layers are useful for many purposes, including animated titles, lower thirds, credit rolls, and dynamic typography. You can animate the properties of entire text layers or the properties of individual characters, such as color, size, and position.
341 Text Best practices for creating text and vector graphics for video Text that looks good on your computer screen as you are creating it can sometimes look bad when viewed in a final output movie. These differences can arise from the device used to view the movie or from the compression scheme used to encode the movie. The same is true for other vector graphics, such as shapes in shape layers.
342 Text Todd Kopriva provides an example script on the Adobe website that demonstrates the text formatting features available through the scripting interface. Salahuddin Taha provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website that enables entry of Arabic text (which flows from right to left). Michael Cardeiro provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website that makes multiple versions of your compositions using information from a spreadsheet or database.
343 Text Note: You can also choose Edit > Paste to paste text that you have copied from any application that uses Unicode characters. Text receives the formatting of the first character in the text layer into which it is pasted. 3 To end text-editing mode, press Enter on the numeric keypad, select another tool, or press Ctrl+Enter (Windows) or Command+Return (Mac OS). Enter paragraph text When you enter paragraph text, the lines of text wrap to fit the dimensions of the bounding box.
344 Text The pointer for a type tool changes, depending on whether it is over a text layer in the Composition panel. When the pointer for a type tool is directly over a text layer, it appears as the edit text pointer ; click to place the insertion point in the existing text. ❖ To select text with a type tool, do one of the following: • To select a range of text, drag over the text. • To select a range of text, click, move the pointer, and then Shift-click. • To select a word, double-click it.
345 Text When you convert from paragraph text to point text, a carriage return is added at the end of each line of text, except the last line. To display the bounding box of paragraph text and automatically select a type tool, double-click the text layer in the Timeline panel. Change the direction of text Horizontal text flows from left to right; multiple lines of horizontal text lie from top to bottom. Vertical text flows from top to bottom; multiple lines of text lie from right to left.
346 Text More Help topics Examples and resources for text animation Apply an effect or animation preset Formatting paragraphs with the Paragraph panel Type Preparing and importing Photoshop files Layer styles Formatting characters and the Character panel Use the Character panel to format characters. If text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect only the selected text.
347 Text When you select a font, you can select the font family and its font style independently. The font family (or typeface) is a collection of fonts sharing an overall design; for example, Times. A font style is a variant version of an individual font in the font family; for example, regular, bold, or italic. The range of available font styles varies with each font.
348 Text Tracking and manual kerning are cumulative, so you can first adjust individual pairs of letters and then tighten or loosen a block of text without affecting the relative kerning of the letter pairs. Note: Values for kerning and tracking affect Japanese text, but normally these options are used to adjust the aki (spacing) between Roman characters. Create a non-breaking space If a set of characters is set to be non-breaking, the characters animate together as if they were a single word.
349 Text Text fills and strokes For text, a fill is applied to the area inside the shape of an individual character; a stroke is applied to the outline of the character. After Effects applies a stroke to a character by centering the stroke on the character’s path; half of the stroke appears on one side of the path, and the other half of the stroke appears on the other side of the path.
350 Text ❖ Choose Miter, Round, or Bevel from the Line Join menu. Blend overlapping characters in a text layer 1 In the Timeline panel, expand the text layer and the More Options group. 2 Choose a blending mode from the Inter-Character Blending menu. Note: To blend a text layer with the layers beneath it, specify a blending mode from the Modes column in the Timeline panel. Inter-character blending is not available for text layers with per-character 3D properties.
351 Text Format text as superscript or subscript Superscript characters are reduced in size and shifted above the text baseline; subscript characters are reduced in size and shifted below the text baseline. If the font does not include superscript or subscript characters, After Effects generates faux superscript or subscript characters. • Click the Superscript button or the Subscript button in the Character panel. • Choose Superscript or Subscript from the Character panel menu.
352 Text 2 Choose Tate-Chuu-Yoko from the Character panel menu. (A check mark indicates that the option is turned on. To turn off the option, choose Tate-Chuu-Yoko again.) Note: You open the panel menu by clicking the panel menu button in the upper-right tab of the panel. Using tate-chuu-yoko does not prevent you from editing and formatting text; you can edit and apply formatting options to rotated characters as you do to other characters.
353 Text Angie Taylor provides a tutorial on the Digital Arts website that shows how to use per-character 3D text animation together with a common workaround for simulating extruded 3D text. Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Artbeats website that shows how to use the After Effects text animation system as a particle system. Rich Young collects several resources and tutorials for creating extruded 3D text in After Effects.
354 Text 1 Create a new composition. 2 Create a new text layer with the word Galaxy. 3 Choose Animation > Animate Text > Character Offset. 4 In the Timeline panel, set the Character Offset value to 5. 5 Expand Range Selector 1. 6 Click the Start stopwatch to set an initial keyframe at 0 seconds and set the value to 0%. 7 Move the current-time indicator to 5 seconds and set the Start value to 100%. 8 Set Character Alignment to Center. 9 Preview the composition.
355 Text 7 Preview the composition. 8 Collapse the Animator 1 group. 9 Make sure that nothing is selected except the text layer name in the Timeline panel, and choose Fill Color > Hue from the Animate menu. A new animator group, Animator 2, appears in the Timeline panel. 10 Set Fill Hue to 1x+0.0. 11 Expand the Range Selector 1 for Animator 2. 12 Click the Start stopwatch and leave it at 0% at 0 seconds; then move the current-time indicator to 5 seconds and set Start to 100%. 13 Preview the animation.
356 Text 14 Drag the Line Anchor value until the 7 is positioned in approximately its original position in the center of the Composition panel. 15 Click the Show Snapshot button in the Composition panel to see the exact location of the 7 in its original location. Adjust the Line Anchor value to position the character in the original location. 16 Preview the animation. Example: Use selectors to animate specific words This example shows how to use selectors to limit an animation to a specific word.
357 Text Note: By default, the Smoothness property is set to 100%. To create a typewriter appearance, expand the Advanced property and set Smoothness to 0%. Example: Animate text with multiple selectors This example uses the selectorValue parameter in an Expression selector with the Wiggly selector to make a string of characters flash on and off randomly. 1 Create a new composition. 2 Create a new text layer. 3 In the Timeline panel, choose Opacity from the Animate menu for the text layer.
358 Text 8 Set the vertical position value. The greater the value, the more the characters wiggle. 9 Preview your composition. Example: Animate text as a timecode display ❖ With no layers selected in the Timeline panel, double-click the Current Time Format animation preset in the Effects & Presets panel. (You can locate the animation preset by typing its name in the Contains field in the Effects & Presets panel.
359 Text • Use text animators and selectors to animate many properties of individual characters or a range of characters. (See Animate text with text animators.) To smooth the edges and movement of animated text, enable motion blur for the text layer. See Motion blur for more information. For a video tutorial on animating text, go to the Adobe website. Text animation presets Browse and apply text animation presets as you would any other animation presets.
360 Text Usually, you don’t need to set keyframes or expressions for the animator properties. It’s common to only set keyframes or expressions for the selector and specify only the ending values for the animator properties. 1 Select a text layer in the Timeline panel, or select the specific characters that you want to animate in the Composition panel. 2 Do one of the following: • Choose Animation > Animate Text and then choose a property from the menu.
361 Text You can create elaborate animations using several animators and several selectors, each of which adds its influence to the text animation. Text animator properties Animator properties work much like other layer properties, except that their values only influence the characters that are selected by the selectors for the animator group. Choose Enable Per-Character 3D to add 3D properties to a text layer; this command does not add properties to an animator group.
362 Text Animator properties Anchor Point Anchor point for the characters: the point about which transformations—such as scaling and rotation— are performed. (See Text anchor point properties.) Position The position of the characters. You can specify values for this property in the Timeline panel, or you can modify it by selecting it in the Timeline panel and then dragging the layer in the Composition panel using the Selection when positioned over text characters.
363 Text Use a Wiggly selector to vary a selection within a specified amount over time. Use expression selectors to use expressions to dynamically specify how much you want characters to be affected by an animator property. • To add a selector using the Timeline panel, select an animator group in the Timeline panel and choose Selector from the Add menu for the animator group, or choose Animation > Add Text Selector. Choose Range, Wiggly, or Expression from the submenu.
364 Text Range selector properties Range selectors include the following properties, in addition to properties common with other selectors: Start and End The beginning and end of the selection. You can modify the Start and End properties by dragging the selector bars in the Composition panel when the selector is selected in the Timeline panel. Offset The amount to offset the selection from the selection specified by the Start and End properties.
365 Text Wiggly selector properties The Wiggly selector includes the following properties, in addition to properties common with other selectors: Max Amount and Min Amount Specifies the amount of variation from the selection. Wiggles/Second How many variations from the set selection occur per second. Correlation Correlation between variations for each character. At 100%, all characters wiggle by the same amount at the same time, and at 0%, all characters wiggle independently.
366 Text Text anchor point properties Text animators animate character position, rotation, and size-related properties relative to an anchor point. You can use the text property, Anchor Point Grouping, to specify whether the anchor point used for transformations is that of each character, each word, each line, or the entire text block. In addition, you can control the alignment of the anchor points of the characters relative to the anchor point of the group with the Grouping Alignment property.
367 Text When you select certain properties in the Timeline panel for a text animation, anchors points are shown in the Composition panel. These properties include Anchor Point Grouping, Grouping Alignment and the animator properties Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation (including per-character 3D versions: X Rotation, Y Rotation, Z Rotation). Per-character 3D text properties You can move, scale, and rotate individual characters in three dimensions using 3D animator properties.
368 Text Creating and animating text on a path When you have a mask on a text layer, you can make the text follow the mask as a path. You can then animate the text along that path, or animate the path itself. You can use open or closed masks to create paths for text. After you create the path, you can modify it at any time. When using a closed mask as a text path, make sure to set the mask mode to None.
369 Text Examples and resources for text animation Expression basics Mask modes Example: Animate characters with per-character 3D properties Creating masks Mask modes Extruding text and shape layers About beveled and extruded text and shape layers In computer graphics, an extruded object is one that appears to be three-dimensional. This 3D appearance is most apparent when moving the object, or moving a camera around the object. Bevel is the control over the edges for an extruded object.
370 Text Limitations of the Ray-traced 3D renderer The following features are not rendered by the Ray-traced 3D renderer: • Blending modes • Track mattes • Layer styles • Masks and effects on continuously rasterized layers, including text and shape layers • Masks and effects on 3D precomposition layers with collapsed transformations • Preserve Underlying Transparency Additional features of a Ray-traced 3D composition Features of a Ray-traced 3D composition also include: • • Additional material options (
371 Text To change the composition renderer: Click the button to open the Advanced tab of the Composition Settings dialog box. To modify the current renderer's options: Ctrl-click (Windows) or Cmd-click (Mac) the button. Creating beveled and extruded text and shape layers In the Ray-traced renderer, 3D text and shape layers can have an extrusion or bevel.
372 Text Bending a footage layer In the Ray-traced renderer, 3D footage and nested composition layers have the following geometry options for curving them around a vertical axis: • Curvature: The amount of bend (as a percentage). It defaults to 0% (no bend), but can go between -100% and 100% to simulate video walls or the flapping of wings. • Segments: The smoothness of or number of facets in the bend, with a lower number producing a coarser look with wider facets.
373 Text • Transparency Rolloff: For a transparent surface, controls the amount of transparency relative to the viewing angle. Transparency will be the specified value when viewing directly at a surface and more opaque when viewing at a glancing angle (for example, along the edges of a curved object if looking directly at it). • Index of Refraction: Controls how light bends through 3D layers, and hence how objects behind a semitransparent layer appear. For a list of indexes, see http://en.wikipedia.
374 Text Environment layer In the Ray-traced renderer, you can use a 3D footage, or nested composition layer, as a spherically mapped environment around the scene. This environment map layer will be seen on reflective objects. To set a footage or nested composition layer as an environment layer: Choose Layer > Environment Layer.
375 Text Align and justify text You can align text to one edge of a paragraph (left, center, or right for horizontal text; top, center, or bottom for vertical text) and justify text to both edges of a paragraph. Alignment options are available for both point text and paragraph text; justification options are available only for paragraph text. • To specify alignment, in the Paragraph panel, click an alignment option: : Aligns horizontal text to the left, leaving the right edge of the paragraph ragged.
376 Text Hanging punctuation for Roman fonts Hanging punctuation controls whether punctuation marks fall inside or outside the margins. If hanging punctuation is turned on for Roman fonts, then periods, commas, single quotation marks, double quotation marks, apostrophes, hyphens, em dashes, en dashes, colons, and semicolons appear outside the margins. ❖ To enable or disable hanging punctuation for Roman fonts, choose Roman Hanging Punctuation from the Paragraph panel menu.
377 Chapter 11: Transparency and compositing Roto Brush, Refine Edge, and Refine Matte effects | CC Separating a foreground object, such as an actor, from a background is a crucial step in many visual effects and compositing workflows. When you’ve created a matte that isolates an object, you can replace the background, selectively apply effects to the foreground, and much more.
378 Transparency and compositing Roto Brush & Refine Edge effect This effect is applied automatically when the first Roto Brush or Refine Edge stroke is drawn in the layer panel. Use this effect to control the settings for the Roto Brush & Refine Edge tools. After you have created a segmentation boundary and the boundary edges that need refining, use the Roto Brush Matte and Refine Edge Matte properties to improve the matte.
379 Transparency and compositing • Work with resolution set to Full when using the Roto Brush or Refine Edge tools. Fast Previews modes, such as Adaptive Resolution, don’t work well with these tools, because switching resolutions requires a full recalculation of the segmentation and transparency information. For this reason, Fast Previews modes are turned off when you draw a Roto Brush or Refine Edge stroke. Both the Composition and Layer panels share the Fast Previews setting. (See Resolution .
380 Transparency and compositing The magenta outline that appears around the foreground object in Alpha Boundary view mode is the segmentation boundary, the rough line that separates the foreground from the background. You can also view the segmentation using other view modes. (See Layer panel view options .) 5 Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) to draw a background stroke on the area that you want to define as the background.
381 Transparency and compositing 6 Repeat the steps of drawing foreground and background strokes on the base frame until the segmentation is as precise and complete as possible. You should make the segmentation on the base frame as good as possible; the segmentation of other frames is based on the segmentation defined on the base frame. Try for a segmentation boundary that is within a couple of pixels of your desired edge.
382 Transparency and compositing 12 Repeat and use the Refine Edge tool on other frames until the refinement is as precise and complete as possible. Press Alt/Option to erase Refine Edge strokes. 13 If you've used the Refine Edge brush, the Fine-tune Refine Edge Matte option in the Roto Brush & Refine Edge effect properties is selected. Modify properties in the Refine Edge Matte property group as needed. (See Roto Brush & Refine Edge, Refine Hard Matte, and Refine Soft Matte effect reference .
383 Transparency and compositing When Roto Brush & Refine Edge segmentation is frozen, the pointer for the Roto Brush & Refine Edge tools has a slash through it. It indicates that new strokes won't affect the result untill you unfreeze. The information that is cached and locked is the result of Roto Brush & Refine Edge strokes and the properties in the Roto Brush Propagation property group of the Roto Brush & Refine Edge effect.
384 Transparency and compositing Roto Brush & Refine Edge, Refine Hard Matte, and Refine Soft Matte effect reference The Roto Brush & Refine Edge effect properties in the Roto Brush Propagation property group affect segmentation between foreground and background and how that segmentation information is used for contiguous frames in a span. Other properties of the Roto Brush & Refine Edge effect affect the matte that is generated based on the initial segmentation.
385 Transparency and compositing Invert Foreground/Background Inverts which strokes are considered foreground strokes and which strokes are considered background strokes in the segmentation phase. Fine-tune Roto Brush Matte Enable or disable finer adjustments for Roto Brush Matte. These controls are used to adjust the segmentation boundary defined by foreground and background strokes.
386 Transparency and compositing Contrast Contrast of the alpha channel in the refined area. Shift Edge The amount of expansion of the matte relative to the value of the Feather property. The result is very similar to that of the Choke property in the Matte Choker effect, but the value is given from 100% to 100% (instead of -127 to 127). Chatter Reduction Enable or disable Chatter Reduction. Choose More Detailed or Smoother (Slower).
387 Transparency and compositing Reduce Chatter Increase this property to reduce erratic changes to edges from one frame to the next. This property determines how much influence the current frame should have when performing a weighted average across adjacent frames to make the matte edges not move erratically from one frame to the next. If the Reduce Chatter value is high, the chatter reduction is strong, and the current frame is considered less.
388 Transparency and compositing Contrast Contrast of the alpha channel in the refined area. Shift Edge The amount of expansion of the matte relative to the value of the Feather property. The result is very similar to that of the Choke property in the Matte Choker effect, but the value is given from 100% to 100% (instead of -127 to 127). Chatter Reduction Enable or disable Chatter Reduction. Choose More Detailed or Smoother (Slower).
389 Transparency and compositing A Separated color channels B Alpha channel represented as a grayscale image C Composite using all four channels with a background showing through transparent areas Many file formats can include an alpha channel, including Adobe Photoshop, ElectricImage, FLV, TGA, TIFF, EPS, PDF, and Adobe Illustrator.
390 Transparency and compositing About masks A mask in After Effects is a path that is used as a parameter to modify layer attributes, effects, and properties. The most common use of a mask is the modification of an alpha channel of a layer, which determines the transparency of the layer at each pixel. Another common use of a mask is as a path along which to animate text. (See Creating and animating text on a path.) For more information on paths in general, see About paths.
391 Transparency and compositing Copy, cut, duplicate, or paste a mask Note: When working with a mask path—rather than the entire mask, including its other properties—select the Mask Path property. This is especially important when transferring mask paths to shape paths, motion paths, and so on. • To copy or cut selected masks to the clipboard, choose Edit > Copy or Edit > Cut. • To duplicate selected masks, choose Edit > Duplicate.
392 Transparency and compositing Cycle through colors for mask paths 1 Choose Edit > Preferences > Appearance. 2 Select Cycle Mask Colors. Mask modes Blending modes for masks (mask modes) control how masks within a layer interact with one another. By default, all masks are set to Add, which combines the transparency values of any masks that overlap on the same layer.
393 Transparency and compositing A Original masks B None C Add D Subtract E Intersect F Lighten G Darken H Difference None The mask has no direct influence on the alpha channel of the layer. This option is useful when you are only using the path of the mask for an effect such as Stroke or Fill, or if you are using the mask path as the basis for a shape path. Add The mask is added to the masks above it in the stacking order. The influence of the mask is cumulative with the masks above it.
394 Transparency and compositing Expand or contract the edges of a mask To expand or contract the area influenced by a mask, use the Mask Expansion property. Mask expansion affects the alpha channel but not the underlying mask path; the mask expansion is essentially an offset that determines how far, in pixels, from the mask path the influence of the mask on the alpha channel extends. 1 In the Timeline panel, expand the Mask properties of the layer you want to adjust.
395 Transparency and compositing Variable-width mask feathering | CC, CS6 Earlier versions of After Effects had the ability to add a feathered edge to a closed mask, but the width (extent) of the feather was the same around the mask. A new Mask Feather tool (available in the same tool menu as the Pen tool) has been added to let you define points along a closed mask that should have varying widths. This video by Todd Kopriva and video2brain introduces the variable-width mask feathering feature.
396 Transparency and compositing Enable the Hold option from the context menu above the feather point. The feather point handle changes to be pointy in the direction of constant radius. To quickly create a feathered edge for a specific mask segment: Hold down the Shift key as you click the mask segment (between vertices, not above them). The pointer changes to indicate that you are in this mode. Drag from the segment to adjust the extent.
397 Transparency and compositing Defining the transparency of a layer based on the luminance of the track matte’s pixels is useful when you want to create a track matte using a layer without an alpha channel or a layer imported from a program that can’t create an alpha channel. In both cases—using alpha channel mattes and using luminance mattes—pixels with higher values are more transparent. In most cases, you use a high-contrast matte so that areas are either completely transparent or completely opaque.
398 Transparency and compositing If you choose an option other than No Track Matte, After Effects converts the next layer above into a track matte, turns off the video of the track matte layer, and adds a track matte icon next to the name of the track matte layer in the Timeline panel. Note: Although the video is turned off for the matte layer, you can still select the layer to reposition, scale, or rotate it.
399 Transparency and compositing Resources for Imagineer mocha shape for After Effects After Effects includes Imagineer Systems mocha for After Effects (mocha-AE), a stand-alone planar tracking application that can export tracking data for use in compositions in After Effects. (See Resources for mocha for After Effects (mocha AE).) After Effects also includes the mocha shape for After Effects (mocha shape) plug-in, which converts paths from mochaAE into mattes in After Effects.
400 Transparency and compositing Layers can also be composited together without modifying the transparency of the layers themselves. For example, you can use blending modes or some of the Channel effects to blend image data from multiple layers into a composite. (See Blending modes and layer styles and Channel effects.) After Effects also includes the mocha shape for After Effects (mocha shape AE) plug-in, which converts paths from mocha-AE into mattes in After Effects.
401 Transparency and compositing Keying introduction and resources Note: When a background is not of a consistent and distinctive color, you can’t remove the background with keying effects. Under these conditions, you may need to use rotoscoping—the manual drawing or painting on individual frames to isolate a foreground object from its background. (See Rotoscoping introduction and resources.
402 Transparency and compositing Jeff Foster provides free sample chapters from his book The Green Screen Handbook: Real World Production Techniques. The sample chapters cover basic compositing, color keying, garbage mattes, hold-out mattes, and how to avoid common problems with greenscreen shots. For more information, see the Adobe website. Rich Young collects more tips and resources for keying on his After Effects Portal website.
403 Transparency and compositing • To help you view transparency, temporarily change the background color of the composition, or include a background layer behind the layer you are keying out. As you apply the keying effect to the layer in the foreground, the composition background (or a background layer) shows through, making it easy to view transparent areas. (See Composition settings.) • For evenly lit footage, adjust keying controls on only one frame.
404 Transparency and compositing A Original bluescreen image. The background for the number is also blue. B After keying, the background for the number is also transparent. C Hold-out matte containing the part of the image you want to remain opaque D When the hold-out matte is placed on top of the keyed image, the background for the number is now opaque. 1 Duplicate the layer containing the color screen. 2 Apply keying effects and Matte effects to the original layer to create transparency.
405 Chapter 12: Effects and animation presets Effects and animation presets overview Animation presets overview and resources With animation presets, you can save and reuse specific configurations of layer properties and animations, including keyframes, effects, and expressions. For example, if you created an explosion using several effects with complex property settings, keyframes, and expressions, you can save all of those settings as a single animation preset.
406 Effects and animation presets Animation presets are loaded and initialized only when the Effects & Presets panel is shown. If the Effects & Presets panel is closed or hidden behind another panel, the animation presets are not initialized. Save an animation preset 1 Select any combination of properties (for example, Position and Scale) and property groups (for example, Paint and Transform). If you are selecting only effects, you can select them in the Effect Controls panel.
407 Effects and animation presets Note: If you open a project that uses an effect for which After Effects has not loaded the plug-in, a warning dialog box appears, and instances of the effect have Missing: at the beginning of its name in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel. To show all instances of missing effects in the Timeline panel for the active composition, press FF. Effect plug-ins All effects are implemented as plug-ins, including the effects that are included with After Effects.
408 Effects and animation presets The order in which After Effects renders masks, effects, layer styles, and transform properties—called the render order—may affect the final result of an applied effect. By default, effects appear in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel in the order in which they were applied. Effects are rendered in order from top to bottom in this list. To change the order in which effects are rendered, drag the effect name to a new position in the list.
409 Effects and animation presets Bob Donlon provides the following tutorial about the CC Particle Systems II effect on the Adobe website: • simulating fire Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on his website that demonstrates the CC Particle System II and CC Mr. Mercury effects. Compound effects and control layers Several effects rely on a control layer (or layer map) as input.
410 Effects and animation presets When you apply an effect with a Comp Camera attribute to a 2D layer, the effect can track the camera and light positions within the composition and render a 3D image on the 2D layer that it is applied to.
411 Effects and animation presets Effects and Presets panel Browse and apply effects and animation presets with the Effects & Presets panel. An icon identifies each item in the panel by type. Numbers within the icons for effects indicate whether the effect works on a maximum of 8, 16, or 32 bits per channel. You can scroll through the list of effects and animation presets, or you can search for effects and animation presets by typing any part of the name in the search box at the top of the panel.
412 Effects and animation presets Note: Applying an effect or animation preset to a layer selects the layer. By default, when you apply an effect to a layer, the effect is active for the duration of the layer. However, you can make an effect start and stop at specific times or make the effect more or less intense over time by using keyframes or expressions or by applying the effect to an adjustment layer. Animation presets are applied at the current time.
413 Effects and animation presets Remove an effect or animation preset You can remove an effect or animation preset from the folder in which After Effects searches for these items, preventing it from being loaded and from being shown in the Effects & Presets panel or Effect menu. 1 Select the effect or animation preset in the Effects & Presets panel. 2 Choose Reveal In Explorer (Windows) or Reveal In Finder (Mac OS) from the panel menu. 3 Move the effect (.aex) or animation preset (.
414 Effects and animation presets • To view an effect control point in the Composition panel, select the effect name in the Timeline panel or Effect Controls panel. Note: To view effect control points in the Composition panel, select Show Layer Controls in the View menu and select Effect Controls in View Options (View > View Options).
415 Effects and animation presets • Lightning Bend • Magma • Orb • Pixels • Racing Rectangles • Red Speed • River • Rose Light • Silk • Smoke Rising • Sweeping Curves Behaviors • Autoscroll - horizontal • Autoscroll - vertical • Drift Over Time • Fade In Over Layer Below • Fade In+Out - frames • Fade In+Out - msec • Fade Out Over Layer Below • Opacity Flash - layer markers • Opacity Flash - random • Rotate Over Time • Scale Bounce - layer markers • Scale Bounce - random • Wiggle - gelatin • Wiggle - posit
416 Effects and animation presets • Colorize - infrared • Colorize - moonshadows • Colorize - red hand tint • Colorize - royal purple • Colorize - sepia • Colorize - sky blue • Colorize - sky orange • Colorize - sunset gradient • Contrast - luminance • Contrast - saturation • Dimension - bevel+shadow • Dimension - glow+shadow • Grayscale • Inset Video - framed • Inset Video - torn edges • Left Third - scoop mask NTSC • Left Third - scoop mask PAL • Lower Third - scoop mask NTSC • Lower Third - scoop mask P
417 Effects and animation presets Image - Utilities • Compress-Expand Dynamic Range • Crop Edges • Flip + Flop • Flip • Flop • Invert Alpha • Keying - blue blur • Keying - green blur • Levels - computer to video • Levels - video to computer • Reduce DV blockiness • Sample Image Expression Shapes Backgrounds • Box Swarm • Kaleidoscopic • Nerve Net - Circular • Nerve Net - Linear • Nerve Net - Penta Backgrounds 2* • Autumn Leaves* • Blue Hibiscus* • Butterfly Resolve* • Fabric of Space* • Floral Explosion
418 Effects and animation presets Elements 2* • Box Grid* • Crosshatch Focus* • Deconstructionist* • Deploy* • Geo Logo* • Graph Paper* • Honeycomb* • Iris Flare* • Kaleidorganic* • Kaleidoscopic Seaweed* • Light Bulb Sign* • Mandathorns* • Neon Flower* • Protection* • Pulsing Snake* • Radar Stopwatch* • Spiral Magic* • Swoop* • Tunnel Drain* • Woven Celtic* • Woven Springs* Lower Thirds* • LT_blue double slant+anim* • LT_blue double-still* • LT_dashed underscore-still* • LT_double bubble-still* • LT_fad
419 Effects and animation presets • Dancing Knot • Mandala - animated • Phase Scope • SpiroMandala • TwinkleStar Sprites - Animated 2* • Pulsing Circles* • Spiralgear* • Sunflower - animated* Sprites - Still • Alien Calligraphy • Alien Face • Box - dashed lines • Bullseye • Circular - half round • Circular - tri dash • Crosshair - brackets • Crosshair - round • Crosshair - square • Fan Blades • Flower Power • Gear • Holy Light • Indian Sun • Mandala • RayStar-4 • RayStar-8 • Rounded Bracket - beveled • R
420 Effects and animation presets • I Ching* (hexagrams and trigrams) • Pictograms* • Schematic* (antennas, batteries, capacitors, diodes, grounds, inductors, logic symbols, resistors, transformers, transistors, tubes) Sound Effects • Blaster • Busy • CallAdobe • DialTone-US • DTMF • PhoneCompany • RingingPhone-US Synthetics • Blue Bars • Cells • Digital • Ethereal • Gold Ambiance • Lightning - Horizontal • Lightning - Vertical • Mosaic • Orange Streaks • Smoke - Drifting • Starburst Spin Text 3D Text
421 Effects and animation presets • 3D Flutter In From Left • 3D Flutter In Random Order • 3D Flutter Out From Right • 3D Fly Down & Unfold • 3D Fly Down Behind Camera • 3D Fly Down Random & Rotate Y • 3D Lines Zoom In • 3D Rain Down Words & Colors • 3D Random Spike Tumble • 3D Resolve Position • 3D Rotate around Circle • 3D Rotate in by Character • 3D Rotate out by Word • 3D Scramble in Position Z • 3D Spiral Down & Unfold • 3D Spiral Rotate In by Line • 3D Spiral Rotate Out by Line • 3D Swing Around on P
422 Effects and animation presets Animate In • Center Spiral • Characters Shuffle In • Decoder Fade In • Drop In By Character • Espresso Eye Chart • Fade Up And Flip • Fade Up Characters • Fade Up Lines • Fade Up Words • Fly In From Bottom • Fly In With A Twist • Pop Buzz Words • Raining Characters In • Random Fade Up • Random Shuffle In • Random Word Shuffle In • Slow Fade On • Smooth Move In • Spin In By Character • Spin In By Word • Straight In By Character • Straight In By Word • Straight In Multi-Lin
423 Effects and animation presets • Random Word Fly Off • Slide Off Right By Character • Slide Off Right By Word • Stretch Out Each Line • Stretch Out Each Word • Twirl Off Each Line • Twirl Off Each Word Blurs • Blur By Word • Bullet Train • Evaporate • Foggy • Jiggy • Transporter Curves and Spins • Bloom Flower • Clockwise Entry • Counter Rotate • Dust Devil • Lasso Tumble • Lasso • Musical Chairs • Newton • Pinwheel • Radial Flare • Retrograde • Rotate • Somersault • Spin Fast • Spiral Exit • Spiral I
424 Effects and animation presets Expressions • Buzz Words • Current Time Format • Dictionary • Frame Number • Inch Worm • Text Bounce Fill and Stroke • Chasing Strokes • Fill Color Wipe • Flicker Color - scale • Flicker Color • Flicker Green • Inflammation • Pulse Blue • Pulse Orange • Pulsing Strokes • Rotate Hue • Sliding Color Flicker • Stroke Ease Down • Wiggly Stroke Width By Line • Wiggly Stroke Width Graphical • Bars Blinky • Bars Lime • Blue Note • Cut Shapes • Exchange • Green Dots • Hazard •
425 Effects and animation presets Lights and Optical • Blue Flash • Broadway • Bubble Pulse • Emerge • Exposure • Flash • Flicker Exposure • Fluctuate • Fluorescent Light • Office Light • Overlay • Pulse Exposure • Shadows • Silhouettes • Sonar Ping • Spin Flash • Word Flash Mechanical • Algorithm Loop • Algorithm • Automation • Bad Reception • Doppler • Electro Magnet • Helicopter • Insert Text • Kinematic • Mechanical • Pistons • Rack & Pinion • Roadtrip • Scale Bounce • Screen Roll • Stairstep • Subma
426 Effects and animation presets • Underscore • Warp 9.8 Miscellaneous • Angle Fly-In • Back Flip • Blow Away • Bounce In • Bungee • Chaotic • Clay Pigeons • Dot.
427 Effects and animation presets • Data Stream • Dealer • Encryption • Fly In By Characters • Fly In By Words • Front - Back • Frontside - Backside • Ideas • Incoming • Jetstream 2 • Jetstream • Multi-Line Flip • Outgoing - Incoming • Pneumatic • Production • Stack Right Left • Weekdays • Word Processor • Zippy Organic • Autumn • Boiling • Boomerang • Bounce Diagonal • Chewing Gum • Climber • Dip-Bounce • Double-Helix • Drop Bounce • Fish Bait • Flutter • Flying Formation • Horsefly • Hummingbird • Insec
428 Effects and animation presets • Leapfrog • Loose Line • Ocean Tide • Quiver • Ripple • Rubber Floor • Rubber • Sea-Sick • Shuffle • Simmer • Slice And Dice • Sprouts • Tag Team • Wheatfield • Wind Current • Wobble Paths • 360 Loop • Antelope • Ants • Back Stage • Balance • Balloon Man • Balloon • Bouncing • Bubble Pop • Bump And Slide On • Centipede • Circuit Board • Conveyor Belt • Double Spiral • Down And Out • Downhill Slide Off • Downhill Slide On • Frenzy • Hurdles • Karate Chop Last updated 12/1
429 Effects and animation presets • Loop On And Off • Lyrical • Organism • Paper Clip • Pipes • Raquetball • Rat Nest • Reel To Reel • Rope Bridge • Serpent • Slippery Slope • Spiral Long • Spiral • Springy • Squirmy • Stairwell • Symmetry • Tchotchke • Walk Of Stars • Zig-Zag Rotation • Drip Down • Flip Up • Full Rotation • Loopy Loop • Random Rotation • Rotate Chars • Rotate Per Word • Spin In • Swirly Rotation • Whirlwind Scale • Large Scale • Let's Dance • Scale Down Word • Scale Down Last updated 1
430 Effects and animation presets • Scale Up Word • Scale Up • Wiggly Scale Wipe • Zoom Away • Zoom Forward Tracking • Contract • Decrease Tracking • Extend • Increase Tracking • Magnify • Spasm • Stretchy Transform • Separate XYZ Position See Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually.
