T454

Week 4 - Spring 2006

Agenda:

• Review homework
• Take quiz
• In-class exercises: AE intro/review

AE Tour

Students should now be working from their portable firewire drives!

Overview

After Effects is an animation and compositing program that supports a broad range of formats and resolutions. People use After Effects to create a wide range of animations, from small 320 x 240 pixel multimedia movies to large film and high-definition projects.

After Effects is format and resolution independent. You can work in square or non-square pixels.

Getting Started - Organizing projects and files

You can import a variety of different media into Motion and After Effects, then move and manipulate them. You can work with almost any kind of media in AE- almost anything you can see and hear. Just make sure that the source media files aren't compressed (MP3s, MPEG-2 video etc). This will cause problems.

Make sure all audio is uncompressed: AIFF files for the Mac and WAV files for PC.

Using Flash files: Export them first as Quicktime using Flash, *then* bring them into After Effects.

Stop and think before you import! It's important to understand that when you import footage files into AE, it uses pointers that reference your files *wherever* they are (CFS storage, internet, Zip disk etc). “Importing” a file into your project doesn’t move it- it just sets up the initial relationship with the file.

It's crucial that your media source files retain the same physical relationship with your project files. A good way to guarantee this is to create a master media folder for a project. (If you'd like you can create sub folders within your master folder for your video, graphics & audio media.) Keep your project files (.aep files) and your media within your master folder. If you need to move or backup your project, move the entire master folder as a whole.

So if you want to work with a graphic or an audio clip, first copy it into your master folder (and maybe into its appropriate sub folder), then import it into your project.

Go back and read the paragraphs before this again and again until you understand it.

Question: Say someone gave you a file on a CD that you wanted to include in your project. What would you do?

Answer: Copy it into your media folder, *then* import it.

Once again, for your sanity make sure you keep all your files in one master directory and maintain the relationship of your AEP project files and media files.

Speed & Safety

Assuming you want to make and play back animations in After Effects, you'll need a fast hard drive. Otherwise you won't be able to play back animations and movies smoothly, without hiccups or stutters. ZIP disks, CDs and network connections aren't usually fast or reliable enough at this point in time. Internal hard drives and external firewire or fast SCSI drives are the best way to go. Because of this, it's best to work off of a portable firewire drive, or off of the internal scratch drive on the lab computers.

Create your master folder on your portable hard drive if you have one, or on the internal scratch drive of the lab computer you'll be working on. Give it an appropriate name (like T354_"your login name"). Assuming you have a portable firewire drive, you can simply take it with you when you leave the lab. However, it's wise to back up your projects onto CD or onto the lab server occasionally, as every hard drive is destined for the junkyard sooner or later.

Backing up onto the server - To back up your work, copy the entire master folder (which contains all of your projects and media) onto a ZIP disk or CD-ROM. In room 250, you can copy the folder onto the server (creatively named "server"). In the Production lab, you can copy your folder onto TC Net Scratch, but be sure to follow the naming conventions outlined on the wall. It's a good idea to asume that your hard drive will crash, so keep backup copies of your work.

AE tour - Making a new project

The project window is a file that references other footage, files and layout info- similar to Avid's or Premiere's windows.

You can customize the view in the Project window (drag headers around)

Hold the control button down & se what happens.

You can also create new folders within the Project window.

Importing Photoshop layers individually verses importing as a comp. When you import individual layers from Photoshop you lose the positioning information.

Compare that with importing a Photoshop file as a comp. It retains all the layers and positioning.

Interpret imported alpha channels
(You can guess, choose straight, or pre-multiplied)

Create compositions (Apple – N creates a new comp. Apple – K brings up the comp settings)

Add layers to comps can be done easily by dragging items into either the composition window or the timeline.

Warning: Wherever your time indicator is becomes the in point for your layer.

Change background color. The background layer can be set to any color you want. When you render/make a movie and choose “RGB + Alpha” and “Millions of Colors +”, it renders the background as transparent, making an alpha channel in the movie.

Transform properties

The base changes you can make to a layer.

• A Anchor point
• P Position
• S scale
• R rotation
• T opacity.

Change position keyframes by dragging

Keyframes

For any animation to happen you need at least two keyframes.

You can set an initial keyframe for a layer by clicking on the stopwatch icon. Anytime you change the parameter you've clicked the stopwatch icon for, a new keyframe is automatically created wherever your position indicator is. An X will appear in the keyframe box.

You can navigate from keyframe to keyframe by the arrow icons. You can remove a keyframe by highlighting it and pressing delete or by unchecking the check box to the left.

