Now, let's take a look at the After Effects interface. When you first open After Effects, you will see a Start menu. Close this by clicking the red X in the upper right-hand top corner:
This menu can be helpful if you need to locate a recently opened project. I find it best to close this and locate what we need in the program itself.
Your workspace is where all your panels and tools are located. This is the heart of the program. Your workspace can be configured in different ways; let's make sure it's set to the default state.
Go to Window | Workspace | Reset "Standard" to Saved Layout. This is the standard workspace:
This way, everything is where it's supposed to be in our interface; nothing is out of place.
Saving a project is always a good practice. Let's start our project by creating a new file by saving it:
Go up to the top-left tab, File. Choose Save As | Save As... and name the file
test
.Navigate to where you want to save your After Effect project. It's a good idea to number your projects. Let's name ours
projects_01
.
We have started saving our first project. It's important to start saving things right away.
The project panel is where you bring in all your assets. After Effects is often used in post-production. You are usually working from many different asset types. Your project can get very disorganized quickly. This is where you keep all your assets tidy. You will be very happy when your project gets more difficult and you have taken the time to keep things organized. It is easier to find things when you have a tidy project. It also helps you to work faster. The project panel has icons at the bottom of the panel. Choose the one called folder:
Let's learn how to create folders in our project panel by following these steps to create one:
Click on the folder icon
Name this
new comp-main comp
When you bring media into After Effects, be sure to organize all your media into the appropriate folders.
You can create the following folders:
MAIN
AUDIO
PRECOMP
Images
Footage
You should have five folders. Right-click on the folder to rename them.
The projects in this book will use these five folders. We have created them to organize everything properly.
Let's import a large image (at least 1,920 x 1,080) by double-clicking the open area. This brings up your media folders. You can click anywhere in the area where I'm standing in the next screenshot:
Drag and move this image into the Images
folder. You can rename your images by right-clicking on the layer.
After Effect references material. It doesn't actually keep anything in the project; it references things. You should never rename a file outside After Effects. When you import images into a Photoshop document, it saves a copy with the document. However, After Effects links to the assets you import into your project. You should always leave the name unchanged because After Effects will not be able to find the new name for its referencing, and you will receive an error message.
Rather than renaming or removing your files from After Effects, it's better to create a copy or not to move it. If you need to replace a file, you have to right-click on the layer and choose to replace or reload the footage:
Practice renaming and relinking your files a couple times, just to make sure you understand that concept.
If you need to delete anything, drag it into the trashcan; this is highlighted in the following screenshot:
Now we will turn our attention to setting Auto-Save... for your projects. It's important to get that set up so your project will automatically save, even if you forget to do this. The following steps will show you how to set up autosave:
Go to Edit | Preferences | Auto-Save....
Set autosave at 20-minute intervals.
You can adjust the maximum number of versions of your project to autosave. The default number is 5:
Setting up autosave can save your life. If your project crashes, you will be happy that you have a back-up copy saved in the autosave folder. This is located wherever you save your project.
After Effects uses compositions to place and arrange your elements. Remember to consider design principles that help create a strong composition when you arrange your elements. In After Effects, these compositions are referred to as comps
. I am going to create a comp by hitting the new composition icon. If you look closely at the icon, you will see that it looks like a composition symbol with shapes:
Leave all these settings as they are, but make the comp size 1,920 x 1,080, and make the time duration 0;04;00;00
. Name the comp MAIN
:
Drag the main comp into the MAIN
comp folder:
Look at the lower-third of the screen. This is called the timeline panel. The timeline is the works space where you create key frames. This is where you make your layers animate across time. You also organize your layer-stacking order. This stacking order is similar to Photoshop. Layers at the top will appear on top of other layers:
After briefly learning about the timeline panel, let's discuss how to bring layers into your composition.
Bringing layers into your composition is easy. Layers are the basic building blocks for creating a movie. A layer can be an image, video footage, or an audio file.
Follow these steps:
Go into the
IMAGE
folder.Drag the image on to the timeline.
If the image is 1,920 x 1,080, it will fit perfectly and fill up the screen. It will come into the comp centered:
Let's go over our tools! The tool panel is where you find all your tools to edit your layers. Here, you can find tools to move your layers and navigate around your composition:
Selection Tool (V): Go to the top left side of the screen. This is called the tool bar:
The arrow icon on the far left is called the Selection Tool.
