Book Image

Creative Motion Mastery with Adobe After Effects

By : Vishu Aggarwal
Book Image

Creative Motion Mastery with Adobe After Effects

By: Vishu Aggarwal

Overview of this book

Visual effects and motion graphics are everywhere, shaping the film, TV, games, websites, and application landscape. Navigating a field this complex and ever-expanding demands more than mere familiarity with tools; you need to stand out to get ahead. Creative Motion Mastery with Adobe After Effects is the definitive guide that not only equips you with the essential skills to distinguish yourself, but also takes you through real projects that you can add to your portfolio. Guided by a hands-on learning approach, you'll master the UI, workflow, and diverse projects such as text animation, shape layers, and rotoscoping. With this newfound knowledge, you’ll take your graphic design and post-production skills to the next level using chroma keying, particle simulations, and 2D and 3D tracking. You’ll progress faster than someone taking a formal course in Adobe After Effects! And it’s not all about creating; you’ll import graphics from Illustrator and Photoshop and apply post-production effects to give them a new life. Finally, you’ll discover how seamlessly you can export and manage your projects, ensuring end-to-end coverage of all you need. By the end of the book, you’ll have a thorough understanding of Adobe After Effects, equipped with the skills and practice you need to propel your career in graphic design.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Working with Motion Graphics
8
Part 2: Post-Production and Visual Effects
13
Part 3: 2D and 3D Tracking, and Rendering

Working with Bezier paths

Now, we want to make it taper from the bottom, meaning the bottom should be narrow and the top should be wider to make it look like a funnel. So, for this, we will follow these steps:

  1. We could just change the bottom vertex points in the coordinates, but since we did not select Bezier Path from the Tools panel options, it is showing us the Rectangle 1 properties, which does not give access to the individual vertex points. However, we can easily convert this shape into a Bezier path.

    To convert the shape into a Bezier path, right-click on Rectangle Path 1 and then select Convert To Bezier Path. You will see it becomes an editable path. It shows Path 1, which is what we will select to get access to all four individual vertex points of the shape path.

Figure 4.7: Shape Layer 2 converted to a Bezier path

Figure 4.7: Shape Layer 2 converted to a Bezier path

  1. Now, we need to select the bottom two vertex points together for Shape Layer 2. To do so, go to the Selection tool...