431 Effects and animation presets • Ovals - concentric NTSC • Ovals - concentric PAL • Ovals - random NTSC • Ovals - random PAL Transitions - Movement • Card Wipe - 2D fractured • Card Wipe - 3D pixelstorm • Card Wipe - 3D swing • Fly to Inset • Slide - drop • Slide - straight • Slide - swoop • Slide - variable • Stretch & Blur • Stretch & Slide • Stretch - diagonal bottom • Stretch - diagonal top • Stretch - horizontal • Stretch - vertical • Stretch Over - horizontal • Stretch Over - vertical • Zoom - 2D
432 Effects and animation presets • Clam Shell • Clock Wipe • Corner Reveal • Grid Wipe • Iris - cross • Iris - diamond • Iris - points • Iris - round • Iris - square • Iris - star unfold • Iris - star • Iris - sunburst unfold • Iris - sunburst • Linear Wipe • Paint On - NTSC • Paint On - PAL • Radial Wipe - bottom • Radial Wipe - top • Venetian Blinds • Wedge Wipe More Help topics Working with Adobe Bridge and After Effects Plug-ins Layer switches and columns in the Timeline panel Cameras, lights, and po
433 Effects and animation presets Detail-preserving Upscale effect The Detail-preserving Upscale effect is capable of scaling up images by large amounts while preserving details in the image. The sharpness of sharp lines and curves is preserved. For example, you can scale up from SD frame sizes to HD frame sizes, or from HD frame sizes to digital cinema frame sizes. This effect is very closely related to the Preserve Details resampling option in the Image Size dialog box in Photoshop.
434 Effects and animation presets Blur & Sharpen effects • Bilateral Blur effect • Box Blur effect • Camera Lens Blur effect • Channel Blur effect • Compound Blur effect • Directional Blur effect • Fast Blur effect • Gaussian Blur effect • Lens Blur effect • Radial Blur effect • Reduce Interlace Flicker effect • Sharpen effect • Smart Blur effect • Unsharp Mask effect Third-party effects: • CC Cross Blur effect (CS6) • CC Radial Blur effect • CC Radial Fast Blur effect • CC Vector Blur effect Channel eff
435 Effects and animation presets Color Correction effects • Auto Color and Auto Contrast effects • Auto Levels effect • Black & White effect • Brightness & Contrast effect • Broadcast Colors effect • Change Color effect • Change To Color effect • Channel Mixer effect • Color Balance effect • Color Balance (HLS) effect • Color Link effect • Color Stabilizer effect • Colorama effect • Curves effect • Equalize effect • Exposure effect • Gamma/Pedestal/Gain effect • Hue/Saturation effect • Leave Color effect
436 Effects and animation presets • Bulge effect • Corner Pin effect • Displacement Map effect • Liquify effect • Magnify effect • Mesh Warp effect • Mirror effect • Offset effect • Optics Compensation effect • Polar Coordinates effect • Reshape effect • Ripple effect • Smear effect • Spherize effect • Transform effect • Turbulent Displace effect • Twirl effect • Warp effect • Warp Stabilizer effect (CS5.
437 Effects and animation presets Expression Controls effects See Expression Controls effects.
438 Effects and animation presets Keying effects • Color Difference Key effect • Color Key effect • Color Range effect • Difference Matte effect • Extract effect • Inner/Outer Key effect • Linear Color Key effect • Luma Key effect • Spill Suppressor effect • Advanced Spill Suppressor effect Third-party effects: • CC Simple Wire Removal effect • Keylight Matte effects • Matte Choker effect • Roto Brush and Refine Matte • Simple Choker effect Third-party effects: • mocha shape Noise & Grain effects • Add
439 Effects and animation presets • Bevel Edges effect • Drop Shadow effect • Radial Shadow effect Third-party effects: • CC Cylinder effect • CC Environment effect (CS6) • CC Sphere effect • CC Spotlight effect Simulation effects • Card Dance effect • Caustics effect • Foam effect • Particle Playground effect • Shatter effect • Wave World effect Third-party effects: • CC Ball Action effect • CC Bubbles effect • CC Drizzle effect • CC Hair effect • CC Mr.
440 Effects and animation presets • Mosaic effect • Motion Tile effect • Posterize effect • Roughen Edges effect • Scatter effect • Strobe Light effect • Texturize effect • Threshold effect Third-party effects: • CC Block Load effect (CS6) • CC Burn Film effect • CC Glass effect • CC Kaleida effect • CC Mr.
441 Effects and animation presets • Card Wipe effect • Gradient Wipe effect • Iris Wipe effect • Linear Wipe effect • Radial Wipe effect • Venetian Blinds effect Third-party effects: • CC Glass Wipe effect • CC Grid Wipe effect • CC Image Wipe effect • CC Jaws effect • CC Light Wipe effect • CC Line Sweep effect (CS6) • CC Radial ScaleWipe effect • CC Scale Wipe effect • CC Twister effect • CC WarpoMatic effect (CS6) Utility effects • Apply Color LUT effect • Cineon Converter effect • Color Profile Conve
442 Effects and animation presets Use the Advanced Lighting effect instead. See Advanced Lightning effect. • Path Text effect Use text layers instead. See Creating and animating text on a path. Audio effects Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips about audio effects on the ProVideo Coalition website. Backwards effect The Backwards effect reverses the audio of a layer by playing the audio from the last frame to the first frame. The frames remain in their original order in the Timeline panel.
443 Effects and animation presets Modulation Depth The amount of modulation. Voice Phase Change The modulation phase difference in degrees between each subsequent voice. Divide 360 by the number of voices to find the optimum value. Invert Phase Inverts the phase of the processed (wet) audio, emphasizing more of the high frequencies; not inverting the phase emphasizes more of the low frequencies.
444 Effects and animation presets Parametric EQ effect The Parametric EQ effect emphasizes or attenuates specific frequency ranges. Parametric EQ is useful for enhancing music, such as boosting low frequencies to bring up bass. If you have audio with an unwanted sound (such as a beep from a forklift in the background), you can isolate and cut the frequency range of the beep to attenuate the sound. Using this effect, you can enhance up to three different bands of audio.
445 Effects and animation presets Tone effect The Tone effect synthesizes simple audio tones to create sounds, such as the low rumble of a submarine, a telephone ringing in the background, sirens, or a laser blast. You can have up to five tones for each instance of the Tone effect, to create a chord. When you apply this effect to a layer with audio, the dry (original, unprocessed) audio is ignored, and only the tone plays.
446 Effects and animation presets Some blur effects have a Repeat Edge Pixels option. Select this option to make the blur algorithm operate as if the pixel values beyond the edge of the layer are the same as the values of the edge pixels. This option keeps edges sharp, preventing them from darkening and becoming more transparent—the result of being averaged with a lot of zeroes. Deselect this option to make the blur algorithm operate as if the pixel values beyond the edge of the layer are zero.
447 Effects and animation presets Camera Lens Blur effect The effect is a replacement for the Lens Blur effect. The effect has a larger blur radius (500), and is much faster than the Lens Blur effect. The Camera Lens Blur effect also does not disable Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously multiprocessing, as its predecessor did. For details, tutorials, and resources about the Camera Lens Blur effect, camera depth-of-field settings, and camera commands, see this article on the Adobe website.
448 Effects and animation presets If the Camera Lens Blur effect is added to an After Effects CS5.5 and later project, and then saved as an After Effects CS5 project (see Save and back up projects in After Effects CS5.5 and later .), a warning appears stating that the effect is missing. Projects created in After Effects CS5 or earlier using the Lens Blur effect retains that effect when opened in After Effects CS5.5 and later. However, you cannot directly apply the Lens Blur effect in After Effects CS5.
449 Effects and animation presets Direction The direction of the blur. The blur is applied equally on either side of the center of a pixel; therefore, a setting of 180° and a setting of 0° produce the same results. Fast Blur effect When layer quality is set to Best, Fast Blur is a close approximation of Gaussian Blur. Stu Maschwitz compares the Box Blur, Fast Blur, and Gaussian Blur effects in a post on his ProLost blog. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.
450 Effects and animation presets Depth Map Layer The control layer from which the depth map is taken. Depth Map Channel The channel of the control layer to use as the depth map. Pixels with low values correspond to low depth (near the camera); pixels with high values correspond to high depth (far from the camera). Select Invert Depth Map to invert this relationship. Blur Focal Distance Depth of the focal plane, where pixels are in focus. Iris Shape The polygon to use as the iris shape.
451 Effects and animation presets Type Spin blurs in arcs around the Center point, as if the camera were rotating; Amount specifies degrees of rotation. Zoom blurs radially outward from the center point; Amount specifies the length of the blur. Reduce Interlace Flicker effect The Reduce Interlace Flicker effect reduces high vertical frequencies to make images more suitable for use in an interlaced medium (such as NTSC video). For example, images with thin horizontal lines can flicker when broadcast.
452 Effects and animation presets Unsharp Mask effect The Unsharp Mask effect increases the contrast between colors that define an edge. Chris and Trish Meyer provide instructions on the ProVideo Coalition website for using the Unsharp Mask effect with the CC Composite effect to sharpen an image without creating undesired color halo artifacts. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Radius The distance from the edge at which pixels are adjusted for contrast.
453 Effects and animation presets Use the Color Difference Key effect 1 Select the layer that you want to make partially transparent, and choose Effect > Keying > Color Difference Key. Note: To use any of the eyedroppers in the Layer panel, choose Color Difference Key from the View menu in the Layer panel. 2 In the Effect Controls panel, choose Matte Corrected from the View menu.
454 Effects and animation presets To remove traces of reflected key color from the image, apply Spill Suppressor using Better For Color Accuracy. If the image still has a lot of color, apply the Simple Choker or Matte Choker effect. Color Key effect Note: Starting with the October 2013 release of After Effects CC, the Color Key effect has been moved to the Obsolete effects category. Use other effects such as the Keylight effect instead.
455 Effects and animation presets Use the Color Range effect 1 Select the layer that you want to make partially transparent, and choose Effect > Keying > Color Range. 2 Choose Lab, YUV, or RGB from the Color Space menu. If you have trouble isolating the subject using one color space, try using a different one. 3 Select the Key Color eyedropper, and then click in the matte thumbnail to select the area that corresponds to a color in the Composition panel you want to make transparent.
456 Effects and animation presets A Original image B Background image C New background image D Final composite image Use the Difference Matte effect 1 Select a motion footage layer as the source layer. 2 In the source layer, find a frame that consists only of background, and save the background frame as an image file. (See Render and export a single frame of a composition.) 3 Import the image file into After Effects, and add it to the composition. The imported image becomes the difference layer.
457 Effects and animation presets 12 Before closing the Effect Controls panel, make sure to select Final Output from the View menu to ensure that After Effects renders the transparency. Extract effect The Extract effect creates transparency by keying out a specified brightness range, based on a histogram of a specified channel. It’s best used to create transparency in an image shot against a black or white background or against a background that is dark or bright but consists of more than one color.
458 Effects and animation presets Use the Inner/Outer Key effect To use the Inner/Outer key, create a mask to define the inside and outside edge of the object you want to isolate. The mask can be fairly rough—it doesn’t need to fit exactly around the edges of the object. In addition to masking a soft-edged object from its background, Inner/Outer Key modifies the colors around the border to remove contaminating background colors.
459 Effects and animation presets Linear keys create a range of transparency across an image. A linear key compares each pixel in the image to the key color you specify. If the color of a pixel closely matches the key color, it becomes completely transparent. Pixels that don’t match as well are made less transparent, and pixels that don’t match at all remain opaque. The range of transparency values, therefore, forms a linear progression.
460 Effects and animation presets 6 Adjust matching tolerance in one of the following ways: • Select the Plus (+) or the Minus (-) eyedropper, and then click a color in the left thumbnail image. The Plus eyedropper adds the specified color to the key color range, increasing the matching tolerance and the level of transparency. The Minus eyedropper subtracts the specified color from the key color range, decreasing the matching tolerance and the level of transparency. • Drag the matching tolerance slider.
461 Effects and animation presets Key out a luminance value with the Luma Key effect 1 Select the layer that you want to make partially transparent, and choose Effect > Keying > Luma Key. 2 Select a Key Type to specify the range to be keyed out. 3 Drag the Threshold slider in the Effect Controls panel to set the luminance value you want the matte to be based on. 4 Drag the Tolerance slider to specify the range of values to be keyed out. Lower values key out a smaller range of values near the threshold.
462 Effects and animation presets 2 Choose the color you want to suppress in one of the following ways: • If you already keyed out the color with a key in the Effect Controls panel, click the Color To Suppress eyedropper, and then click the screen color in the Key Color swatch for the key. • In Spill Suppressor, click the Key Color swatch and choose a color from the color wheel. Note: To use the eyedropper in the Layer panel, choose Spill Suppressor from the View menu in the Layer panel.
463 Effects and animation presets Note: The Key Color property is already linked with an expression to the Keylight effect's Screen Colour property, so you don't need to change it unless you want to use a different color for the despill process. To use a different color for the despill process, just disable or remove the Keylight expression. See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects.
464 Effects and animation presets 2 Use the Keylight effect's Screen Colour eyedropper to sample the key color from the layer in the Composition panel. Adjust other Keylight effect settings as you normally would to get the best results. 3 Turn on the effect switch for the Advanced Spill Suppressor effect to remove color spill from the scene, if required.
465 Effects and animation presets • CC Light Wipe effect • CC Line Sweep effect (CS6 or later) • CC Radial ScaleWipe effect • CC Scale Wipe effect • CC Twister effect • CC WarpoMatic effect (CS6 or later) See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects. Online resources about transitions and Transition effects For an example of how to use animation presets to create custom transitions, see this entry in Stu Maschwitz’s ProLost blog.
466 Effects and animation presets Card Wipe effect Note: For information on properties shared by the Card Wipe and Card Dance effects, see Common Lighting controls and Material controls This effect simulates a group of cards displaying a picture and then flipping to display another picture. Card Wipe provides control over the number of rows and columns of cards, the flip direction, and the transition direction (including the ability to use a gradient to determine flip order).
467 Effects and animation presets Timing Randomness Randomizes the timing of the transition. If this control is set to 0, the cards flip in order. The higher the value, the more random the order in which the cards flip. Camera System Whether to use the effect’s Camera Position properties, the effect’s Corner Pins properties, or the default composition camera and light positions to render 3D images of the cards.
468 Effects and animation presets Gradient Wipe effect The Gradient Wipe effect causes pixels in the layer to become transparent based on the luminance values of corresponding pixels in another layer, called the gradient layer. Dark pixels in the gradient layer cause the corresponding pixels to become transparent at a lower Transition Completion value.
469 Effects and animation presets Linear Wipe effect The Linear Wipe effect performs a simple linear wipe of a layer in a specified direction. At Draft quality, the edge of the wipe isn’t anti-aliased; at Best quality, the edge of the wipe is anti-aliased and the feather is smooth. Wipe Angle The direction that the wipe travels. For example, at 90° the wipe travels from left to right. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. In After Effects CS6 or later, this effect works in 32-bit color.
470 Effects and animation presets Venetian Blinds effect The Venetian Blinds effect reveals an underlying layer using strips of specified direction and width. At Draft quality, the strips are animated with pixel precision; at Best quality, the strips are animated with subpixel precision. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
471 Effects and animation presets Work with Grain effects Almost every digital image captured from the real world contains grain or visual noise caused by the recording, encoding, scanning, or reproduction processes and by the equipment used to create the image.
472 Effects and animation presets 3 Adjust the controls for the effect in the Effect Controls panel. The preview region in the Composition panel reflects any changes you make. 4 Choose Final Output from the Viewing Mode control. Apply a grain effect to a selected area The Blend With Original controls group lets you precisely apply a grain effect to a particular area of an image by masking and matting the desired area.
473 Effects and animation presets • Click the eyedropper and click a color anywhere on the screen. 3 Do one of the following: • To prevent the grain effect from affecting the selected color, make sure that the Invert Match control is deselected. • To restrict the grain effect to the selected color, leaving the rest of the image unaffected, select Invert Match.
474 Effects and animation presets Because adding or removing grain can affect sharpness of detail, you may want to preview an area of fine detail, such as a human face or some text. When you remove grain with the Remove Grain effect, a best practice is to preview an area where the grain is most clearly visible or most objectionable, such as a large expanse of solid color.
475 Effects and animation presets The number of samples in automatic mode is high to ensure that the algorithm has enough good noise data, even if finding good samples in a particular image is difficult. In addition, automatic mode may override the number of samples you’ve set if the effect can’t find enough good samples.
476 Effects and animation presets Change the noise sample box color You can set the viewing mode for the Remove Grain or Match Grain effect to Noise Samples to see the areas sampled by the effect. Sampled areas are automatically framed with a white outline. If you prefer, you can change the color of these noise sample boxes. ❖ Next to the Sample Box Color control in the Sampling controls group, do one of the following: • Click the color swatch, and select a color in the Color Picker.
477 Effects and animation presets • To use interpolation to create smooth transitions between the generated noise frames, select Animate Smoothly. This control matters only if Animation Speed is less than 1. • To change the appearance of the noise between layers on the same frame, adjust the Random Seed value. Each Random Seed value represents one of 100 possible variations in the appearance; changing the value doesn’t make the results more or less random.
478 Effects and animation presets The distribution of the added noise over the color channels does affect the overall color of the resulting image. With a dark background, the noise tends to add to the image visually, so a red tint or more noise in the red channel gives a reddish hue to the image. With a bright background, the noise tends to subtract from the image visually, so a red tint or more noise in the red channel gives a cyan color.
479 Effects and animation presets Aspect Ratio Controls the ratio of the width of the generated grain over a constant height of 1; this setting is useful for emulating the effect of anamorphic lenses or for aesthetic effects. A value higher than 1 stretches the grain horizontally; values smaller than 1 squash it horizontally. Dust & Scratches effect The Dust & Scratches effect reduces noise and defects by changing dissimilar pixels within a specified radius to be more like their neighboring pixels.
