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

Using Null for vertex points of Shape layers

To make the animation simple, After Effects helps us by giving us a script to run, which creates Null objects for the vertex points of the path. With this, we can control multiple vertex points with the Null objects. To do so, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the graph line in the composition, open the dropdown of Layer | Contents | Shape 1, and then select Path 1 | Path.
  2. Go to the Window menu, then select Create Nulls From Paths.
  3. A window will pop up; select Points Follow Nulls.
Figure 4.41: Graph Line Path and Points Follow Nulls selected

Figure 4.41: Graph Line Path and Points Follow Nulls selected

Notice that each anchor point has a Null object created, so if we move the Null, we can see the points also move there. Going ahead, we can control the graph line and make the animation simpler to implement.

  1. Rename all Null objects. Go to Null 1 (that is, vertex point number 1) and rename it Line Point1. Similarly, we will rename each of the Null points...