Specifications

38
A Digital Video Primer
2D and 3D compositing: You can animate images in either 2 or 3 dimensions. With either type,
you can move objects horizontally (x axis) or vertically (y axis), but 3D animation enables you
to add depth (z axis), such as change the z-position, z-rotation, and orientation or perspective.
And you can animate the object to interact with light direction, shadows, and cameras (points of
view). In addition, you can use dierent types of animation on each layer. For example, you could
composite a 2D title animation over a 3D animation that synchronizes movement with video on
a third layer.
Animating
Making things move is only one aspect of animation. Aer Eects oers a wide range of features
and tools to augment your animation capabilities.
Timeline implementation: Animation revolves around the concept of elements changing over
time. e ability to selectively display control curves with linear keyframe information directly
inside the Timeline panel lets you ne-tune timings of multiple elements. e Timeline panel
provides exibility for viewing and editing all object parameters.
Keyframe control: Keyframes are the heart and soul of moving objects, and Aer Eects provides
precise control over keyframe type, generation, placement, and all other aspects of keyframe
functionality. Full curve-based editing of keyframe data delivers the ability to exactly tweak
motion and animation data to t a desired requirement for all aspects of motion and eects over
time. Use the Graph Editor in the Timeline panel to view and work with changes in eects and
animations as a two-dimensional graph.
Motion Sketch and Smoother: Plotting complex motion can be dicult if you must enter
keyframes manually. By using the Motion Sketch panel, you can draw animation paths on the
screen, varying the velocity of a path by adjusting your drawing speed. Aer Eects, then, auto-
matically creates the keyframes for you. Use the Smoother to smooth the shape of the path and
ne-tune it until the animation moves exactly as you want.
Parenting: You can synchronize the motion and other properties of objects in two or more layers
by dening a parent layer and one or more child layers. By dening a parent-child relationship
between layers, you ensure that the child layers inherit all of the transformations applied to the
parent. Parenting is useful for making objects in multiple layers appear to move and change as
one object. For example, when the scale and position of the parent layer are animated, the child
layers behave the same way. Parent-child relationships aren’t limited to footage layers. You can
also dene relationships between light and camera layers in 3D compositions. For example,
dene a camera as the child to a key footage element in a composition, so the camera will auto-
matically track the movement of that element. Or, a light might have a camera as a parent, so the
elements that a camera is pointing at are always illuminated.
Parent-child relationships are dened between dierent layers to quickly create a dancing skeleton. As a parent
part moves (the upper arm), so do its children (the lower arm and hand.)