Transcripts

1. Introduction: welcome to the comprehensive aftereffects for beginner scores. If you would like to become emotion graphics artist learned a softer for private use or check out if aftereffect is the rights after for you, this course is the right guy to do so. I will teach you all the necessary basics. You need to know and help you complete your first projects. Let me know. Sit down a PC and show what I have prepared for you. - The entire course is, of course, divided in sections. But the general structure is four hours off basic training which will teach you all the necessary tools to start working and then the workshop where we'll make some exciting, real life examples answer to yourself. Why do you want to take this course? You want to start making motion graphic. You want to make better online courses and promo videos. You want to enhance your YouTube channel. You want to be able to great product for your friends and clients. This comprehensive course will teach you everything you need to know to start working in after. If you are ready to work, hit the enroll button and let's go. I look forward to seeing you inside 2. 01-01. Class Structure, how to learn it quicker: welcome inside of this course. There is some work ahead of us, but the end result will be rewarding. As you well know, a great deal about aftereffect and you will be able to complete your first project. So let me know. Take a sip of tea and sit down at the PC to explain your the structure. And if I design as good as I rhyme, we'll all set. I want to quickly explain you how the courses structural eyes. So it will be easier for you to prepare and work along at first. In the next lesson, you have to download the project files. The project files will help you work along with me. And the most important, there will be a footage folder. This footage folder will have some photos, some icons, an example photo shop and illustrator file a few sounds and, of course, a few videos. We will work with some of the files in our lessons. Let me very briefly explain the structure. The entire course is, of course, divided in sections, but the general structure is four hours off basic training which will teach you all the necessary tools to start working and then the workshop where we'll make some exciting real life examples. I would, for example, recommend you doing one section a day. You could off course to more, but by doing one section a day, you will be regulated in less than a week to first sections that core elements and workflow will teach you the basics and familiarize with the program. From there we will work with the shape, layers and other type of layers. Then we'll go inside of the animation and then we continue with effects and presets. All those three combined is like the bread and butter off after effect. Once we are done with that, I will show you some other most used techniques. These are topics which, after effects is famous for, for example, green screen color key motion tracking, making transparent videos. All those topics had to be included in this course in order to make it comprehensive. The final boss off this course and the moment where it all will be. The most interesting will be the workshop. Here we will work on some real life examples on selected topics. I can assure you that once you are dominant, discourse after effect will become one of the tools you are happy to work in 3. 01-02. What is Motion Graphics and AE?: to get an understanding off what it is that we are dealing with. I want to quickly touch on motion graphics itself and after effects as the program. This is a very tricky combination of words because it has not just one simple explanation, but in the very generic language. Motion graphics, our graphic project that simply move. Thousands of people try to explain what motion graphics is to them and how they see it as a part of the whole graphic design word. On one side, I can find motion graphics are generally short pieces off time based visual media, which combined the language off Phil and graphic design. And this is a very short and precise explanation. Motion graphics use footage and animation to create the illusion off motion. So if I create something in photo shop, let's say I place a text and then I make the text to move in some other application. I begin to transfer it into motion graphics a bit later, when more tools off video editing appeared, Motion graphics was considered a digital technique that combines pictures, words, sound and video. And in this block post from all Boardman, you see a few simple example Off motion graphic design. This is exactly what motion graphic design wants to convey in itself. It wants to explain the story. It wants to express something exactly as John Dickinson wrote a few years back. For me, motion graphics is the satisfaction off executing on idea that moves people. And this is also something which should be on your mind while you are creating motion graphics. It cannot be told that motion graphics emerged in 2010 and people started using in because moving graphics in cinematography we're known for the past decade or even more. Even in older movies. We have some introductions, which shows motion graphics. Example. Just like here in this video, we see different kinds off animations, but they are all related to motion graphics. One particular software, which is dealing very good with motion graphics, is off course. Our beloved after effects aftereffect allows us to use all the tools Adobe brings us to create engaging, interesting and expressive motion graphics. Here's an example. Inter. I've created ones, and I can freely say that this is an example off motion graphics because I have graphical elements, like a background like a video like some text, and it is all moving to become emotion graphics design. This is only one example of using after effects, but after effects off course goes far beyond that. This application is used by video professionals to create engaging motion graphics and cinematic visual effect so you can add visual effects and correct your footage. You can create animations, or you can combine all of those techniques. Inter one piece off art. So I hope if you are watching this video, you are excited to start learning after effects because this is a really beautiful software , which evolves from year to year, and Adobe is making sure that it meets the current standards, and it will be always up to date and one of the leading program in animation design on the planet. So I hope you are eager to jump in with me and diving deeper in the program. I hope to see you in the next lesson 4. 01-03. Terminology in Video Editing: In this video, I will explain some basic terminology most commonly used in video editing, animation and motion graphics. Overall, I will briefly talk about what is a footage. Color channels. What is a key frame for this interpellation? What is rendering masks met and finalizing it with compositing and compositions? Let us start with footage in the video production and motion graphics footage is unedited raw material, which we use in postproduction footage, is mostly related to video. But no matter of use a Photoshopped file, an image or video. You can tell that all of this can be your footage, which you will work with. Maybe you came across a term like stock footage or video footage. These are websites which offer footage files for sell what you can use in your graphic products. Next on our plate are the color channels, see, um way kay and are to be our caller models. So in RGB, we have three channels red, green and blue, and those three channels, by combining the light off each other, are creating a various palette of colors. In video. Off course, we use RGB, and if you would like to edit only one off the channels or preview one off the channels. I can click your on the red. Then I can click on green and on blue. And those three images together create the RGB color palette and create this nice red image . An additional channel, which is added in graphic design, is the Alfa Channel. The Alfa Channel is that transparency now. It's not visible because the entire screen is filled up. But if I will delete this image, I would have the Alfa Channel visible because there is nothing visible in the background. You can also toggle the Alfa Channel an after effect by clicking this button. This is just for convenience. Some people prefer to work in a black background. Some people prefer to see the transparency, grit. Now we are getting to the real juicy stuff. Key frames, key frames are those little guys here which help us to animate anything in after effects. As you can see, I have set a key frame on the position, and as I direct my timer, this layer is moving. So to explain what is a key frame apart for being this little guy, because this is only a graphical interpretation key frames indicate change in the value off a property in the layer. I know this sounds a bit complicated, but he only have to know that key frames are used to prepare animations and change values over time. And now this is why we are heading over toe interpolation, which is one of the most important word interment used in video graphic overall. Because interpellation automated our animation process where the interpolation came from off course from mathematics. But it is so impressive in after effects, let's say I create a round shape. I opened up the shape I opened up the Phil, and I said the key frame at the beginning to make it red. I go a few friends further, and I make it blue, for example. Now I don't have to go frame by frame and change the color slowly toe blue. It is interpolated automatically from red to blue, and this is what is allowing us to create amazing animation in after effects. Because we use mathematics or after effects is using rather for us to automatically interpolate between two values. How cool is that? Okay, Before I get too excited, let me get back to the boring stuff. I'll delete the circle rendering in video, especially after effect rendering is the process off creating our final video output? Former, for example, This is my main camp animation. I could add it to the render queue, render it out and I would have a right video. This is what is called rendering in video editing. Now let me touch on the to next things together because they are very similar masking and matting. Masking is a tool which allows us to protect or reveal a specific portion, often image by default. Masks can be created in after effects with direct angle tool. If you don't have anything selected and I select the circle, it will just create a shape layer. But if I would have this layer selected, the Redwall, which is my image here in the background, and I would click on the rectangle tool or use the circle, it doesn't matter. It would create a mask. The longer I dragged him ask the more off the images revealed. I have messed one here. It has appeared because I have created it and it is now said with the blending Moto at, I could of course, also subtract it to get the opposite off it. If I choose at, I can then work further with the mask, for example, Federer it out. And with a few mouse clicks, I can get this nice blending effect here. Okay, let me delete the mask. So this was a mask. But we also have matting. Methinks is something more natural, and it doesn't have to be influenced by masked like that. I don't have toe create masks. Matt, are something built in our image already? I have this little toggle switches button here on the bottom, and it reveals our moat and track Matte. As you see, I've used a track matte to reveal this red text. This red text is invisible, but underneath there is a shape. Let me reveal it. No track. Matte. This is the shape. It is just a simple white rectangle. But if I set the track Matte tau alpha matte red. This rat tex will be only visible when it