Welcome to this introduction to motion graphics with Adobe After Effects, your guide to motion graphics, the most exciting field in the world today. This book will provide readers with the knowledge and skills required to communicate effectively with After Effects and with the ability to create infographics through the use of feature film-level compositing tools. Other topics covered include editing, camera work, and lighting. You will learn how to create stunning visual effects and exciting animated 3D typography. This book will train readers in the concepts of motion design, examining a range of diverse issues, such as merging graphic design and animation with cinematic storytelling techniques.
This book is targeted at students, professionals, YouTubers, and people who are interested in video editing, animation, and motion graphics. It is also designed for illustrators who would like to set their creations in motion. All these groups will really enjoy reading this book.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with After Effects, explains where the main tools and menus are to be found. The focus will be on shape and text layers, animating position, scale, rotation, opacity, and masks.
Chapter 2, Creating a Lower Third for a Television Show, talks about precomps. This is a very important part of After Effects. It helps you to create complex animations quickly. Once you understand this concept, we will create a lower third project with more complex layers.
Chapter 3, Using Shape Layers to Create an Animated Lyric Video, builds on the previous chapter in understanding more complex layers. We will also begin working with text animators. Text animators are more complex text tools that allow you to achieve detailed animation using text presets.
Chapter 4, Creating an Infographic with Character Animator, takes your text animation to a more advanced level and uses it to communicate. You will animate icons dynamically. Having an understanding of the graph editor will make your animations more realistic and professional. You will also learn about different tools for animating simple characters to use in your projects.
Chapter 5, Producing a Film Title Project Using Text Animator, explains how opening film titles are a great way to set a mood and communicate what the movie is about (according to Saul Bass, a graphic designer who pioneered motion graphics and contemporary film titles). In this chapter, we are going to create a dynamic film title opening sequence.
Chapter 6, Animating Sports Graphics with Compositing Effects, begins our work with video footage. Understanding how to edit video and add effects to footage is an important tool in After Effects. You will learn how to use tools commonly used in the entertainment industry to composite and track video.
Chapter 7, Developing a VFX Project Using the 3D Camera Tracker, gets more advanced with professional-level visual effects commonly used in the entertainment industry. Understanding how to separate objects from their background opens up a plethora of possibilities in special effects. We will also learn how to use the particle system.
Chapter 8, Creating a 2.5D Environment Camera Fly Through, takes your layers and puts them in the 3D space. After Effects has a powerful 3D workspace. Understanding how to animate in a 3D space opens up a lot of options in terms of creating dynamic videos. In this chapter, you will get up and running with all the 3D tools.
Chapter 9, Building a 3D C4D Lite Logo Project, teaches you how to model, light, and composite your 3D project in After Effects.
Before beginning to use this book, you should have a working knowledge of your computer. You should know how to use the mouse and how to open, save, and close files.
After Effects CC is not included with this book. You need to purchase and install it. Some of the lessons in this book use Adobe Bridge, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Character Animator. You must install these programs from Adobe Creative Cloud.
To work through the projects in this book, you need to download the lesson files. The link is provided in the Technical requirements section of Chapter 2, Creating a Lower Third for a Television Show.
We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789345155_ColorImages.pdf.
There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.
CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Create a new 1920 x 1080 comp with a frame rate of 29.97."
Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see on screen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Go to Layer | New | Solid, and change the color to blue."
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In this section, you will learn where the main tools and menus are. The focus is on shape and text layers, animating position, scale, rotation, opacity, and masks.
The following chapters are included in this section: