After Effects 1

Today we are having our first After Effects workshop, I haven't used it before so this workshop should be very useful. The images I have made for studio brief 2 should be quite good for animation as they are made up of lots of different shapes that can be adjusted to create movement. 

The workspace is made up of a number of panels. The blue outline indicates which panel we have selected, certain options will only be available if we have the correct panel selected.

The project panel works as a library, select file and import to open projects.

The bottom panel works in a similar way to the layers panel in illustrator or photoshop. The composition panel shows us what we have created in our timeline (bottom panel).

Every after effects project contains at least one composition, can think of it the same way as a new page in illustrator. Go to Composition > new composition.

PAL and NTSC are video standards, PAL is UK and Europe, NTSC is US.

We will be using HDTV 1080 25

1080 is the resolution of the image and 25 is the frame rate per second.

Text in blue means that the number can be changed, you can click and hold on the number then scroll left to decrease the number and right to increase.

We set the duration of the composition in the compositions setting panel as well as the background colour.

we are going to create images within after effects, we started with the layers panel which is only available with the timeline or composition panel selected.

we created a sold layer, a square 100 by 100 pixels. 

When working with layers we can work in two ways. spatially or temporally. We can change where the object is and when the object is.

The red line represents the layer, only where the red line appears in the timeline will the layer be visible. 

each layer we create can only contain one asset, unlike photoshop we cannot have lots of different assets on the same layer. However similarly to photoshop the layer at the top is the layer at the front of the composition. 

If you are using the same shape for multiple layers you can use the edit menu to duplicate layers rather then having to create new layers all the time. You can also use cntrl c and cntrl v to copy and paste leyers.

The info pallet will tell you whether your playback is in real time, this is very useful with more complex projects where aftereffects may not be able to play back. 

At the bottom of the composition window we have drop down list that kets us chose what resolution we want to view our animation in. The resolution is not measured in pixels in this list, we have options such as full, half and third. This is an option to allow us to see our animation in real time. 

The resolution is lowered but we can still se the interactions and movements of the elements on screen.

the blue handles at the top of the timeline are used to determine the work area. The playback will now only show the selected are of the timeline.

to reveal the layer properties click on the triangle next to the layer name on the bottom panel. Next to transform is another triangle, clicking this reveals another drop down menu that gives us information about the layer such as position and scale. The numbers next to of these is highlighted in blue which means they can be changed, we can change them by moving the object in the composition window or by altering these numerical values. 

Changing the scale of an object works the same way as illustrator or Photoshop.

The symbol next to each of these properties that looks like a stop watch is called a time-vary stop watch, it allows us to change to properties based on the time in the animation.

We will be using key frames, key frames are points where a significant change is made. 

The diamond indicates we have set the key frame. we do this by clocking on the stop watch of the property we want to use.

The line shows the motion path that the object will take. a key frame has automatically been made at the finish time I chose. Once we have the key frames set we can alter their position within the timeline. We can add points in the middle of these paths that create curves in the movement of the object. The paths work in the same way as vectors in illustrator with anchor points and handles to alter the paths. 

We can use the pen too. If we hold down on the pen icon on the panel it will bring up a variety of different tools. We can use the convert vertex too to convert the curves to straight lines.

On the left of the timeline panel there are arrows that allow you to scroll between key frames to make adjustments. You can clock the diamond logo between the arrows to add new ket frames without making an adjustment tot he path. 

Shortcuts

P- position property

A- Anchor point

R- Rotation

S- Scale

T- Opacity

B- beginning of work area

N- End of work area

If you want to view two of the properties press one the hold shift and press the second shortcut.

If I select multiple layers then select key frame on one of the them it will be set on all selected layers.

To change an anchor point we can use the pan behind (anchor pint) tool to drag the anchor point to where we want it. 

If you want a movement to pause you can copy and paste a key frame, so you can have a movement that pauses at some stage then continues.