480 Effects and animation presets Note: Because the controls for the two effects are nearly identical, you can use most instructions and tutorials created for the Fractal Noise effect to instead guide your use of the Turbulent Noise effect. (See Turbulent Noise effect.) Controls Fractal Type The fractal noise is created by generating a grid of random numbers for each noise layer. The Complexity setting specifies the number of noise layers.
481 Effects and animation presets appearance at 2 revolutions, and so on. To return the Evolution setting to its original state (for example, to create a seamless loop), use the Cycle Evolution option. You can specify how much the noise evolves over a period of time by animating Evolution. The more revolutions within a given amount of time, the more rapidly the noise changes. Large changes in the Evolution value over a short period of time may result in flashing.
482 Effects and animation presets The evolution completes the number of revolutions you specify for Cycle in the amount of time determined by the distance between Evolution keyframes. Determine the Cycle value by considering how much of this cycle you need to render before it repeats. Choose the shortest length appropriate for your project to save rendering time. Initially, the last frame of a cycle is identical to the first frame.
483 Effects and animation presets Match noise or grain between images 1 Make sure that the source and the destination layers are in the same composition. 2 Select the destination layer to which you want to add grain. 3 Choose Effect > Noise & Grain > Match Grain. 4 Choose a layer from the Noise Source Layer control in the Effect Controls panel to specify the source layer from which you want to sample the grain. (The Noise Source Layer control lists only layers that are in the Timeline panel.
484 Effects and animation presets 2 In the Effect Controls panel, adjust the Compensate For Existing Noise value under the Match Grain effect as needed. The noise in the source layer and the noise in the destination layer are sampled, and their difference is calculated, so that only enough noise to match the destination layer to the source layer is applied to the destination.
485 Effects and animation presets Noise Alpha effect The Noise Alpha effect adds noise to the alpha channel. This effect works with 8-bpc color. Noise The type of noise. Unique Random creates equal amounts of black and white noise. Squared Random creates high-contrast noise. Uniform Animation creates animated noise, and Squared Animation creates animated highcontrast noise. Amount The magnitude of the noise.
486 Effects and animation presets Noise The type of noise. Uniform produces uniform noise. Squared creates high-contrast noise. Grain produces grainlike noise similar to film grain. Hue The amount of noise added to hue values. Lightness The amount of noise added to lightness values. Saturation The amount of noise added to saturation values. Grain Size This control is active only for the Grain type of noise. Noise Phase (Noise HLS only) An input value to the random number generator for the noise.
487 Effects and animation presets Remove noise or grain from an image 1 Select the layer, and choose Effect > Noise & Grain > Remove Grain. 2 Adjust any of the following using the Noise Reduction Settings controls group: • To adjust the overall amount of noise in the image, adjust the Noise Reduction value. • To adjust the amount of noise on each channel individually, adjust the Red, Green, and Blue Noise Reduction values in the Channel Noise Reduction controls.
488 Effects and animation presets Clean Solid Areas Controls the extent to which adjacent pixels with low variations in value are smoothed out by the noise reduction process. This setting is helpful for large areas of solid color that need to be as clean as possible. Settings that are too high can smooth out nearly solid areas of the image, resulting in an artificial appearance. 6 Adjust the Unsharp Mask controls to return subtle edge detail that the degraining removed.
489 Effects and animation presets Turbulent Noise effect The Turbulent Noise effect uses Perlin noise to create grayscale noise that you can use for organic-looking backgrounds, displacement maps, and textures, or to simulate things like clouds, fire, lava, steam, flowing water, or vapor. The Turbulent Noise effect is essentially a modern, higher-performance implementation of the Fractal Noise effect.
490 Effects and animation presets Note: Increasing Complexity results in longer rendering times. If appropriate, try reducing the Size rather than increasing Complexity to achieve similar results and avoid longer rendering. A trick to increase apparent complexity without increasing rendering time is to use a negative or very high Contrast or Brightness setting and choose Wrap Back for Overflow. Sub Settings The noise is generated by combining layers of noise.
491 Effects and animation presets Channel effects Third-party effects in this category included with After Effects: • CC Composite effect See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects. Additional resources about Channel effects Satya Meka provides the Separate RGB effect plug-in on the After Effects Scripts website. This effect—which was written with Pixel Bender—offsets, scales, and rotates each color channel of an image separately.
492 Effects and animation presets John Dickinson explains the use of the Blend effect in an entry in the A-Z series on the Motionworks website. Blend With Layer The layer to blend with (the secondary or control layer). Note: To use a layer as a control layer for the Blend effect but not show the layer in the rest of the composition, deselect the control Video switch for the control layer. (See Layer switches and columns in the Timeline panel.
493 Effects and animation presets Preserve Transparency Ensures that the alpha channel of the original layer isn’t modified. Channel Combiner effect The Channel Combiner effect extracts, displays, and adjusts channel values for a layer. Note: You can use this effect to view any channel as a grayscale image by choosing the channel from the From menu and choosing Lightness Only from the To menu. This effect works with 8-bpc color.
494 Effects and animation presets Scale The maximum and minimum values are remapped to 255 and 0, and intermediate values are stretched or compressed to fit within this range. Stretch Second Source To Fit Scales the second layer to match the size (width and height) of the current layer. If this option is deselected, the second layer is placed at the current size of its source, aligned with the upper left corner of the source layer. Blend With Original The transparency of the effect.
495 Effects and animation presets Minimum operation and then the Maximum operation. Maximum Then Minimum performs the Maximum operation and then the Minimum operation. Direction The axis along which to scan for values. Horizontal & Vertical scans all directions. Remove Color Matting effect The Remove Color Matting effect removes color fringes (halos) from layers with premultiplied color channels.
496 Effects and animation presets Sometimes, it’s easier and faster to create traveling mattes by using a track matte instead of using the Set Matte effect. However, using the Set Matte effect provides some advantages over defining a layer as a track matte layer. The layer used as the matte with the Set Matte effect can be anywhere in the layer stacking order, unlike a track matte layer, which must be directly above the matted layer in the layer stacking order.
497 Effects and animation presets More Help topics Blending modes and layer styles Distort effects You can use each of the Distort effects to distort (morph) an image.
498 Effects and animation presets Bezier Warp effect The Bezier Warp effect shapes an image using a closed Bezier curve along the boundary of a layer. The curve consists of four segments. Each segment has three points (a vertex and two tangents). Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial on his Video Copilot website that demonstrates the use of the Bezier Warp effect. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. The positions of the vertices and tangents determine the size and shape of a curved segment.
499 Effects and animation presets Bulge Height The apparent depth of the bulge. Positive values push the bulge toward the viewer. Negative values pull the bulge away from the viewer. Taper Radius The shallowness of the sides of the bulge. A taper radius of 0 produces a steep, pronounced bulge. Antialiasing The amount of edge smoothing (blending of colors) at the boundaries of the bulge. Anti-aliasing is applied only when the layer quality is set to Best.
500 Effects and animation presets The displacement is determined from the color values of the displacement map. The color values range from 0 to 255. Each value is converted into a scale ranging from -1 to 1. The displacement amount is calculated by multiplying the converted value by the maximum displacement amount you specify. A color value of 0 produces maximum negative displacement (–1 * maximum displacement). A color value of 255 produces maximum positive displacement.
501 Effects and animation presets The Liquify effect can extend beyond the boundaries of the target layer. This extension is useful when the target layer is smaller than the composition. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Andrew Kramer provides a video tutorial on his Video Copilot websitethat demonstrates the use of the Liquify effect to distort (morph) a human face into the face of a demon.
502 Effects and animation presets Moves pixels perpendicular to the stroke direction. Reflection Copies pixels to the brush area. Clone Copies the distortions from around a source location to the current mouse location. Set the source location by Altclicking (Windows) or Option-clicking (Mac OS) the source point. Reconstruction Reverses distortions or applies them in different ways. Distort an image with the Liquify effect 1 Select the layer, and choose Effect > Distort > Liquify.
503 Effects and animation presets Shape The shape of the magnified area. Center The center point of the magnified area. Magnification Percentage by which to scale the magnified area. Link How the Magnification setting affects the size and edge feathering of the magnified area. Setting Link to any value other than None disables the Resize Layer option. None The size and edge feathering of the magnified area don’t depend on the Magnification setting.
504 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. To select multiple vertices, Shift-click the vertices. Rows, Columns Specify up to 31 patches vertically (Rows) or horizontally (Columns). For broader distortion, use fewer patches. For finer control, use more. Drag the vertices and tangents to change the grid shape. The image follows the grid shape according to the elasticity setting and the boundary created by the adjacent patch.
505 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Optics Compensation effect Use the Optics Compensation effect to add or remove camera lens distortion. Elements composited with mismatched lens distortion cause anomalies in the animation. For example, tracked objects in a distorted scene don’t match the scene area because linear objects don’t follow the distortion of the scene. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color.
506 Effects and animation presets Polar Coordinates effect The Polar Coordinates effect distorts a layer by transposing each pixel in the (x,y) coordinate system of the layer to the corresponding position in the polar coordinate system, or the reverse. This effect produces unusual and surprising distortions that can vary greatly depending on the image and the controls you select.
507 Effects and animation presets By default, After Effects assigns the masks a function (source, destination, or boundary) based on the order in which you create or import them. You can also specify different masks. Use a closed path for each mask. All three masks must be on the layer to which you apply the Reshape effect, although you can copy masks from another layer. Source Mask The mask that contains the image area you want to reshape.
508 Effects and animation presets points along the masks. (If the arc lengths of the curves between correspondence points are too different, twisting may result.) Interpolation Method Specifies how After Effects determines the distortion of each video or animation frame in the interval between keyframes or if no keyframes exist. Discrete Requires no keyframes because it calculates the distortion at each frame. Discrete produces the most accurate results but requires more rendering time.
509 Effects and animation presets Animate ripples at a constant speed using the Wave Speed control. This control doesn’t require keyframes for animation. Animate ripples at varying speeds by creating keyframes for the Ripple Phase control. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Radius Controls the distance the ripples travel from the center point. The Radius value is a percentage of the image size.
510 Effects and animation presets Processing can take up to several minutes with certain settings. Computation time increases as the source mask gets closer to the boundary mask. Processing is interrupted when you click a control. Source Mask Specifies a mask as the source mask. By default, After Effects selects the second mask you create or import for the layer as the source mask. Note: You must specify both a boundary mask and a source mask to create a distortion.
511 Effects and animation presets Spherize effect The Spherize effect distorts a layer by wrapping a region of the image onto a sphere. The quality setting of the layer influences the Spherize effect. Best quality samples the displaced pixels to subpixel precision; Draft quality samples to the nearest whole pixel. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Transform effect The Transform effect applies two-dimensional geometric transformations to a layer.
512 Effects and animation presets Note: Although the Evolution value is set in units called revolutions, it’s important to realize that these revolutions are progressive. The Evolution state continues to progress infinitely at each new value. Use the Cycle Evolution option to return the Evolution setting to its original state at each revolution. Evolution Options Evolution Options provide controls that render the effect for one short cycle and then loop it for the duration of the layer.
513 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Angle How far to twirl the image. Positive angles twirl the image clockwise; negative angles twirl it counterclockwise. For a whirlpool result, animate the angle. Twirl Radius How far the twirl extends from the twirl center. This value is a percentage of width or height of the layer, whichever is greater. A value of 50, for example, produces a twirl that extends to the edges of the layer.
514 Effects and animation presets Phase The point along the waveform at which a wave cycle begins. For example, 0° starts the wave at the midpoint of its downward slope, and 90° starts it at the lowest point in the trough. Antialiasing Sets the amount of anti-aliasing, or edge smoothing, to perform on the image. In many cases, lower settings produce satisfactory results; a high setting can greatly increase rendering time. Anti-aliasing is performed only if the layer quality setting is Best.
515 Effects and animation presets To use the Cineon Converter effect, import a Cineon file and leave it in its default state; After Effects either condenses the colors to 8 bpc or expands them to 16 bpc or 32 bpc, depending on the mode you work in. You can then apply the Cineon Converter effect to the file and precisely adjust the colors while interactively viewing the results in the Composition panel.
516 Effects and animation presets To convert the color profile of the layer, select a color profile from the Input Profile menu. Select Project Working Space to use the profile specified in the project settings (File > Project Settings). To linearize the input profile, select the Linearize Input Profile option. Then select an output profile from the Output Profile menu. To linearize the output profile, select the Linearize Output Profile. In the Intent menu, select a rendering intent.
517 Effects and animation presets Grow Bounds effect The Grow Bounds effect increases the layer size for the effect that directly follows it. This effect is most useful with layers that have Collapse Transformations / Continuously Rasterize enabled, because they render using a buffer that’s the size of the composition.
518 Effects and animation presets 5 Apply whatever low-dynamic-range effects you choose to the layer. 6 Apply another instance of the HDR Compander effect to the layer. Make sure that the second instance of HDR Compander is ordered after (below) any 8-bpc or 16-bpc effects you’ve applied. 7 Select Expand Range for Mode for the second instance of the HDR Compander effect. 8 Set Gain and Gamma to the same values as set in the first instance of the HDR Compander effect.
519 Effects and animation presets The Auto Levels effect uses many of the same controls as the Auto Color and Auto Contrast effects. A quick way to remove (or at least reduce) the flicker caused by fluctuations in exposure and color from one frame to the next is to apply the Auto Color effect. This is useful, for example, in reducing the flicker of old film or for correcting for the flickering color of a light source. These effects work with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
520 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Decrease or increase the property value for each color component to convert that color channel to a darker or lighter shade of gray. To tint the image with a color, select Tint and click the color swatch or eyedropper to specify a color. The Black & White effect is based on the Black & White adjustment layer type in Photoshop.
521 Effects and animation presets Change Color effect The Change Color effect adjusts the hue, lightness, and saturation of a range of colors. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. View Corrected Layer shows the results of the Change Color effect. Color Correction Mask shows a grayscale matte that indicates the areas of the layer that will be changed. White areas in the color correction mask are changed the most, and dark areas are changed the least.
522 Effects and animation presets To The color to change matched pixels to. Tip: To animate a color change, set keyframes or expressions for the To color. Change Which channels the effect affects. Change By How to change colors. Setting To Color performs a direct change of affected pixels to the target color.
523 Effects and animation presets Color Balance (HLS) effect The Color Balance (HLS) effect alters the hue, lightness, and saturation of an image. This effect is intended only to provide compatibility with projects created in earlier versions of After Effects that use the Color Balance (HLS) effect. For new projects, use the Hue/Saturation effect, which operates the same as the Hue/Saturation command in Adobe Photoshop. You can convert a movie to grayscale by setting the Saturation to –100.
524 Effects and animation presets Levels Color is stabilized using two sample points (Black Point and White Point). Curves Color is stabilized using all three sample points (Black Point, White Point, and Mid Point). Black Point Place this point on a dark area to stabilize. Mid Point Place this point on a midtone area to stabilize. White Point Place this point on a bright area to stabilize. Sample Size Radius, in pixels, of sampled areas.
525 Effects and animation presets Output Cycle controls Use Preset Palette Presets for the Output Cycle. The top palettes are designed for quick color correction and adjustment tasks. The bottom choices offer a variety of built-in color palettes for creative results. Output Cycle Customize the output color palette by altering the colors and locations of the triangles on the Output Cycle wheel. The triangles specify the location on the color wheel where a specific color occurs.
526 Effects and animation presets Matching Tolerance How far a color can be from Matching Color and still be affected by the Colorama effect. When Matching Tolerance is 0, the Colorama effect only affects the exact color selected for Matching Color. When Matching Tolerance is 1, all colors are matched; this value essentially turns off Matching Mode. Matching Softness How smoothly the matched pixels blend into the rest of the image.
527 Effects and animation presets The curve type is determined by the last tool used to modify it. You can save arbitrary map curves modified by the Pencil tool as .amp (Photoshop lookup) files. You can save curves modified by the Bezier tool as .acv (Photoshop spline) files. Equalize effect The Equalize effect alters the pixel values of an image to produce a more consistent brightness or color component distribution. The effect works similarly to the Equalize command in Adobe Photoshop.
528 Effects and animation presets The Black Stretch control remaps the low pixel values of all channels. Large Black Stretch values brighten dark areas. Gamma specifies an exponent describing the shape of the intermediate curve. The Pedestal and Gain controls specify the lowest and highest attainable output value for a channel. This effect works with 8-bpc color. Hue/Saturation effect The Hue/Saturation effect adjusts the hue, saturation, and lightness of individual color components in an image.
529 Effects and animation presets 4 Drag the Colorize Saturation and Colorize Lightness sliders. Modify the range of Hue/Saturation effect adjustments 1 From the Channel Control menu, choose an individual color. (By default, the range of color selected when you choose a color component is 30° wide, with 30° of fall-off on either side. Setting the fall-off too low can produce dithering in the image.
530 Effects and animation presets By choosing Alpha from the Channel menu, you can use the Levels effect to convert completely opaque or completely transparent areas of a matte to be semitransparent, or to convert semitransparent areas to be completely opaque or completely transparent. Because transparency is based on the monochrome alpha channel, the controls for this effect refer to complete transparency as black and complete opacity as white.