will appear over this shape layer. So when it's on the left, it's invisible. But when it's here, the track matting allows us to reveal it with a shape, so as you see masking emitting are very similar method, but masks have to be created and mats come more natural and they are already built in in our image. We just have to influence it with different options. Last but definitely not least is compositing. Let me pull out Wikipedia to help. Wikipedia is, of course, not always perfect source. But the explanation here off compositing is really very good. Compositing is the combining off visual elements from separate sources into single images. After faith is a compositing power machine, it allows us to combine several items and elements in one place to create a visual story or effect. This is all I wanted to give you in the basic terminology off video editing. It might be a bit difficult. You've learned something like key frames, interpolation rendering all at once. But trust me, this will be a basis for you. And next time, if you hear those words, you'll already have some basic understanding off what they refer to. You already know more about motion graphics. Thank you very much for listening to this heart, but I believe Interesting lesson. See you in the next one. 5. 01-04. EXERCISE - Prepare Your First Movie: hello and welcome in this introduction every lesson where you will prepare and complete your first after effects movie. Now, once you head over to Adobe Help and support for aftereffect, there are a lot of articles on basic usage off the program. One of those articles is on the topic off work flows, and while you will not learn everything from those articles, Adobe is implying that it will be good if you start out by making your first very simple movie. And that's what we're going to do right now. In this lesson, I will, of course, explain every detail off what we are doing later in the lesson. Once we get deeper in the program and learn step by step. But at the beginning, I would also like you to complete your first project, render your first movie and see what you created after you're done. All right, I have read what Adobe told us to do and let's jump right into aftereffects. Let me make it full screen and we can start working once you are an after effect. That's it. You're done. No, of course I'm joking. You need to go to composition press on new composition. And here are the options off our composition. You don't have to understand everything here right now. Just go to do it. Make it 12. 80 7 20 p. This will be our resolution off the composition We will prepare and at the duration instead of having 30 seconds or as many seconds as you have. Delete everything. What is here and place? Five seconds. This will be completely enough for our first animation hit. OK? And your composition is created. So now let us start crunching on our first animation. I hope you are following along. You don't have to change an option or do anything else. Just go to layer new and create a new solid layer. Please select the color of the background you want to have in this panel. I'll click here. And I heard, for example, like to have a nice reddish background. I press. Okay, I press. Okay. My background is created. This is my composition. It has a solid red layer and the layer, as you can see on the timeline, displaying for five straight seconds. Now click. And they were to de select this layer. Go here on the top to the text tool. And right. Any award Adobe is telling us You can write, for example, your name. But I want to write something different. Let me write Turbo. All right, I have the terrible text. And by having this layer selected here, you can make it a big bigger and a director panel. If you don't see the character panel, please go to window and open up character. All right? I just want to make it bigger. Something like that may be changing the phone because it's so plain and boring. All right, this on this. Okay, still a bit bigger will be better. All right, I have it in the middle. And now goto window, open up a line. What? You have the align panel opened press on this little button and this little button tohave it perfectly centered. You are halfway through with the animation by having this layer selected and having the play head at the very beginning off our animation press p and click on the stopwatch. A little key frame has appeared. No press once again on this layer and press s toe, open the scale property and also place a key frame right now. If you hit this layer, press you both key frames, would you are editing will appear. Everything is fine. We are going in the right direction. And right now you should be at the point where I am. You should have an empty composition, have a text in the middle and have two properties open deposition and the scale. Once again, you hit you on the keyboard to reveal all key frames which are edited. Okay, we have the two key frames here at the very beginning off our timeline. Now we will start with the good stuff. Let me go toe. Four seconds. Four seconds will be here on the timeline, as you can see and by pulling this little time litigation and I'll extend my friend to see the entire five seconds. All right. At four seconds. I want my animation to be finished for this. I want the tour vortex toe go down and be a bit smaller. This is while we use the position and the scale property to prefer our animation press V on the keyboard or press here to use the selection tool. I'll scroll back a bit and I placed my tour boat text here on the far bottom left site. While this is happening automatically, one key frame has appeared now also go to the scale, and by hitting the 100% make it smaller toe about 30%. You can also click manually and right here 30 all right, and this is everything. I want it from my animation. You can now pull the handle to see what is happening on the screen. You can also click on preview toe ramp review What is happening inside of this animation, and by hitting the space bar, you can stop and play it ahead. Okay, this is our first animation. It's prepared. Now let's render it to a video for that. You do not have to do many things. You just press control or comment. Shift forward slash. This will add the composition one, which we had active automatically to the render queue. We'll talk later about the render options, but for your first animation and first render, we can stay at lossless to specify work. To save it, just click here and select the place where the file will be saved. All right, I have selected the place where my first animation will be rendered. I hit Render I wait a little bit until it finishes, and I go to watch my first prepared animation, As I see the movie has rendered, it is very big because we choose lost less here in the render settings. Normally you always render with Codex. But here for your first animation, it's 400 megabytes because the solid background takes a bit and this is our first beautiful animation. I hope you're proud of yourself. This doesn't look as fancy as it should, but for the first animation you make the first steps. You prepared an animation, you edited some key frames and you render it it out. And this is how your usual workflow in after effects looks like this was the beginning with getting our feet wet with our first animation and proceed to the next section toe. Finally start analyzing the program and creating some nice animations. Thank you very much for listening to this introduction. Every lesson into animation 6. 02-01. After Effects Interface: Hello. Welcome in this video. We are going to take a big picture. Look at the interface off after effect, how it is divided up and some of its key functions. This will be a rather general overview off the program because there are so many options and buttons which we will look into later. But it is important to understand how the interface works as a whole. Here in after effects. Please go to the project files which you have downloaded and open up the interface project . It might look a bit different, but it should be called interface and depending on which aftereffect version you have, if you have CIA six, open this file. And if you have the after effects CC version, please open the CC version product filed. Let us review now off which elements The after effects interface consists as complex it might look Adobe has done a very good job of making this entire program as easy to navigate through as possible. Let me first list a few core items will review and then tell a few words about them at the top left side. We have our toolbox right under it. We have our project window right below it on the bottom health off the screen, we have our layers with their duration, which is the entire timeline in the middle of the screen. We have our composition, which can be also called the preview window. And on the right side of the screen, we have our configurable tools panels with the basic after effects layout. We have our info panel. Our preview panel most likely are effects and presets and a few panels we have opened up ourselves. All panels which are missing can be found in window, and you can always open them. For example, if you miss the efforts and presets panel, you just click here and it will appear on the screen. I wanted to go a bit more into detail about the elements I've listed, and how are they connected together, where? Let me start with the toolbox. The toolbox, I believe, doesn't need as much explanations efs. The other elements have because under toolbox, we have items very similar to older adobe programs like Photoshopped or illustrator. We have at the beginning our move tools which help us to move the composition around to select items and to zoom in right after that. We have a segment off tools which is used for rotation and usage off cameras in our layers . Right after that, we have the most used after effects tools, which are the creation tools. Here. We can create rectangles. We can use the pen tal to create shapes and, of course, our beloved text tool, which allows us to enter text into our composition and work from there. After that, we have our brushes, razors and a few other tools which will explore later. This is our project window, where we load up our assets, organize our project and overall decide which items are used. What's amazing here is that if you click on any element here, you have a little preview box. This preview box not only showed you the time nail so immediately know what's going in this composition and what, for example, going on in this solid layer. You have also the settings off a particle er composition. I'll, of course, explain with detail what a composition is, But for now, you only have to understand that a composition inside of after effect is a group of items which is pre composed to contain all our animation and layers at once. As I click on the composition here in my project, I immediately know that it has this resolution. It has six seconds off duration, and it was, and it's settings are set toe 30 frames per second. So it's a very seamless video, and most often, if you are combining all of your assets and preparing yourself for work, this is all you need to know. To start using a particular item for this composition, I used a photograph with a red background, and I organized this photo into a photos Fuller. If you want toe organize anything here, you just drag and drop it around. I can create new folders by clicking here. A new Fuller could be, for example, called videos, and all my assets could be put into this folder, which will contain all the videos I will not use in my project. Everything off course can be dragged around repositioned, put in tow one another. I won't use that. Now I'll delete a video folder. The photos saw it and main company is completed. Enough for what we have now. Now let us head over to the most