Keyframe interpolation - You can set how keyframes react temporally and spatially (time and space). Temporal keyframes effect how the keyframe is applied over time (slow down, speed up, stop) Spatial keyframes effect how the keyframe effects the layer within the space of the composition.

You can set keyframes to be linear, auto bezier, or continous bezier.

Linear keyframes mean the change will occor at a constant rate. Spatially, objects would move in a straight line. Temporally, objects effects will take place at a steady rate of speed.

Auto Bezier

Continuous Bezier

adjust velocity graphs - again this can be done temporally or spatially

Project Window

Replace footage layers highlight the footage you want to replace. Option-drag the new footage into the timeline window.

Create ram previews Hit the 0 key on the numeric keypad.
Rename layers (Highlight the layer and press return. Then you can rename it.)

Timeline

Duplicate layers. (Apple-D does the trick)

precompose multiple layers
render elements

Guides

Find the button to turn on the safe text grid in your comp window. Use it!

You can create and use guides in the comp window.

It works just like Photoshop: Show rulers, then drag the guides in from the edges.

Work Area

Set the work area (B and N keys) This effects RAM previews and rendering.

Keyboard shortcuts:

Command - / adds footage to the center of a comp
Command - Option - F fits layer to comp size
Command D duplicates a layer
Command - shift - \ resize window to fill screen
Command B: sends layer to back
Command F: sends layer to front
Command Up Arrow: send layer up one level
Command Down Arrow: send layer down one level
Press tab key to hide or display all open palettes & toolbox
Command - G displays "Go to ________"
Pressing the period key zooms in (in Comp window)
Pressing the comma key zooms out (in Comp window)
Pressing Command apostrophe key shows grid (in Comp window)
Work area: b for beginning, n for ending
Type 0 (on numeric keypad) for real time wire frame preview

For layer windows
Show any keyframes u
Mask m
Feather f
Effect e
Anchor point a
Position p
Scale s
Rotation r
Opacity t (transparency)
Audio levels l (levels)
By holding down the shift key you can add or subtract properties. So S + (shift + p) = scale and position

Making a Movie:

To make a movie, select your composition, then press command-M or choose "make movie" from the drop-down composition menu at the top of the screen.

The first things it asks is for the name and where to save it. It's recommended that you use the scratch drive, as opposed to the hard drive, or it may not allow you to make it. Saving over the network and to ZIP drives can slow things down.

You should then get the render window, with your composition at the bottom of the list of items to render. Click on the Render settings: Current Settings to open up quality and resolution settings. You can select "best" for quality and pick a size for resolution (full, half etc). Be sure to think about if you want to render your entire comp or just the work area. This selection is on the right hand side of the window.

Once you OK this, back at the render window click on "Output module: Lossless" to open up the format settings. I'd go with Quicktime, under the format drop down menu. Under format options, unless you're outputting for DV or a specific codec, use "animation" with the best quality settings. If you have audio, you can check the "audio output" box. Once you "ok" this you should be back at the render window. Select render and it will start making your movie.

In-class Exercise:

Do some basic animation with one of your TV graphics. You'll first have to import your Photoshop file as a comp. Then make sure the composition length is set to something meangingful, like 10 or 15 seconds or so.

Animate your graphic fading up from black at the beginning and fading out to black at the end. You can easily do this by adding a black solid as the topmost layer in your AE compostion. Then simply add some opacity keyframes. On the black solid layer put a keyframe at frame 0- then make it 100, add another keyframe 15 frames in and make it 0. Get the idea? Do the reverse at the end of your timeline.

After you master the fade up from black and fade down at the end, try animating some of the layers. For example you can make the main title slide in using position keyframes.

Make a movie of your graphic fading up and down. Place it in your folder in the week4 folder on the scratch drive.

Tutorials

(Start in-class if time allows) Work through two of Trish Meyers tutorials. They will provide an excellent start to AE.

Homework:

• Animate one of your TV titles or promo graphics. Important note: make sure you animate a NEW graphic- not one you did during week 4. Think about your graphic's message and the order and timing you want to bring in the information. (Suggested timing: 15 seconds)
  • Be sure to incorporate:
    • AE generated animated text
    • Animated AE effect
  • Render out a half-sized version for viewing in class (eg 320 x 240). (Use the animation codec)
  • Use the T454 critique form to describe what you did and how you made it.
• Optional Tutorials: If you want more AE practice, work through the After Effects tutorial(s) I've left on the room 250 scratch drive. Look in the T454_Krause/bonus tutorials/ folder on the scratch drive for these.

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