531 Effects and animation presets Photo Filter effect The Photo Filter effect mimics the technique of putting a colored filter in front of the camera lens to adjust the color balance and color temperature of the light transmitted through the lens and exposing the film. You can choose a color preset to apply a hue adjustment to an image, or you can specify a custom color using the color picker or the eyedropper.
532 Effects and animation presets You can import and apply an arbitrary map file with Options in the Effect Controls panel. When loaded into After Effects, the specified arbitrary map is applied to the layer or to one or more channels of the layer, depending on how it was created. If you don’t select an arbitrary map, After Effects applies the default map (linear distribution of brightness) to the layer. Although you can’t import .
533 Effects and animation presets Shadow/Highlight effect The Shadow/Highlight effect brightens shadowed subjects in an image and reduces the highlights in an image. This effect doesn’t darken or lighten an entire image; it adjusts the shadows and highlights independently, based on the surrounding pixels. You can also adjust the overall contrast of an image. The default settings are for fixing images with backlighting problems. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
534 Effects and animation presets more significant the correction that you make to the shadows and highlights, the greater the range of color correction available. Note: If you want to change the color over the whole image, use the Hue/Saturation effect after applying the Shadow/Highlight effect. Midtone Contrast The amount of contrast that the effect applies to the midtones. Higher values increase the contrast in the midtones alone, while concurrently darkening the shadows and lightening the highlights.
535 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. To affect less-saturated colors more than more saturated colors and protect skin tones, modify the Vibrance property. To adjust the saturation of all colors equally, modify the Saturation property. The Vibrance effect is based on the Vibrance adjustment layer type in Photoshop.
536 Effects and animation presets Light Intensity Specifies the power of the light. The higher the value, the brighter the layer. Other lighting settings affect the overall light intensity as well. Light Color Specifies the color of light. Light Position Specifies the position of the light in x,y space. To position the light interactively, Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) the effect point for the light. Light Depth Specifies the position of the light in z space.
537 Effects and animation presets Apply Card Dance to the layer to use for the front of the cards. To set the view, use the rotation or perspective controls, or match the perspective of the effect in any scene by corner-pinning. For example, select a vertical grayscale gradient layer (black on top, white on bottom) from the Gradient Layer 1 menu, and then select Intensity 1 from the X Rotation Source menu. Card Dance uses the intensity of the gradient to animate the x-axis rotation of the cards.
538 Effects and animation presets Note: Rows and columns are always evenly distributed across a layer, so unusually shaped rectangular tiles don’t appear along the edges of a layer—unless you use an alpha channel. Back Layer The layer that appears in segments on the backs of the cards. You can use any layer in the composition; its Video switch can even be turned off. If the layer has effects or masks, precompose the layer first. Gradient Layer 1 The first control layer to use to make the cards dance.
539 Effects and animation presets Focal Length Overrides the other settings if the results you’ve obtained aren’t what you need. If you set the Focal Length to something that doesn’t correspond to what the focal length would be if the pins were actually in that configuration, the image may look unusual (strangely sheared, for example). But if you know the focal length that you are trying to match, manually setting Focal Length is the easiest way to get correct results.
540 Effects and animation presets a certain way. Reflected abuts each edge of a bottom layer tile to a mirrored copy of the tile. This option can eliminate a hard edge where the two tiles meet. If Layer Size Differs Specifies how to handle the bottom layer when it is smaller than the composition. Blur Specifies the amount of blur applied to the bottom layer. To make the bottom sharp, set this control to 0. Higher values make the bottom appear increasingly blurry, especially where the water is deeper.
541 Effects and animation presets Foam effect This effect generates bubbles that flow, cling, and pop. Use the controls for the effect to adjust attributes for the bubbles such as stickiness, viscosity, life span, and bubble strength. You can control exactly how the foam particles interact with each other and with their environment, and specify a separate layer to act as a map, controlling precisely where the foam flows. For example, you can have particles flow around a logo or fill a logo with bubbles.
542 Effects and animation presets upper-left corner of the screen if you don’t select Zoom Producer Point. If you select Zoom Producer Point, the point moves with the universe as it is zoomed out, and the point ends up closer to the center of the screen. Production Rate Determines the rate at which bubbles are generated. This control does not affect the number of bubbles per frame. Rather, the rate is the average number of bubbles generated every 30th of a second. Higher numbers yield more bubbles.
543 Effects and animation presets Pop Velocity Controls how popping bubbles affect each other. When a bubble pops, it affects other bubbles around it by leaving a hole that other bubbles can fill, pushing other bubbles away, or popping other bubbles. The higher the value, the more popping bubbles affect one another. Viscosity Specifies the rate at which bubbles decelerate after being released from the producer point, and controls the speed of the flow of the bubbles.
544 Effects and animation presets Bubble Velocity faces the bubble in the direction of its motion. This setting is the most useful for flocking-style animations. Environment Map Specifies the layer that is reflected in the bubbles. If you want to use this layer only for the reflection, turn off the video switch for a layer. Reflection Strength Controls how much of the selected Environment Map is reflected in the bubbles. The higher the value, the more the reflection obscures the original bubble texture.
545 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc color. Start by creating a stream or plane of particles, or by exploding an existing layer into particles. Once you have a layer of particles, you can control their properties, such as speed, size, and color. You can replace the default dot particles with images from an existing layer to create, for example, an entire snowstorm from a single snowflake layer. You can also use text characters as particles.
546 Effects and animation presets Particle content and particle generators Particle Playground can generate three kinds of particles: dots, a layer, or text characters. You can specify only one kind of particle per particle generator. Create particles by using the Cannon, the Grid, the Layer Exploder, and the Particle Exploder. The Grid creates particles in an organized grid format with straight rows and columns. The exploders create particles randomly, like firecracker sparks.
547 Effects and animation presets Note: By default, the Cannon is on and the Grid is off. If you are using the Grid and want to stop the Cannon from generating particles, turn off the Cannon by setting its Particles Per Second value to 0. Position Specifies the (x,y) coordinates of the grid center. When a grid particle is created, it is centered over its grid intersection, regardless of whether it is a dot, a layer, or a text character.
548 Effects and animation presets Affects Specifies which particles the Layer Exploder and Particle Exploder affect. Layer Map controls By default, the Cannon, Grid, Layer Exploder, and Particle Exploder create dot particles. To replace the dots with a layer in the composition, use the Layer Map. For example, if you use a movie of a single bird flapping its wings as a particle source layer, After Effects replaces all dots with an instance of the bird movie, creating a flock of birds.
549 Effects and animation presets Replace default Cannon particles with text You can use text characters as particles. For example, you can type a message that the Cannon shoots across the frame. You can also change the attributes of any three sets of characters. For example, you can make some of the characters larger or brighter than others. 1 In the Effect Controls panel, click Options. 2 Click Edit Cannon Text.
550 Effects and animation presets Note: The string matching is case-sensitive, and it does include punctuation marks and other symbols. As with all text features, consider using this feature with symbol fonts, like wingdings. Changing a particle over its lifespan Some controls affect the particle from birth: Cannon, Grid, Layer Exploder, and Particle Exploder.
551 Effects and animation presets Force Random Spread Specifies a range of randomness for the Force. At zero, all particles fall at the same rate. At a higher value, particles fall at slightly different rates. Although pure gravity accelerates all objects equally, increasing the Force Random Spread value can produce more realistic results with subjects such as leaves falling through air, where enough air resistance exists to vary the rates of descent of the leaves.
552 Effects and animation presets Age Feather Specifies the age range in seconds within which the Older/Younger Than value is feathered, or softened. Feathering creates a gradual, rather than abrupt, change. For example, if you set Older/Younger Than to 10 and Age Feather to 4, about 20% of particles start changing when they’re 8 seconds old, 50% change when they’re 10 seconds old (the Older/Younger Than value), and the remainder change by the time they’re 12 seconds old.
553 Effects and animation presets Note: Because particle properties use many kinds of units, such as pixels, degrees, and seconds, you may want to compress or expand the range of values from the layer map so that all the resulting values are usable in the measurement system of a specific particle property. First, use the Min and Max controls, which define the range of values to use from the layer map.
554 Effects and animation presets If you are using a layer map for Gradient Force where flat areas equal no adjustment, and you are using the Min and Max controls (not the Min or Max operators) to set the range of values for Gradient Force, set them to positive and negative values of the same number (for example, –30 and +30). This ensures that the middle of the range remains centered at zero. X Force Copies the coercion along the x axis of motion. Positive values push a particle to the right.
555 Effects and animation presets • You use a layer map to affect the Scale property of particles and find that the smallest particles aren’t small enough while the largest resulting particles are too large. In this case, the entire output range needs to be shifted down; lower both the Min and Max values. • You have a layer map that modifies particles in the opposite direction from the one you want. Swap the Min and Max values, which has the same result as inverting the layer map.
556 Effects and animation presets Max Compares the brightness value of the layer map to the value of the particle property and uses the higher value. To amplify existing values of properties, try applying the Add operator with positive values or the Multiply operator with values above 1.0. To attenuate (tone down) property value changes, try applying the Multiply operator using values in the range 0.0–1.0.
557 Effects and animation presets To specify field rendering with a Particle Playground effect, select Enable Field Rendering in the Particle Playground options dialog box. Then Particle Playground calculates the simulation at double the frame rate of the current composition, which is what field rendering requires. Shatter effect Note: For information on properties shared by several of the Simulation effects, see Common Lighting controls and Material controls. The Shatter effect explodes images.
558 Effects and animation presets Wireframe Front View Displays the layer from a full-screen, straight-on camera angle with no perspective. Use this view to adjust effect points and other parameters that are hard to see from an angle. In addition, the outlines of the shatter map are visible so you can precisely position, rotate, and scale the shatter pattern. It’s handy to toggle between this view and the perspective view you use for the scene.
559 Effects and animation presets Depth Specifies the current center point in z space, or how far in front of or behind the layer the blast point is. Adjust Depth to determine how much of the blast radius is applied to the layer. The blast radius defines a sphere, and the layer is basically a plane; therefore, only a circular slice of the sphere intersects the plane. The farther away the layer is from the center of the blast, the smaller the circular slice.
560 Effects and animation presets Note: Some shapes have a balance point that falls outside the actual area of the shape—for example, the letters C and U. When designing a gradient layer in such a situation, avoid using grayscale versions of letters. Instead, use larger shapes that cover the balance point of each character. Invert Gradient Inverts the pixel values in the gradient. White becomes black, and black becomes white.
561 Effects and animation presets Front Mode, Side Mode, Back Mode Determine the appearance of the front, sides, and back of the pieces. Color applies the selected color to the applicable side of the piece. Layer takes the layer chosen in the corresponding Layer menu and maps it to the applicable side of the piece. Tinted Layer blends the chosen layer with the selected color; the effect is similar to viewing the layer through a colored filter.
562 Effects and animation presets the image may look unusual (strangely sheared, for example). But if you know the focal length that you are trying to match, this option is the easiest way to get correct results. Creating a custom shatter map All layers in After Effects are represented as an RGBA image, including black-and-white images. The Shatter effect calculates the luminance threshold of each channel to create a custom shatter map.
563 Effects and animation presets To understand how this effect works, consider the following information about the physics of waves: A wave consists of a peak and a trough. The amplitude of a wave is the height, or distance, between the peak and trough. The wavelength is the distance from one peak to the next. Frequency is the number of waves per second passing a fixed point. View controls View controls specify the method used to preview the Wave World effect.
564 Effects and animation presets Gamma Adjustment Controls the slope of the waves in relation to the Brightness. Results are visible only in Height Map view. Higher values result in rounder peaks and narrower valleys, while lower values result in smoother valleys and pointier peaks. Render Dry Areas As Specifies how the water surface is rendered when a dry area exists. Dry areas are created when a portion of the ground layer rises above the surface of the water.
565 Effects and animation presets Steepness Adjusts the steepness of the ground by expanding and contracting the height of the displaced wireframe. The mesh is locked at the black level, so it always grows up from the bottom. In other words, you cannot adjust the bottom of a canyon to be deeper; instead, you can adjust the rim to be higher. To make the canyon deeper, combine a higher Steepness setting with a lower Height setting.
566 Effects and animation presets Obsolete effects Effects in the Obsolete category are retained for compatibility with projects created with previous versions of After Effects. When updating projects or creating new projects, you should use alternative effects and techniques rather than effects in the Obsolete category.
567 Effects and animation presets Lightning effect If you are working on a project that was created in an older version of After Effects and the Lightning effect is applied to one or more layers, you can continue to use this effect; otherwise, use the Advanced Lightning effect. (See Advanced Lightning effect.) This effect works with 8-bpc color. Start Point, End Point Where the lightning begins and ends. Segments The number of segments that form the main lightning bolt.
568 Effects and animation presets Random Seed An input value for the random noise generator that is the basis of the Lightning effect. If the random movement of the lightning interferes with another image or layer, enter a new value for Random Seed until you find one that works for you. Blending Mode The blending mode to use to composite the lightning on top of the original layer. These blending modes work identically to the ones in the Timeline panel.
569 Effects and animation presets Circle Shapes text around the circumference of a circle, defined by two control points (Tangent 1/Circle Point, and Vertex 1/Circle Center). If the text is longer than the circumference of the circle, the text overlaps itself. If an arbitrary path is chosen and if the path is closed, this property forms the text around the path, as opposed to looping it.
570 Effects and animation presets Horizontal Scale, Vertical Scale Resize the characters by the specified percentage in the horizontal and vertical directions. Text is scaled from the initial rasterization size, specified for Size. Setting the scaling percentage greater than 100 may result in blurred edges. For best results, set Size to a point size that doesn’t require scaling beyond 100% to achieve the largest desired text size.
571 Effects and animation presets For Fade Time values between 0% and 100%, the opacity of the character is defined as a range across the halfway point between whole-number values of Visible Characters. For example, if Fade Time is 20%, the eighth character begins to appear at a Visible Character value of 7.40 and is fully opaque at 7.60. If Fade Time is set to 60%, the same character begins to appear at a value of 7.20 and is fully opaque at 7.80. Mode The blending mode used if characters overlap.
572 Effects and animation presets 2 In the Effect Controls panel, specify a key color in one of two ways: • Click the Key Color swatch to open the Color dialog box and specify a color. • Click the eyedropper, and then click a color on the screen. 3 Drag the Color Tolerance slider to specify the range of color to key out. Lower values key out a smaller range of colors near the key color. Higher values key out a wider range of color.
573 Effects and animation presets 2 Choose the color you want to suppress in one of the following ways : • If you already keyed out the color with a key in the Effect Controls panel, click the Color To Suppress eyedropper, and then click the screen color in the Key Color swatch for the key. • In Spill Suppressor, click the Key Color swatch and choose a color from the color wheel. To use the eyedropper in the Layer panel, choose Spill Suppressor from the View menu in the Layer panel.
574 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc color. Lightning Type Specifies the characteristics of the lightning. note: The type determines the nature of the Direction/Outer Radius contextual control. In the Breaking type, the branches are focused toward the Direction point as the distance between Origin and Direction increases. Origin Specifies the point of origin for the lightning.
575 Effects and animation presets Fractal Type Specifies the type of fractal turbulence used to create the lightning. Core Drain Specifies the percentage by which the core strength is drained when creating a new fork. Increasing this value reduces the opacity of the core where new forks appear. Because forks draw their strength from the main core, decreasing this value reduces the opacity of the forks as well. Fork Strength Specifies the opacity of the new fork.
576 Effects and animation presets Softness How feathered or blurry the bands appear. Inside Color, Outside Color Inside and outside colors of the bands. Blend Overlapping Colors Specifies that overlapping spectrums are blended. Hue Interpolation If the value is greater than 0, the frequencies displayed rotate through the hue color space. Dynamic Hue Phase If selected, and the Hue Interpolation is greater than 0, the Start color shifts to the maximum frequency in the range of displayed frequencies.
577 Effects and animation presets Audio Offset Time offset, in milliseconds, used to retrieve the audio. Thickness The thickness of the waveform. Softness How feathered or blurry the waveform appears. Inside Color, Outside Color The inside and outside colors of the waveform. Waveform Options Mono combines the left and right channels of the audio layer. Nonstereo audio layers play as Mono.
578 Effects and animation presets Cell Pattern The cell pattern to use. HQ denotes high-quality patterns that render with more definition than their unmarked counterparts. Mixed Crystals is available only as a high-quality option. note: The Static Plates option is identical in appearance to the Plates option. However, when evolving, the static plates retain a uniform lightness value, whereas the plates shift the lightness of the cell pattern. Invert Inverts the cell pattern.
579 Effects and animation presets Random Seed Specifies a value from which to generate the cell pattern. Animating this property results in flashing from one cell pattern to another (within the same cell pattern type), which is not usually the result that you want. For smooth transition of the cell pattern, animate the Evolution property. note: Create new cell pattern animations by reusing previously created Evolution cycles and changing only the Random Seed value.
580 Effects and animation presets Ellipse effect The Ellipse effect draws an ellipse. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Eyedropper Fill effect The Eyedropper Fill effect (formerly the Color Picker effect) applies a sampled color to the source layer. This effect is useful for quickly picking a solid color from a sample point on the original layer or picking a color value from one layer and using blending modes to apply this color to a second layer. This effect works with 8-bpc color.