important panel. The timeline hold information about all the layers we have in our project and how long the layers are displayed. As you see, by hitting this little time indicator, I can I can scrap through my entire composition and preview what is going on on it. I want to see all six seconds at once. So we need to pull this handle to the end. And now I see the entire composition. This is a zooming in option which allows us to go in detail if you want to edit something frame by frame because in video editing and animations, you want every frame to count When you are doing some project, Let me extend this back here. We have our layers. Want a layer is selected? It will highlight in the composition panel. The composition panel. Let us preview what actually is happening on the screen and a basic workflow and after effects always looks like that. You import some assets into your project files. You put those assets here as layers and then you start editing an animation. As you see, it turns green because it has already loaded. And now, with the preview panel, I can preview what is happening on the screen. This is used to preview the animation you are creating. If you are not satisfied with the animation just hit pause by hitting the space bar, you can shift some key frames to change the animation. And after that, it would have to load again. So let me again press in preview. And if you decided that this looks better, you could go forward and render the video layers on. The timeline can be shortened just by clicking on them and dragging them to the position you want. If you have snapping, enabled they would snap. Here, let me, for example, get rid off the text until the fourth seconds. I don't know. See this red text at all? This red text is the first layer. I only select the first layer, and I want to get rid of it until the 4th 2nd So everything prior to that will not show me the red taste as I over my mouth. After four seconds, it finally starts to appear. Okay, let me go back. Because in fact, I want to see the text. It's essential to this animation. Laters. Inside off after effects off course followed the same hierarchy as in photo shop. Let me show you a brief example. This is our rattle J pic project file, which is the background. You can make the background visible or invisible by clicking on this little Aibel. Aiken, if I would take this background and put it as the first layer, nothing else would be visible because the first layer would cover up the tree boxes, which are here on the bottom, and the red text which is appearing here. Won't you click on a layer element here? It instantly shows me which layer I have selected. Also, this little box indicates that this layer is in three D space. I can turn this off or on if I don't want to move it only in the X or y axis. But I would also like to use the ZX is to make it closer or more deep into the composition . So let me put the red well at the bottom again, everything is visible. You can rece ice each element just by clicking on it and dragging. You will get to know the interface once using the program in real life. I just wanted to show you that each component in the after effects window can be pulled over and replaced. For example, if you are using very often, they're aligned tools. I could not use it because they don't apply to treaty layers. But let me use this now. And I would, for example, want to have the line tools here. That's absolutely no problem. Just take them, dragged them over. And you see this little purple indicator shows me where this will be placed. I could even replace my entire composition with the Align panel if it would be very important to me. But off course, that has no sense in this case, but in some cases you want to replace certain elements, so it's easier for you to edit. I want you to take a few panels and just play around with them, for example, dragged the preview panel here, check out how everything looks. You can off course, pull their handles and precise elements like that, and once you are done, do not be afraid. You don't have to press control Z or something to get back. You can go to the workspaces options click on standard and just reset the standard view or explore another views which Adobe has prepared for us. For example, the minimal or the paint you. I will now go back to my standard view. I'll take on standard reset standard. I'll click. Yes, you can make as many workspaces as you want. You just get here and hit new workspace in after effects CC as I see my composition opened and by the way, you can open each layer or composition by double clicking on it. For example, let me quickly make a new composition. I have come form and now I can toggle between the compositions and if I'm done editing, for example, I place a text. That text is hello. I close this composition because I no longer want to added the hello composition. It was come form. It shows me hello and I can drag this composition here because, as I told you, compositions are simple groups containing many informations at once, and I can use one composition nested within another composition. From here, I can resize it. I can use the rotate to rotate it around and do many other fundings with it in after effects cc near toe. Every composition you have this I can with the tree lines displayed in this I can we have some basic options regarding our composition in after effects? CIA six. This option is not here. It is here on the far right side. The options are the same. These are some global options which you can apply to compositions. Since this is a rather very important feature, Adobe has decided toe place it right here. It takes up a bit off space, but its really useful to have it by hand. You can undocked the panels, you can run with them around. And this is all I wanted to show you about the basics off the interface in after effects. I hope you were clicking along with me to get a bit familiar with the interface and let us head over to the next lesson where we will explore some preferences which will allow us to work more efficient in after effects 7. 