Adobe After Effects Tips #2

Projects, Compositions, Previews

Extracts from the book Adobe After Effects 7 Studio Techniques by Mark Christiansen.

- Great thing for compositing is to cooperate with Photoshop. You can then import your .psd project in the After Effects, choose import as a Composition option and you have all your layers, names etc. from PS in your AAE project.

- You can also create Photoshop file right in your current composition. Just hit Layer -> New -> Adobe Photshop File. PS automaticaly opens the file, allowing you to create whatever you want. Then when you save the file and hit Reloead Footage in your AAE project window (just highlight the newly created .psd file, right-click it and hit Reload Footage) it automaticaly finds the changes and you can continue working with in your AAE composition. Nice and easy.

- When choosing digital source media, people often consider .png to be more or less like .jpg - great compression for a cost of low quality. It's not really true - supporting 8-16 Bit Depth it can compress files heavily without a visible loss of quality.

- It's best to create a new composition by dragging your source video (if you're working with one clip as a bg) over the Create a new Composition icon in the bottom of the Project window. This way After Effects automaticaly find the exact attributes, length and Bit Depth of the video you're using.

- If your computer is too slow, don't forget to change resolution to Half or even Quarter in your Composition window. Or you can preview only a certain region of your composition by hitting a Region of Interest icon right next to the resolution slider in the Composition window and drawing a rectangular shape in your composition. You can even crop the selection by hiting Composition -> Crop Comp to Region of Interest.

- When working with 50% Magnification ratio (you know, just zooming in the composition window with your mouse wheel) it's pointless to set the Resolution higher than to Half. The same way it goes for 25% - set Quarter.

- By holding down spacebar when working in the Composition window, you can bring up the hand tool. It allows you to move with your composition (especially handy when you're working with more than 100% Magnification ratio). It's a great and universal tool you can find in all Adobe applications.

- If you go to Time Control window, unfold the pull-down menu and choose Shift+RAM preview options, you can choose to skip 1-4 frames (when you skip 1, you render every second frame, when you skip 4, you render every fifth frame). If you don't really need to see the video play real time, this method greatly improves RAM rendering times and is very useful for slower computers.

- You can quickly set the work area to the length of a layer by selecting the layer and hiting Alt+Ctrl+B.


- Martin

Sliding Particles

This is a particle composition I'm creating for a certain shot. If I find some time, I can write a short tutorial...Even though it's not really a hard thing to create, beginners often wonder how to make such animations.



- Martin

Adobe After Effects Tips #1

User Interface

I'm sure that 90% of After Effects compositors have read this book - Adobe After Effects Studio Techniques. It's great, it's complex and it explains everything, from the very basics of Making the most of UI to Advanced Compositing and Expressions. I like writing notes when learning and since I keep them in my computer, I'm posting them here. I'm sure you'll find at least one thing you didn't know.

- To make any panel in your worspace float (just like in the old 6.5 version) pres CTRL and drag it from its position (it's good f.ex. for Tracker Controls and Render Queue).

- The Lock icon on the top of the active Tab (f.ex. Effect Control) prevents this Tab from closing when you select another layer.

- The ` key (backslash, bellow Esc) brings the selected window into a fullscreen. For normal size hit it again.

- Ctrl + ` = opens all the pull-down panel menus of the layer.

- Ctrl + [ = puts the selected layer down in the timeline, Ctrl + ] puts it up.

- To reset absolutely ALL PREFERENCES (including your Workspaces) hold down CTRL + SHIFT + ALT at startup.

- If you're working with a lot of files, solids and comps in your Project menu, some of them are missing and you can't find those (or you just want to spare some time), hit the binoculars icon in the bottom left corner of the Project window and check the Find Missing Footage.

- If you need to make some changes in a file you're using in your project - say a Photoshop composition - just highlight this file in your Project window, hit CTRL + E. The file opens in the program it was created (in our case Adobe Photoshop), you make the changes, save the file and After Effects will automaticly register the change.

- Ideal way to export your whole project with all the files included is to use File -> Collect Files option. This way you can store everything you need for working with the project in one folder. You just choose if you want to store everything, or only the things used in compositions, only the things used for final render etc. Very handy for transporting projects to different computers.

- If you want to quickly remove all the files you don't use in your compositions, just highlight this comp in your Project window and then hit File -> Reduce Project.

- If you hit File -> Consolidate All Footage, you delete the files that are uploaded multiple times in the Project window, leaving just one.

- If you hit File -> Remove Unused Footage, you remove from the Project Window anything that is not used in any composition.

- You're working on some important project, you've done a great job so far, but you want to make some changes that may end up ruining everything. In this case you may use the File -> Increment and Save option. This way you save your project and every time you hit Increment and save again, you create another copy of the saved project with a sequence number added.

- Enable Auto-save option in Edit -> Preferences -> Auto-save. The default numbers are ok.

This was the first part of what I plan to be a series of useful tips extracted from this great book by Mark Christiansen.

- Martin

Bruce in Action

Based on another great tutorial by Andrew Kramer (visit Videocopilot.net) I tried to create a 3D scene from a still photo. I just typed "action star" in google and guess who popped up? Well, it's not really a guess since you can see him right bellow this text. But I love Bruce, so the choice was quite obvious.

Original image:


Final Render:



I just recently discovered the power of a stamp tool in Photoshop allowing you to clone certain parts of a still image. This way I could cut Bruce out of the image and extend the wall behind him.

- Martin

DVD menu

I didn't really have time for After Effects lately, but I did at least this video for our filmschool projects DVD menu.



- Martin

Something Exciting This Way Comes

I'm slowly beginning to realize how many wonderful things I can create with combination of 3DS Max models and After Effects postproduction. My notebook is probably going to explode, because I'm forcing it to use every possible MB of memory and graphics at its disposal, but the outcome is definitely worth it.



- Martin