581 Effects and animation presets Set Choice Specifies the set used. Mandelbrot is the typical Mandelbrot set. Mandelbrot Inverse is the Mandelbrot set mathematically inverted. Julia always changes depending on the center point from the Mandelbrot set and can produce the set of all possible Julia sets. Julia Inverse is the inverse of the Julia set. To see a Julia set, you may want to set the magnification to a negative value, because these sets tend to fill up the complex plane outside the normal boundary.
582 Effects and animation presets solid color, such as black, and it generally produces results indistinguishable from Brute Force. Brute Force-Slow-Every Pixel oversamples every pixel in the image. It is slow but precise. Oversample Factor Specifies the amount of oversampling to perform. For example, a value of 4 specifies that each pixel is sampled 16 times (4x4=16) and that the average color is used. Higher values produce better quality output but require longer render times.
583 Effects and animation presets Width Slider The height and width of a rectangle are equal to the Width value, meaning that the rectangles are squares. Width & Height Sliders The height of a rectangle is equal to the Height value. The width of a rectangle is equal to the Width value. Border The thickness of the grid lines. A value of 0 causes the grid to disappear. note: The anti-aliasing of the grid borders may cause the visible thickness to vary. Feather The softness of the grid.
584 Effects and animation presets Transparency Specifies that the effect fills only the transparent areas near the fill point. You must set a fill point in a transparent area for this option to work. Opacity Specifies that the effect fills only the opaque areas near the fill point. You must set a fill point in an opaque area for this option to work.
585 Effects and animation presets Producer Point The point from which the waves appear. Parameters Are Set At Specifies whether parameters can be animated for individual waves. Birth specifies that each wave maintains the same parameter settings over time. Each Frame specifies that the waves change as the parameters change.
586 Effects and animation presets Invert Input Inverts the chosen value channel option. Value Threshold Specifies the threshold for the chosen value channel. It determines the percentage value at which everything below it or above it is mapped to either white or black. This control can make a big difference in the shape of the wave. Pre-Blur Smooths out the value channel before the value threshold is sampled.
587 Effects and animation presets of the two fades is calculated so that the wave doesn’t reach full transparency. If either Fade-in Time or Fade-out Time is longer than the Lifespan, that amount is truncated to equal the Lifespan. Start Width Specifies the width of the shape at its birth. End Width specifies the width of the shape at the end of its lifespan. Stroke effect The Stroke effect creates a stroke or border around the path defined by one or more masks.
588 Effects and animation presets Input Layer The layer whose image contours are used. High-contrast, grayscale layers, and alpha channels work well and are easy to work with. Invert Input Inverts the input layer before creating the stroke. If Layer Sizes Differ Determines how to adjust the layers if the size of the input layer differs from the size of the layer to which Vegas is applied. Center centers the input layer in the composition at its original size.
589 Effects and animation presets Start, End Opacity Specify the opacity at the beginning or end of the stroke. Mid-point Opacity Specifies the opacity of the midpoint of the stroke. This control works in terms of relative opacity, not absolute opacity. Setting it to 0 makes the change in opacity smooth from the start point to the end point, as if there were no midpoint at all.
590 Effects and animation presets Matte effects For information on the Refine Matte effect and the Roto Brush effect, see Roto Brush effect and Refine Matte effect reference . Third-party effects in this category included with After Effects: • mocha shape effect See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects. Matte Choker effect The Matte Choker effect repeats a sequence of choking and spreading the matte to fill undesired holes (transparent areas) in opaque regions.
591 Effects and animation presets 4 (Optional) Use the Iterations property to specify how many times After Effects repeats the spread-and-choke sequence. You may need to try a few different settings so that the sequence is repeated as many times as necessary to close any unwanted holes. Simple Choker effect The Simple Choker effect shrinks or expands the edges of a matte in small increments to create a cleaner matte.
592 Effects and animation presets Use 3D Channel effects to integrate 3D scenes into 2D composites and to modify those 3D scenes. You can import 3D image files saved in RLA, RPF, Softimage PIC/ZPIC, and Electric Image EI/EIZ formats. For PIC and EI files, the 3D channel information is in the ZPIC and EIZ files, respectively. You don’t import ZPIC and EIZ files, but as long as they’re in the same folder with the PIC and EI files, you have access to their 3D channels using the 3D Channel effects.
593 Effects and animation presets 3D Channel Extract effect The 3D Channel Extract effect makes auxiliary channels visible as either grayscale or multichannel color images. You can then use the resulting layer as a control layer for other effects. For example, extract the depth information in a 3D channel image file and then use it as an influence map in the Particle Playground effect, or extract values from the unclamped RGB channel to produce a matte that generates glowing highlights.
594 Effects and animation presets Depth Matte effect The Depth Matte effect reads the depth information in a 3D image and slices the image anywhere along the z axis. For example, you can remove a background in a 3D scene, or you can insert objects into a 3D scene.
595 Effects and animation presets Focal Plane The distance along the z axis of the focal plane from the camera. To show the depth of an object in the Info panel, click the object in the Composition panel or Layer panel using the Selection tool while the effect is selected. Maximum Radius How much blur is applied to objects outside the focal plane. Focal Plane Thickness Determines what depths are in focus on either side of the focal plane.
596 Effects and animation presets To determine the depth of an object, click it in the Composition panel or Layer panel using the Selection tool while the effect is selected. Fog End Depth Where along the z axis the diffusion reaches its maximum. Scattering Density Determines how quickly the scattering occurs. The higher the value, the more dense the fog appears from its starting point. Foggy Background Creates a foggy background (default).
597 Effects and animation presets More Help topics Importing and using 3D files from other applications 3D layers Stylize effects Third-party effects in this category included with After Effects: • CC Block Load effect (CS6 or later) • CC Burn Film effect • CC Glass effect • CC Kaleida effect • CC Mr. Smoothie effect • CC Plastic effect (CS6 or later) • CC RepeTile effect • CC Threshold effect • CC Threshold RGB effect See Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects.
598 Effects and animation presets Paint On Original Image Puts the strokes on top of the unmodified layer. This setting is the default. Paint On Transparent Causes only the strokes themselves to appear, leaving the layer transparent between the strokes. Paint On White/Paint On Black Applies strokes over a white or black background. Blend With Original The transparency of the effect. The result of the effect is blended with the original image, with the effect result composited on top.
599 Effects and animation presets Last updated 12/12/2014
600 Effects and animation presets Cartoon effect properties Render Fill, Edges, or Fill & Edges. Determines which operations to perform and which results to display. Detail Radius The radius for the blurring operation that is used to smooth the image and remove details before the operation to find edges. A larger radius for a blur means that more pixels are averaged together to determine each pixel value, so increasing the Detail Radius value increases the blurriness.
601 Effects and animation presets Edge Black Level When this property is 0, only the pixels that have been identified as being part of an edge receive a stroke; when Render is set to Edges, the image is white except in areas with a pure black stroke. Increase the Edge Black Level property by a small amount to add shades of gray in the Edges phase of rendering. Increase this property by a larger amount to approach a result that resembles white strokes on a black background.
602 Effects and animation presets Find Edges effect The Find Edges effect identifies the areas of an image that have significant transitions and emphasizes the edges. Edges can appear as dark lines against a white background or colored lines against a black background. With the Find Edges effect applied, images often look like sketches of the original. Invert Inverts the image after the edges are found. If Invert isn’t selected, edges appear as dark lines on a white background.
603 Effects and animation presets Color Looping The shape of the gradient curve to use if A & B Colors is selected for Glow Colors. Color Loops Creates multicolor ringing in the glow, if you select two or more loops. A single loop cycles through the gradient (or arbitrary map) specified for Glow Colors. Note: You can create an arbitrary map (.amp) file by applying the Curves effect, selecting the pencil icon, then clicking the save (floppy disk) icon.
604 Effects and animation presets Posterize effect The Posterize effect posterizes colors; the number of colors is reduced and gradual color transitions are replaced by abrupt color transitions. You specify the number of tonal levels (or brightness values) for each channel in an image. The Posterize effect then maps pixels to the closest matching level. For example, choosing two tonal levels in an RGB image gives you two tones for red, two tones for green, and two tones for blue.
605 Effects and animation presets Note: Although the Evolution value is set in units called revolutions, it’s important to realize that these revolutions are progressive. The Evolution state continues to progress infinitely at each new value. Use the Cycle Evolution option to return the Evolution setting to its original state at each revolution. Evolution Options Evolution Options provide controls that render the effect for one short cycle and then loop it for the duration of your layer.
606 Effects and animation presets This effect works with 8-bpc color. Strobe Color The color of the strobe light. Blend With Original The transparency of the effect. The result of the effect is blended with the original image, with the effect result composited on top. The higher you set this value, the less the effect affects the layer. For example, if you set this value to 100%, the effect has no visible result on the layer; if you set this value to 0%, the original image doesn’t show through.
607 Effects and animation presets Threshold effect The Threshold effect converts grayscale or color images to high-contrast, black-and-white images. Specify a certain level as a threshold; all pixels lighter than the threshold convert to white and all pixels darker convert to black. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color.
608 Effects and animation presets Note: Leap years are considered. Hexadecimal Base-16 numbers (digits from 0 to F). Hexadecimal numbers increment by 0x1 for every 0.0000125 that the Value/Offset/Random Max value increases, and increments by 0x10000 for every 1.0 that the Value/Offset/Random Max value increases. If you select Random, the number is bounded by 0 and the Value/Offset/Random Max value. Random Values Random values limited by the Value/Offset/Random Max value.
609 Effects and animation presets Composition Timecode is displayed according to the timecode from the composition. Custom Allows access to the settings in the Custom section, the previous behavior of the effect. These are Time Units, Drop Frame and Starting Frame. Time Units Frame rate in frames per second (fps) to be used by this instance of the Timecode effect.
610 Effects and animation presets Scan Direction: Specifies the direction that the rolling shutter scan takes place. Most cameras scan top-to-bottom of the sensor, but of course you can mount a camera upside down or rotate a camera completely in the case of a smart phone.Advanced section: Method: Indicates if optical-flow analysis and pixel-motion retiming will be used to generate the unwarped frames (Pixel Motion), or if a sparse point-tracking and warping method should be used (Warp).
611 Effects and animation presets To avoid problems with flipped views, keep in mind the following guidelines: • Use the same vertical dimensions for the composition and source images. A one-pixel difference produces the same result as moving the position one pixel vertically. • Make sure that the Position values for the layer are whole numbers (such as 240 instead of 239.7). • If the left and right view images are interlaced, de-interlace them before using 3D Glasses to avoid field mismatch.
612 Effects and animation presets Red Blue LR Tints the Right View layer red and the Left View layer blue (cyan) using the luminance values of each layer. Balanced Red Green LR Performs the same operation as Red Green LR but also balances the colors to reduce shadows or ghosting effects caused by one view showing through the other. Setting a high value reduces the overall contrast.
613 Effects and animation presets Drop Shadow effect The Drop Shadow effect adds a shadow that appears behind the layer. The alpha channel of the layer determines the shape of the shadow. When you add a drop shadow to a layer, a soft-edged outline of the alpha channel of the layer appears behind it, as if a shadow is cast on the background or underlying objects. Drop Shadow can create a shadow outside the bounds of the layer.
614 Effects and animation presets Light Source The location of the point light source. Copy and paste position keyframes or expressions from a control point for another effect (for example, Lens Flare) to quickly create a shadow that matches the light source for another effect. Projection Distance The distance from the layer to the surface on which the shadow falls. The shadow appears larger as this value increases. Softness The softness of the edges of a shadow.
615 Chapter 13: Markers Layer markers and composition markers Use composition markers and layer markers to store comments and other metadata and mark important times in a composition or layer. Composition markers appear in the time ruler for the composition, whereas layer markers each appear on the duration bar of a specific layer. Both kinds of markers can hold the same information. Markers can refer to a single point in time or to a duration.
616 Markers Note: If the layer uses a file (rather than a composition) as its source, this command restores the layer markers to those representing the temporal XMP metadata for the source file. If you add one composition to another, the original composition becomes nested as a layer in the containing composition. All of the composition markers from the nested composition become layer markers in the timeline of the containing composition. These markers are not linked to the original composition markers.
617 Markers Layer markers are retained when you render and export a movie to a QuickTime container. For alternative keyboard shortcuts, see Markers (keyboard shortcuts). • To add a layer marker to selected layers at the current time, choose Layer > Add Marker or press * (multiply) on the numeric keypad. Note: Pressing * during a RAM preview or audio-only preview adds a marker at the current time without interrupting the preview.
618 Markers 2 Enter information in the appropriate boxes in the marker dialog box: • To create a web link, enter a Uniform Resource Locator in the URL box in the Chapter And Web Links area of the marker dialog box. To activate a specific frame in a site, enter the filename of the frame for Frame Target. • Enter the chapter name and number (if available) in the Chapter box in the Chapter And Web Links area of the marker dialog box. • Enter a name for the cue point, and names and values for any parameters.
619 Markers More Help topics Scripts Preview video and audio MarkerKey attributes (expression reference) About XMP metadata XMP metadata in After Effects Sharing markers with After Effects, Encore, and Flash Chapter points XMP metadata About XMP metadata Metadata is—in the simplest sense—data about data. In practical terms, metadata is a set of standardized information about a file, such as author name, resolution, color space, copyright, and keywords applied to the file.
620 Markers After Effects scripts and expressions can read and use data stored in markers. Because XMP metadata for source footage items can be converted to layer markers, expressions and scripts can work with XMP metadata. Scripts can also operate on the XMP metadata for a file outside of the After Effects context, both for the automation of common tasks and for creative uses.
621 Markers • common multimedia container formats: FLV, F4V, QuickTime (MOV), Video for Windows (AVI), Windows Media (ASF, WAV) • authoring formats: InDesign documents, Photoshop documents (PSD), other native document formats for Adobe applications • MPEG formats (MP3, MPEG-2, MPEG-4) • SWF When you import a file that contains XMP metadata, After Effects shows a “Reading XMP metadata from footage” status message while it reads the metadata from the source file.
622 Markers When you create a layer based on a footage item that contains XMP metadata, the temporal metadata can be converted to layer markers. ❖ To enable the automatic conversion of XMP metadata to layer markers, select the Create Layer Markers From Footage XMP Metadata preference in the Media & Disk Cache preferences category. During this conversion, After Effects shows a “Reading XMP markers from footage” status message. These layer markers are fully editable, just as any other layer markers.
623 Markers XMP metadata that is written to a file is inserted in an XML data structure separate from the audio and video data itself. You can view this plain-text XML data just as you view any other plain-text data, and you can use and manipulate it with scripts of various kinds. Note: After Effects writes startTimecode and altTimecode values into XMP metadata. You can view these values in the Start Timecode and Alternate Timecode fields in the Dynamic Media schema in the Metadata panel.
624 Markers Show or hide XMP metadata To optimize the Metadata panel for your workflow, show or hide entire schemas or individual properties, displaying only those that you need. 1 From the options menu for the Metadata panel, select Metadata Display. 2 To show or hide schemas or properties, select or deselect them from the list. Save, switch, or delete metadata sets If you use multiple workflows, each requiring different sets of displayed metadata, you can save sets and switch between them.
625 Chapter 14: Memory, storage, performance Improve performance You can improve performance by optimizing your computer system, After Effects, your project, and your workflow. Some of the suggestions here improve performance not by increasing rendering speed but by decreasing time that other operations require, such as opening a project.
626 Memory, storage, performance • In After Effects CC and CS6, OpenGL and the GPU are important for new features, such as Ray-Traced 3D rendering on the GPU, Fast Draft previews, faster blitting to the screen, and a GPU enhanced Cartoon effect. For more information. See Render with OpenGL. • On Windows, disable the Aero compositing mode. Hardware acceleration of panels and OpenGL features perform better in After Effects when Windows is operating in Basic mode. For information, see the Microsoft website.
627 Memory, storage, performance • Divide complex projects into simpler projects, and then recombine them before you render the finished movie. To recombine projects, import all of the projects into a single project. See Import an After Effects project. • Before rendering, put all of your source footage files on a fast, local disk—not the one that you’re rendering and exporting to. A good way to do this is with the Collect Files command. See Collect files in one location. • Pre-render nested compositions.
628 Memory, storage, performance • Select Draft 3D in the Timeline panel menu, which disables all lights and shadows that fall on 3D layers. It also disables the depth-of-field blur for a camera. • In After Effects CC and CS6, use fast draft mode while laying out and previewing a ray-traced 3D composition by selecting an option other than "Off " from the Fast Previews button. • Deselect Live Update in the Timeline panel menu to prevent After Effects from updating compositions dynamically.
629 Memory, storage, performance OpenGL accelerates workflow by offering a faster graphics pipeline. One process that was slower in previous versions of After Effects was transferring pixels to the screen in a process called block transfer, or "blitting." The GPU now handles this functionality (in a process referred to as OpenGL Swap Buffer) much more efficiently. For system requirements for OpenGL Swap Buffer, see Features Support Levels . For more information, see the following video.
630 Memory, storage, performance Feature support levels There are three tiers or levels, from lowest to highest requirements, of support: Level 1: For OpenGL SwapBuffer: This level simply requires a GPU that can do OpenGL 1.5, or greater, with Shader Model 3.0, or greater. Most ATI and NVIDIA cards, and the Intel HD Graphics 3000 chipset (available in the MacBook Air, Mac Mini, various Windows machines, etc.) and 4000 (Windows only at this time) are supported.