Hand Tool (H): The hand tool is to the right of the arrow tool. This tool lets you move around in your composition:
Now select the hand tool or use the keyboard shortcut H. You can use the hand tool to move around in your view or navigate around in the comp.
Zoom Tool (Z): The zoom tool is next to the hand tool. This tool will magnify your image in the composition. Select the zoom tool, or use the keyboard shortcut Z, and click on the image in the comp a few times:
Rotate Tool (W): The rotate tool is the circular tool next to the zoom tool:
Let's explore how to use the rotate tool. The center of the screen where your image is displayed is called the composition window. At the bottom left is an icon called the Magnification ratio popup. Choose fit to 100%. This will zoom out so we can see what's happening:
Select the rotate tool, or use the keyboard shortcut W, and adjust the image:
To undo an action, go to the top-left corner and choose Edit | Undo Rotate Object:
Pan Behind (Anchor Point) Tool (Y): I'll skip the camera tool for now. Next to the camera tool is the pan behind tool. Use this to move your anchor point. Things animate along the anchor point in After Effects. It's useful to know how to move the anchor point around, as it gives you control over how things animate:
Masking Tool: To the right are our masking tools. The first shape in the list is the rectangle tool. With these masking tools, you can click and drag to create a shape. Click on the triangle icon on the bottom-left of this tool's button. You will find the rounded Rectangle Tool, the Eclipse Tool, and the Star Tool:
Pen Tool (G): Next to the rectangle tool is the pen tool. It is used to make custom shapes in After Effects.
Brush tool: The next icon with the brush icon is the brush tool.
Stamp tool: The icon with the stamp icon is the clone stamp tool.
We will go over more of these tools later.
Hopefully, you are starting to get used to the interface in After Effects. Poke around and experiment with these tools, to get comfortable with them. A little triangle next to a tool's button means you can access more options for that tool. If a tool is grayed out, just click on your comp and it will become active.
Let's go over the preview panel. This is located in the upper-right corner of your screen:
This preview panel gives you options such as moving through your movie. A project is made up of frames, just like in real video footage. In After Effects, moving within a project is referred to as moving down the timeline. This timeline is represented in units, such as frames, seconds, and minutes. This preview panel allows you to move forward or backward frame by frame. Pressing the play button lets you preview your project. You can also use the ram review, which gives you the ability to watch the project at a faster speed. You can also hit the space bar to preview your animation.
At the bottom of the composition window, there are a few options. Let's go over some of them.
The icon in the lower right-hand corner of the composition is where you will find your guide options. These guide options are used to arrange your layers and to create compositionally strong images. However, these guides are not rendered; they are only for preview purposes:
Guides: These are used for aligning and arranging layers. To remove guides, choose View | Clear guides.
Title/Action Safe: These are video-safe zones, for standard video monitors.
Rulers: This is used to drag guides to the composition to align and arrange layers to.
Grid: This is a modular grid that helps you organize your layers and create strong compositions:
A little further over to the right is the resolution button. You can reduce the quality down to Quarter. This gives you the ability to look at it and play it back even faster, but at a lower quality:
Next, we will go over our Effects & Presets panel. The effects panel is a major toolbox full of effects to make your video look amazing! This panel gives you access to hundreds of effects that can help you create animation, correct the color, or fix any number of problems with video or images.
The effects panel is located to the far-right, below the preview panel. A lot of these effects are the same as those used in Photoshop. You may be familiar with Brightness, Contrast, Curves, and so on. Make sure your layer is selected in the timeline, before clicking on an effect.
You can add an effect to a layer by doing the following:
Twirl the category name
dow
Click on the effect with the layer selected, or you can type in the name of the effect
Double-click on the effect, while your layer is selected
Let's type the effect (auto levels) into the search bar. Double-click the effect to add to our layer:
You can adjust this effects in the effects control panel. This panel is nested right next to your main project panel:
The main difference between these effects and Photoshop is that you can animate them across the timeline, which we will get into in the next sections. You can also add multiple effects to a layer, to create complex visual images.