631 Memory, storage, performance Advantages of a 64-bit application and 64-bit address space The maximum amount of RAM that a 32-bit application can use is 4 GB, which is much less than the amount of RAM that can be installed in modern computers and addressed by 64-bit operating systems. After Effects is now a 64-bit application, so each process can use all of the RAM addressed by 64-bit Windows and Mac OS operating systems.
632 Memory, storage, performance Note: When the RAM cache (the RAM available for storing RAM preview frames) is nearly full, the background processes cease rendering and go into a low-memory-usage state, and the foreground process starts rendering—as if Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously were off. This means that the rendering of a RAM preview will be fast at first, and then the speed will step down as rendering switches to only one processor core.
633 Memory, storage, performance When After Effects temporarily disables multiprocessing with Render Multiple Frames Simultaneously If After Effects can’t use background processes to render multiple frames simultaneously, a message appears in the Info panel, and After Effects uses only the main foreground process to render all frames. These messages include the following: • “Insufficient RAM. Multiprocessing is off.” • “Incompatible effect or expression. Multiprocessing is off.
634 Memory, storage, performance A memory balancer prevents swapping of RAM to disk by dynamically managing the memory allocated to each of the applications. Each application registers with the memory balancer with some basic information: minimum memory requirements, maximum memory able to be used, current memory in use, and a priority. The priority has three settings: low, normal, and highest. Highest is currently reserved for After Effects and Premiere Pro, when it is the active application.
635 Memory, storage, performance Note: For tips on decreasing memory requirements and increasing performance, see Improve performance by simplifying your project. Purging memory (RAM) Occasionally, After Effects may display an alert message indicating that it requires more memory to display or render a composition. If you receive an out-of-memory alert, free memory or reduce the memory requirements of the most memory-intensive layers, and then try again.
636 Memory, storage, performance Because video is typically compressed during encoding when you render to final output, you can’t just multiply the amount of memory required for a single frame by the frame rate and composition duration to determine the amount of disk space required to store your final output movie. However, such a calculation can give you a rough idea of the maximum storage space you may need.
637 Memory, storage, performance The global performance cache Disk cache and other performance enhancements are referred to as the global performance cache, bringing major improvements to workflow. The global performance cache consists of these features: Global RAM cache : RAM cache is still available, even after you perform a function that would have erased it in past versions of After Effects.Persistent disk cache : Frames cached to disk are still available, even after closing After Effects.
638 Memory, storage, performance The Maximum Disk Cache Size setting specifies the number of gigabytes of hard disk space to use. The default disk cache size is set to 10% of the volume's total size, up to 100 GB. In After Effects CS5.5, this amount is 20 GB, by default. Because of this, many more frames are eligible for disk caching than in previous versions. Note: The application checks to make sure that you have 10 GB free above what is set in Preferences > Media & Disk Cache.
639 Memory, storage, performance Note: For best results, use a large disk cache on a fast drive that is different from the source footage drive. SSD drives work well for disk caching. 2 Set the work area for the frames to cache to disk. 3 Choose Composition > Cache Work Area in Background, or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + Enter (Windows) or Cmd + Enter (MacOS). To cancel cache work area in background, choose Composition > Cancel Cache Work Area in Background.
640 Memory, storage, performance A database retains links to each of the cached media files. This media cache database is shared with Adobe Media Encoder, Premiere Pro, Encore, Soundbooth, so each of these applications can each read from and write to the same set of cached media files (Note: Adobe Audition CS5.5 does not share the media cache database). If you change the location of the database from within any of these applications, the location is updated for the other applications, too.
641 Chapter 15: Expressions and automation Plug-ins Plug-ins are small software modules—with filename extensions such as .aex, .pbk, .pbg, and .8bi—that add functionality to an application. After Effects effects are implemented as plug-ins, as are some features for importing and working with certain file formats. The Photoshop Camera Raw plug-in, for example, provides After Effects with its ability to work with camera raw files.
642 Expressions and automation Third-party plug-ins included with After Effects After Effects comes with several third-party plug-ins. These plug-ins are installed by default with the full version of Adobe After Effects software. Some of these plug-ins are not included with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. Foundry Keylight Keylight installs its documentation in the plug-in’s subfolder in the Plug-ins folder. For more information, see Keying effects, including Keylight.
643 Expressions and automation Automation After Effects and other Adobe software with which it’s integrated provide many different means for automating various processes. You can automate animation and image processing within After Effects with expressions, scripts, and plug-ins. You can automate rendering with aerender, network rendering, and post-render actions. You can also automate some tasks using workflow automation scripts in Adobe Bridge.
644 Expressions and automation value + 90 Some methods—such as wiggle—operate directly on the keyframed property values. (See Property attributes and methods (expression reference).) The following expression on the Position property of a layer preserves the keyframed motion of the layer and causes it to wiggle a little: wiggle(10, 10) Note: Using the wiggle expression is often much faster and easier than using the Wiggler.
645 Expressions and automation Symbol Function + add - subtract / divide * multiply *-1 perform opposite of original, such as counterclockwise instead of clockwise For example, you can double the result by typing *2 at the end of the expression; or you can halve the result by typing /2 at the end of the expression. As you develop comfort editing expressions, you can combine these simple operations—and more.
646 Expressions and automation Edit an expression with the pick whip If you are not familiar with JavaScript or the After Effects expression language, you can still take advantage of the power of expressions by using the pick whip. You simply drag the pick whip from one property to another to link the properties with an expression, and the expression text is entered in the expression field at the insertion point.
647 Expressions and automation Note: If you use the pick whip to create an expression to refer to a layer, and that layer has the same name as another layer in the same composition, then the targeted layer’s name changes. The new layer name is the old layer name with a numeral at the end. This change is necessary to ensure that the expression unambiguously refers to a single layer in the composition. Edit an expression manually 1 Click in the expression field to enter text-editing mode.
648 Expressions and automation 7 From Layer General attributes and methods (expression reference), you can see that the position attribute returns a property. Look up Property attributes and methods (expression reference)and notice that you can add a time factor to the expression. To add a specific time, such as current time plus 2 seconds, type .valueAtTime(time+2)at the end of the expression to get the following: thisComp.layer(1).position.
649 Expressions and automation Adding a text layer to a composition and adding an expression to its Source Text property can be a great way to examine the property values of other layers. For example, the following expression on a Source Text property reports the name and value of the Opacity property for the next layer in the layer stacking order: thisComp.layer(index + 1).name + "\rOpacity = " + thisComp.layer(index + 1).opacity.
650 Expressions and automation function average(a, b) { return (a + b) / 2; } average(position, thisComp.layer(1).position); Note: You must define each function fully within each expression in which it is used. There is no global library of functions that you can add to. If you want to save an expression for use in another project, you should add comments to the expression. (See Add comments to an expression.
651 Expressions and automation If you apply an animation preset from the Animation Presets > Shapes > Backgrounds category, you can see a custom Animated Shape Control effect in the Effect Controls panel. This custom effect is a specialized expression control effect that was created specifically for these animation presets. You can copy and paste this effect to other layers, or you can save it as an animation preset itself so that you can apply it elsewhere.
652 Expressions and automation Though the expression language is based on a scripting language, a subtle but important difference exists between a script and an expression: Whereas a script tells an application to do something, an expression says that a property is something. For more information about JavaScript, see a JavaScript reference resource. When creating expressions, keep in mind the following: • The value of an expression is the value of the last statement evaluated.
653 Expressions and automation You do need to include the layer and property when retrieving them from outside the layer and property on which the expression is written. For example, an expression written on the Opacity property of Layer B, linking it to the Rotation property of Layer A would look like this expression: thisComp.layer("Layer A").rotation To see more examples of how this works, use the pick whip to link one layer property to another, and look at the expressions it creates.
654 Expressions and automation The Position property arrays are indexed as follows: • position[0] is the x coordinate of position. • position[1] is the y coordinate of position. • position[2] is the z coordinate of position. Colors are represented as four-dimensional arrays [red, green, blue, alpha]. In projects with a color depth of 8 bpc or 16 bpc, each value in a color array ranges from 0 (black) to 1 (white). For example, red can range from 0 (no color) to 1 (red).
655 Expressions and automation However, though a function like audioLevels does return a two-dimensional value (the left and right channel levels), it is not called a vector because it does not represent a point or direction. Some functions in After Effects accept vector arguments, but they are generally only useful when the values passed represent a direction. For example, cross(vec1, vec2) computes a third vector that is at right angles to the input vectors.
656 Expressions and automation To show expressions that have errors, select one or more layers, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) a selected layer in the Timeline panel, and choose Reveal Expression Errors from the context menu. Some expressions rely on the names of layers or properties in your project; if you change the name of a layer or property that is involved in an expression, After Effects attempts to update the expression to use the new name.
657 Expressions and automation Layer properties in the Timeline panel Null object layers Animation presets overview and resources Color depth and high dynamic range color Expression language reference Use the After Effects expression elements along with standard JavaScript elements to write your expressions. You can use the Expression Language menu at any time to insert methods and attributes into an expression, and you can use the pick whip at any time to insert properties.
658 Expressions and automation colorDepth Return type: Number. Returns the project color depth value. For example, colorDepth returns 16 when the project color depth is 16 bits per channel. posterizeTime(framesPerSecond) Return type: Number. Argument type: framesPerSecond is a Number. The framesPerSecond value becomes the frame rate from which the rest of the expression operates. This expression allows you to set the frame rate for a property to be lower than the frame rate of the composition.
659 Expressions and automation Converts the value of t to a String representing feet of film and frames. See timeToFrames for an explanation of the t, fps, and isDuration arguments. The framesPerFoot argument specifies the number of frames in one foot of film. It defaults to 16, which is the most common rate for 35mm footage. timeToCurrentFormat(t = time + thisComp.displayStartTime, fps = 1.0 / thisComp.frameDuration, isDuration = false) Return type: String.
660 Expressions and automation Argument type: value, limit1, and limit2 are Numbers or Arrays. The value of each component of value is constrained to fall between the values of the corresponding values of limit1 and limit2. Chris and Trish Meyer provide additional information about the clamp method in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website. dot(vec1, vec2) Return type: Number. Argument type: vec1 and vec2 are Arrays. Returns the dot (inner) product of the vector arguments.
661 Expressions and automation Argument type: offset is a Number, timeless is a Boolean. The random and gaussRandom methods use a seed value that controls the sequence of numbers. By default, the seed is computed as a function of a unique layer identifier, the property within the layer, the current time, and an offset value of 0. Call seedRandom to set the offset to something other than 0 to create a different random sequence.
662 Expressions and automation range from 0 to maxValOrArray, and the remaining 10% are outside this range. The results have a Gaussian (bellshaped) distribution. gaussRandom(minValOrArray, maxValOrArray) Return type: Number or Array. Argument type: minValOrArray and maxValOrArray are Numbers or Arrays. If minValOrArray and maxValOrArray are Numbers, this method returns a random number.
663 Expressions and automation Argument type: t is a Number, and value1 and value2 are Numbers or Arrays. Returns a value that linearly interpolates from value1 to value2 as t ranges from 0 to 1. Returns value1 when t <= 0. Returns value2 when t >= 1. ease(t, value1, value2) Return type: Number or Array. Argument type: t is a Number, and value1 and value2 are Numbers or Arrays.
664 Expressions and automation Other Math methods (expression reference) Chris and Trish Meyer provide additional information about these methods in an article on the ProVideo Coalition website. degreesToRadians(degrees) Return type: Number. Argument type: degrees is a Number. Converts degrees to radians. radiansToDegrees(radians) Return type: Number. Argument type: radians is a Number. Converts radians to degrees.
665 Expressions and automation Returns the MarkerKey object of the marker with the specified name. The name value is the name of the marker, as typed in the comment field in the marker dialog box, for example, marker.key("1"). For a composition marker, the default name is a number. If more than one marker in the composition has the same name, this method returns the marker that occurs first in time (in composition time). The value for a marker key is a String, not a Number.
666 Expressions and automation shutterPhase Return type: Number. Returns the shutter phase of the composition, in degrees. bgColor Return type: Array [4]. Returns the background color of the composition. pixelAspect Return type: Number. Returns the pixel aspect ratio of the composition. name Return type: String. Returns the name of the composition.
667 Expressions and automation effect(name) Return type: Effect. Argument type: name is a String. After Effects finds the effect by its name in the Effect Controls panel. The name can be the default name or a userdefined name. If multiple effects have the same name, the effect closest to the top of the Effect Controls panel is used. Example: effect("Fast Blur")("Blurriness") effect(index) Return type: Effect. Argument type: index is a Number.
668 Expressions and automation Note: In general, the value of outPoint is greater than the value of inPoint. However, if a layer is reversed in time, the value of inPoint is greater than the value of outPoint. Similarly, the value of startTime can be greater than the value of inPoint. outPoint Return type: Number. Returns the Out point of the layer, in seconds. startTime Return type: Number. Returns the start time of the layer, in seconds. hasVideo Return type: Boolean.
669 Expressions and automation Layer Properties attributes and methods (expression reference) When you add masks, effects, paint, or text to a layer, After Effects adds new properties to the Timeline panel. There are too many of these properties to list here, so use the pick whip to learn the syntax for referring to them in your expressions. anchorPoint Return type: Property [2 or 3]. Returns the anchor point value of the layer in the coordinate system of the layer (layer space).
670 Expressions and automation This expression returns the time of the marker on the layer nearest to the current time: marker.nearestKey(time).time marker.numKeys Return type: Number. Returns the total number of markers on the layer. name Return type: String. Returns the name of the layer. Layer 3D attributes and methods (expression reference) orientation Return type: Property [3]. Returns the 3D orientation value, in degrees, for a 3D layer. rotationX Return type: Property.
671 Expressions and automation Layer Space Transforms methods (expression reference) Use layer space transform methods to transform values from one space to another, such as from layer space to world space. The “from” methods transform values from the named space (composition or world) to the layer space. The “to” methods transform values from the layer space to the named space (composition or world).
672 Expressions and automation Transforms a vector from layer space to composition space. Example: toCompVec([1,0]) fromCompVec(vec, t=time) Return type: Array [2 or 3]. Argument type: vec is an Array [2 or 3], and t is a Number. Transforms a vector from composition space to layer space. Example (2D layer): dir=sub(position, thisComp.layer(2).position); fromCompVec(dir) toWorldVec(vec, t=time) Return type: Array [2 or 3]. Argument type: vec is an Array [2 or 3], and t is a Number.
673 Expressions and automation active Return type: Boolean. Returns true if the camera is the active camera for the composition at the current time: the Video switch for the camera layer is on, the current time is in the range from the In point of the camera layer to the Out point of the camera layer, and it is the first (topmost) such camera layer listed in the Timeline panel. Returns false otherwise.
674 Expressions and automation Mask attributes and methods (expression reference) Note: You can link Mask Path properties to other path properties (paths in a shape layer and brush strokes), but the properties are not accessible for direct numerical manipulation through expressions. maskOpacity Return type: Property. Returns the opacity value of a mask as a percentage. maskFeather Return type: Property. Returns the feather value of a mask, in pixels. maskExpansion Return type: Property.
675 Expressions and automation Argument type: freq, amp, octaves, amp_mult, and t are Numbers. Randomly shakes (wiggles) the value of the property. freq value is the frequency in wiggles per second. amp value is the amplitude in units of the property to which it is applied. octaves is the number of octaves of noise to add together. This value controls how much detail is in the wiggle.
676 Expressions and automation Loops a segment of time that is measured from the first keyframe on the layer forward toward the Out point of the layer. The loop plays from the In point of the layer. The numKeyframes value determines what segment is looped: The segment looped is the portion of the layer from the first keyframe to the numKeyframes+1 keyframe. For example, loopIn("cycle", 3) loops the segment bounded by the first and fourth keyframes. The default value of 0 means that all keyframes will loop.
677 Expressions and automation value sets the number of composition seconds in a segment to loop; the specified range is measured backward from the last keyframe. For example, loopOutDuration("cycle", 1) loops the last second of the entire animation. The default of 0 means that the segment to loop begins at the layer In point. See the entry for loopIn for more information. key(index) Return type: Key or MarkerKey. Argument type: index is a Number. Returns the Key or MarkerKey object by number.
678 Expressions and automation A propertyGroup(4) B propertyGroup(3) C propertyGroup(2) D propertyGroup(1) E Position propertyIndex value is 2; Rotation propertyIndex value is 4. In this example, the propertyGroup method for each brush stroke targets the Brush property group because that group is two property groups up from the Rotation property. The propertyIndex attribute in each Brush stroke then returns a unique value for each Brush stroke.
679 Expressions and automation Returns the index of the keyframe. MarkerKey attributes (expression reference) You can access values for composition markers and layer markers using the same methods. Access layer markers through the thisLayer.marker object; access composition markers through the thisComp.marker object. For the purpose of expressions, markers are a special type of Key object, so you can use methods such as nearestKey(time) to access markers, and markers also have time and index attributes.
680 Expressions and automation cuePointName Return type: String. Contents of cue point Name field in marker dialog box. parameters Return type: associative array of String values. Contents of Parameter Name and Parameter Value fields in marker dialog box. For example, if you have a parameter named “background color”, then you can use the following expression to access its value at the nearest marker: thisComp.marker.nearestKey(time).
681 Expressions and automation Chris Zwar provides an example project on his website for automatically arranging still images or videos into a grid (like a video wall). You can easily adjust position and spacing with sliders that are connected to a system of expressions. There are three compositions in the project—one for stills, one for videos, and one to create an auto-storyboard in which a video is sampled at user-defined intervals and aligned into a grid.
682 Expressions and automation 3 Select the third layer, press P to reveal the Position property, and Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac OS) the stopwatch button to the left of the property name. 4 Enter the following in the expression field: (thisComp.layer(1).position + thisComp.layer(2).
683 Expressions and automation startFade = 500; // Start fade 500 pixels from camera. endFade = 1500; // End fade 1500 pixels from camera. try { // Check whether there's a camera C = thisComp.activeCamera.toWorld([0,0,0]); } catch(err) { // No camera, so assume 50mm w = thisComp.width * thisComp.pixelAspect; z = (w/2)/Math.tan(degreesToRadians(19.
684 Expressions and automation Apply the following expression to a property to wiggle it beginning at time 2 seconds: timeToStart = 2; if (time > timeToStart) { wiggle(3,25); } else { value; } Apply the following expression to a property to stop wiggling it at time 4 seconds: timeToStop = 4; if (time > timeToStop) { value; } else { wiggle(3,25); } Apply the following expression to a property to start wiggling it at time 2 seconds and stop wiggling it at time 4 seconds: timeToStart = 2; timeToStop = 4; if
685 Expressions and automation Scripts A script is a series of commands that tells an application to perform a series of operations. You can use scripts in most Adobe applications to automate repetitive tasks, perform complex calculations, and even use some functionality not directly exposed through the graphical user interface. For example, you can direct After Effects to reorder the layers in a composition, find and replace source text in text layers, or send an e-mail message when rendering is complete.
686 Expressions and automation Sebastien Perier provides instructions on his website for assigning keyboard shortcuts to scripts so that you can run a script with a single keystroke. This technique relies on the KeyEd Up script. Jeff Almasol provides a script that creates a simple console panel. The console panel includes a text area in which you can enter ExtendScript commands to be evaluated.
687 Chapter 16: Rendering and Exporting Basics of rendering and exporting Rendering and exporting overview What is rendering? Rendering is the creation of the frames of a movie from a composition. The rendering of a frame is the creation of a composited two-dimensional image from all of the layers, settings, and other information in a composition that make up the model for that image. The rendering of a movie is the frame-by-frame rendering of each of the frames that make up the movie.
688 Rendering and Exporting Aharon Rabinowitz provides an introduction to rendering in his “What is Rendering?” video tutorial—part of the Multimedia 101 series on the Creative COW website. There are two ways Adobe Media Encoder can create an output file from After Effects. You can output files by using the Render Queue or you can import compositions directly into the standalone version of Adobe Media Encoder.
689 Rendering and Exporting Using the Render Queue panel, you can render the same composition to different formats or with different settings, all with one click of the Render button: • You can output to a sequence of still images, such as a Cineon sequence, which you can then transfer to film for cinema projection. • You can output using lossless compression (or no compression) to a QuickTime container for transfer to a nonlinear editing (NLE) system for video editing.
690 Rendering and Exporting When rendering of a render item is complete, it remains in the Render Queue panel with its status changed to Done until you remove the item from the Render Queue panel. You cannot rerender a completed item, but you can duplicate it to create a new item in the queue with the same settings or with new settings. After an item has been rendered, you can import the finished movie as a footage item by dragging its output module from the Render Queue panel into the Project panel.
691 Rendering and Exporting • Render with a new filename - Choose Duplicate, click the underlined filename next to Output To, enter a new filename, and click Save. Pause or stop rendering If the disk (to which an output module is writing) runs out of space, After Effects pauses the render operation. You can clear additional disk space and then resume rendering and exporting. • To pause rendering, click Pause. To resume rendering, click Continue.
692 Rendering and Exporting Jeff Almasol provides a script on his redefinery website that renders and exports each of the selected layers separately. You might find this script useful if layers represent different versions of an effect or different parts of an effect that you want to render as separate “passes” for flexibility in how they get composited. Christopher Green provides a script (Queue_Comp_Sections.
693 Rendering and Exporting Video and animation formats • 3GPP (3GP) • H.264 and H.264 Blu-ray • MPEG-2 • MPEG-2 DVD • MPEG-2 Blu-ray • MPEG-4 • QuickTime (MOV) • SWF • Video for Windows (AVI; Windows only) • Windows Media (Windows only) To create an animated GIF movie, first render and export a QuickTime movie from After Effects. Then import the QuickTime movie into Photoshop Extended and export the movie to animated GIF using Save For Web & Devices.
694 Rendering and Exporting When you use the Collect Files command, After Effects creates a new folder and the following information is saved in the new folder: • A new copy of the project • Copies of the footage files • Proxy files as specified • A report describing the files, effects, and fonts necessary to re-create the project and render the compositions.
695 Rendering and Exporting Note: If rendering time is unusually long, you may have set Maximum Number Of Machines too high, and the network overhead required to track rendering progress among all computers is out of proportion to the time spent actually rendering frames. The optimal number depends on many variables related to the network configuration and the computers on it; experiment to determine the optimal number for your network.
696 Rendering and Exporting 3 Click in the Template box where you want to insert a file naming rule, and do any of the following: • To add a preset property to the filename, choose the property from the Add Property menu. • Enter text in the Template box. Note: Make sure that the insertion point is outside the square brackets ([ ]) of preset properties.
697 Rendering and Exporting Change render settings • To change render settings for a render item, click the render settings template name next to the Render Settings heading in the Render Queue panel, and choose settings in the Render Settings dialog box. • To apply a render settings template to selected render items, click the triangle next to the Render Settings heading in the Render Queue panel, and choose a template from the menu.
698 Rendering and Exporting • To load a saved render settings template file, click Load, select the render settings template file, and then click Open. Render settings reference Each of these settings overrides composition settings, project settings, or layer switch settings. Log You can choose how much information After Effects writes to a render log file. If you choose Errors Only, After Effects only creates the file if errors are encountered during rendering.
699 Rendering and Exporting Skip Existing Files Lets you rerender part of a sequence of files without wasting time on previously rendered frames. When rendering a sequence of files, After Effects locates files that are part of the current sequence, identifies the missing frames, and then renders only those frames, inserting them where they belong in the sequence. You can also use this option to render an image sequence on multiple computers. (See Render a still-image sequence with multiple computers.
700 Rendering and Exporting Change output module settings • To change output module settings for a render item, click the underlined output module settings template name next to the Output Module heading in the Render Queue panel, and choose settings in the Output Module Settings dialog box. • To apply an output module settings template to selected render items, click the triangle next to the Output Module heading in the Render Queue panel, and choose a template from the menu.
701 Rendering and Exporting Include Project Link Specifies whether to include information in the output file that links to the source After Effects project. When you open the output file in another application, such as Adobe Premiere Pro, you can use the Edit Original command to edit the source project in After Effects. Include Source XMP Metadata Specifies whether to include XMP metadata in the output file from the files used as sources for the rendered composition.
702 Rendering and Exporting If you choose such a constrained output format, and your composition, its render settings, or its output module settings and the message “Settings mismatch” at don’t match the constraints, then After Effects shows a yellow warning icon the bottom of the Output Module Settings dialog box. Click the warning icon to see a detailed message that describes how the output file will be modified to meet the format constraints.
703 Rendering and Exporting note: For more information on QuickTime, see the Apple website. 5 Click OK. 6 Specify other settings in the Output Module Settings dialog box. Post-render actions You can use post-render actions to automate simple tasks that occur after a composition is rendered.
704 Rendering and Exporting For Quadro 4000 drivers and CUDA drivers for MacOS, see this blog post. For information regarding specific OpenGL hardware, go to the After Effects section of the Adobe website. On Windows, disable the Aero compositing mode. Hardware acceleration of panels and OpenGL features perform better in After Effects when Windows is operating in Basic mode. For information, see the Microsoft website.
705 Rendering and Exporting • Quadro FX 3700M • Quadro FX 3800 • Quadro FX 3800M • Quadro FX 4800 • Quadro FX 5800 • Quadro 2000 • Quadro 2000D • Quadro 2000M • Quadro 3000M • Quadro 4000 • Quadro 4000M • Quadro 5000 • Quadro 5000M • Quadro 5010M • Quadro 6000 • Quadro K2000 • Quadro K2100M • Quadro K3000M • Quadro K3100M • Quadro K4000 • Quadro K4000M • Quadro K4100M • Quadro K5000 • Quadro K5000M • Quadro K5100M • Quadro K6000 • Tesla C2075 Mac OS • GeForce GTX 285 • GeForce GTX 675MX • GeForce GTX 680
706 Rendering and Exporting • Quadro K5000 Using untested and unsupported GPUs with After Effects In the October 2013 release of After Effects CC, a new option was introduced under Edit > Preferences > Previews > GPU Information to enable the users to use untested and unsupported GPUs. Check the "Enable untested, unsupported GPU for CUDA acceleration of ray-traced 3D renderer" box so that After Effects uses the GPU-accelerated ray-traced 3D renderer with any GPU that meets minimum requirements.
707 Rendering and Exporting 3 Choose GoPro CineForm as the video codec in the QuickTime Options dialog box. Adjust the compression settings using the Quality slider under the Basic Video Settings. The slider can be moved from a range of 1 to 5, with 1 for the Low setting and 5 for Film Scan 2 setting. The default value is 4 (Film Scan). 1. Low 2. Medium 3. High 4. Film Scan 5.
708 Rendering and Exporting The encoded pixel format is based on the color depth and alpha channel settings that you choose in the Output Module Settings dialog box. There are three Channels settings that can be set, RGB, Alpha, and RGB+Alpha: • Set Channels to RGB or Alpha to encode to 10bpc YUV. In this case, Depth can only be set to Millions Of Colors. • Set Channels to RGB+Alpha to encode to 12bpc RGBA. In this case Depth can be set to Millions of Colors+ or Trillions of Colors+.
709 Rendering and Exporting Other considerations • You can edit the basic video settings, such as Frame Rate and Aspect ratio by unchecking the boxes next to each of these settings. For unsupported sizes such as GoPro 2.7K, change the resolution settings and down-scale to 1080,2K, or 4K or upscale to 6K. • Due to the frame size limitations, frame width sizes should be divisible by 16, and frame height sizes should be divisible by 8, regardless of bit depth. For example, the frame size of GoPro 2.
710 Rendering and Exporting A layered Photoshop file saved from After Effects may look different from the frame viewed in After Effects if the frame uses features that Photoshop doesn’t support. For example, if the frame contains a blending mode that isn’t available in Photoshop, a blending mode that most resembles it is substituted in the layer, but the embedded composite image (viewable only by applications that don’t support Photoshop layers) looks the same.
711 Rendering and Exporting The version and build number of the application are written to standard output (stdout). The render may be performed either by an already running instance of After Effects or by a newly started instance. By default, aerender starts a new instance of After Effects, even if one is already running. To instead use the currently running instance, use the –reuse argument. This example command tells After Effects to render frames 1 through 10 of Composition_1 in project_1.
712 Rendering and Exporting Argument Description –s start_frame start_frame is the first frame to render. If this argument is not used, aerender uses the start frame in the file. –e end_frame end_frame is the last frame to render. If this argument is not provided, aerender uses the end frame in the file. –i increment increment is the number of frames to advance before rendering a new frame. A value of 1 (the default) causes normal rendering of all frames.
713 Rendering and Exporting Network rendering with watch folders and render engines You can render one or more compositions from a project using multiple computers over a network in a fraction of the time that a single computer would require. Network rendering involves copying the project and source files to a networked folder, and then rendering the project. (A network of computers used together to render a single composition is sometimes called a render farm.
714 Rendering and Exporting When working with multiple render engines on multiple computers, keep in mind the following guidelines: • When possible, identify folders using absolute file paths so that the paths are correctly identified for all render engines. Identifying folders using absolute file paths may mean mapping network drives to a particular drive letter on all computers (for example, H:\renders\watch\). Avoid using relative paths (for example, \\renders\watch).
715 Rendering and Exporting Note: If rendering time is unusually slow, you may be rendering to too many computers, and the network overhead required to track rendering progress among all computers is out of proportion to the time spent actually rendering frames. The optimal number depends on many variables related to the network configuration and the computers on it; experiment to determine the optimal number for your network.
716 Rendering and Exporting Start in watch-folder mode Watch-folder mode applies only to rendering from a folder on your local computer. • To start After Effects in watch-folder mode automatically, save a project with the filename Watch This Folder.aep. After Effects watches the folder containing the project if you open that project. • To start After Effects in watch-folder mode when you start your computer, create a shortcut (Windows) or alias (Mac OS) to the Watch This Folder.
717 Rendering and Exporting 7 Unless the network can handle large file transfers rapidly, copy the project file and all its source footage to each rendering computer. 8 Open the Render Queue panel on each computer and click Render. You do not need to start rendering on each computer simultaneously, but to ensure equal workloads, start them at approximately the same time.
718 Rendering and Exporting When you export an After Effects project as an Adobe Premiere Pro project, Adobe Premiere Pro uses the settings from the first composition in the After Effects project for all subsequent sequences. Keyframes, effects, and other properties are converted in the same way as when you paste an After Effects layer into an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence. (See Importing from After Effects and Adobe Premiere Pro .) 1 Choose File > Export > Adobe Premiere Pro Project.
719 Rendering and Exporting When you export a composition as an XFL file, After Effects attempts to export individual layers and keyframes, preserving as much information for direct use in Flash Professional as it can. If After Effects can’t export an element of a composition as unrendered data in an XFL file, the element is either ignored or rendered into a PNG or FLV item, depending on whether you choose to ignore unsupported features.
720 Rendering and Exporting Working in Flash Professional with a FLA document created from an XFL file The Library panel in Flash Professional is similar to the Project panel in After Effects. When Flash Professional creates a FLA document from an XFL file, it creates symbols, folders, and video clips and organizes them in the Library panel.
721 Rendering and Exporting Stage 2: Remaining source files are converted to PNG sequences or FLV files, if possible. If the only reason that a layer’s source file can’t be passed through to the XFL file is that it doesn’t use a PNG sequence, JPEG sequence, or FLV file as its source, then the layer’s source is transcoded or rasterized to a PNG sequence or FLV file, which is included in the XFL file.
722 Rendering and Exporting When you export a composition to the XFL format from a 32-bpc project, the rendering of colors with values under 0 and over 1 does not produce results that preserve the appearance of the composition in After Effects. You should only work in an 8-bpc or 16-bpc project when creating a composition that you intend to export to Flash Professional in XFL format. Audio is not exported to the XFL file.
723 Rendering and Exporting Unsupported Features Specifies whether to rasterize features that SWF format doesn’t support. Choose Ignore to exclude unsupported features, or choose Rasterize to render all frames that contain unsupported features as JPEGcompressed bitmap images and include them in the SWF file.
724 Rendering and Exporting property aren’t supported, and only Normal blending mode is supported. Nested compositions aren’t supported and are rasterized. Masks Only masks with Add mask mode or Difference mask mode are supported; multiple masks in a layer must use the same mask mode. If Add mode is specified, partial opacity and the Inverted option are also supported. Mask feather is not supported.
725 Rendering and Exporting You render and export a movie to the FLV or F4V container format using the render queue, just as you do with other formats. (See Render and export a movie using the render queue.) To include the alpha channel in the FLV output, use the On2 VP6 codec and select Encode Alpha Channel in the Video tab of the export settings dialog box. After Effects premultiplies channels with black when encoding transparency in FLV files.
726 Rendering and Exporting • Changes in frame rate may require the use of frame blending to smooth out the interpolated frames. For longer footage items, the use of frame blending can result in very long render times. 1 Import the footage you’re converting into a composition using the preset of the format you’re converting to. Example: if you’re converting NTSC to PAL, add your NTSC footage item to a composition with the appropriate PAL composition settings preset.
727 Rendering and Exporting 6 Choose Custom from the Render Settings menu. 7 In the Render Settings pane, enable Field Rendering (choose the field order required by your output type), select any option from the 3:2 Pulldown menu, and then click OK. 8 Choose the output type from the Render Queue Output Module menu (for example, Microsoft DV NTSC 32 kHz). 9 Specify a name and destination for the output file using the controls to the right of the Output To heading in the Render Queue panel.
728 Rendering and Exporting Note: When rendering at reduced resolution, set the quality of the composition to Draft. Rendering at Best quality while reducing resolution does not produce a clean image and takes longer to render than rendering at Draft quality. Scaling a movie up Increasing the size of the output from a rendered composition reduces the image quality of a movie and is not recommended.
729 Rendering and Exporting Note: If the Use System Shortcut Keys option is enabled in General preferences (Mac OS), the shortcut is Ctrl+Cmd+M. 2 After Effects creates both a new item in the render queue and a new composition in the Project panel for each footage item. 3 Adjust the render settings as desired, and click Render. Introduce 3:2 pulldown If you are creating output for film that’s been transferred to video, or if you want to simulate a film look for animation, use 3:2 pulldown.
730 Rendering and Exporting 8 Render the composition again, choosing Lower Field First from the Field Render menu in the Render Settings dialog box. 9 Record both movies to the same device. 10 Play both movies. One movie will look distorted and have jumpy horizontal motion or shape distortion during vertical motion. The other movie will play back smoothly, with sharply defined edges. Use the field order for the smooth-playing movie whenever you render movies with that particular hardware configuration.
731 Chapter 17: System Requirements System requirements for After Effects System requirements for After Effects Last updated 12/12/2014