02-02. Preferences & memory size: adobe after effects has some specific preferences which you should know about. Let me show you how to access them and how to change them up. If you are working on a Mac, you will have here adobe after effects Just click on it. Windows User can click, edit and by hitting edit. You go down here to preferences and here you can find the general preferences. If you want to immediately go to a category, you know, we want to change. Just select the category right here. If no, please open up, General and will now review the most important options that are here and what we should change. I will, of course not go over each option because these are much options, which in most cases should be not changed, their very properly done. I just want to show you key changes with you can undertake to make your workflow faster and easier In the general tab, you can read true toe, get an understanding what is happening here. But for me personally, the most important option here is revealed preferences in Explorer. I believe on a Mac computer. This is called finder. From time to time, you either one or make a safety backup off your preferences or after effects is running into some problems. You just click here and after a friend's is revealing the file, which is holding all the preferences. But you can, for example, safety back up on another hard drive. If you would like to import some preferences, you can also migrant previous version settings. So if you are working on Adobe CS six and you transition into Adobe CC, you can simply migrate your preferences. Let us continue with the next options in the previous and display panels. There are not much things to change but a general rule, especially if you have a slow computer. You want aftereffect to run as fast and smooth as possible, because rendering video takes a lot of time. So if you have a weak machine, you could, for example, lowered resume quality in the color management quality toe faster and faster. But if not, you can stay by their default. The same goes for the display options. For example, we have one option here toe disable the time days in project panels. As you see, this is the tablet in the project panel. Well, this would not save you money room, but each little option combined together gives you a bit more space to work. So if you have a really slower machine, you can turn this on. But I definitely do not recommend it because it's useful to see the Tamil and it doesn't eat up much room. The next category is the importing settings. In most cases, if you import some assets in your project and you drop them into your composition, you wanted to take the entire length of the composition, so most often you will not change it to a specific time and the next option. The sequence footage is if you load up image sequences and you set a default frame rate. If you have image sequences, which are slower, for example, 25 frames per second, you could change the default sequence footage, import settings, but will not change anything here. The next important section is the great proportional grids and guides. In the grading options, you have some colors and some pixels. This refers to the grid on the composition. You open up all helper grits. With this button, you can toggle the title action safe, which is used just like in television, which tells you where is the safety text to display your text and the action off your composition. You can also display the proportional grid, which is with green lines. Here you can display a normal grid and, of course, opened up rulers and pull out rules toe help you During the work, we will talk about those rulers and helping guides later. But as for the options you see, the rulers are blue, the greatest green and the great, for example, is divided into the little five pixel or 10 pixel sections. If you want to change it, it's off course. No problem. In the edit preferences, grit and Guide section, you can change everything up by adjusting the pixels and the colors. The same goes for the labels. The labels display the default colors off layers you dragged into the composition as we can notice. In our example, I have here three solid layers. Solid layers are displayed as red text layers are also displayed as red. I have here one shape layer and the shape layer is this late as blue. This can be off course change by clicking on this little color and changing it here. But if you want to stick to the default coloristic, it is set in the labels. The next option is very, very important. I would say it's crucial to the entire Preferences section because after effect is a render heavy program. Adobe is telling us that the optimal render settings would be, if you would have three hard drives, one for your system in the application, one for your footage and one for a cache folder. And, of course, this all depends what I were doing in after effects and how heavy is your render. If you're just starting out, you do not have to make such big cache sizes. You can, for example, stay at the default 20 gigabytes. I just have it set to a bit more because I have a second hard drive and this hard drive is my story device. So I have repaired a cache folder on this drive. A general rule here is that it would be optimal if the cash folder is not on the same disk or partition where your system is, So if you have the opportunity to change it, please do this now change it to another partition or days. This will take you up about 20 gigabyte of space. The same goes for the conformity media, cash and from time to time. It's a good practice toe. Empty the discussion and clean the database and cash to make sure that our this is clean and prepared for some rendering. The next option I want to show you is the appearance. If you didn't like the appearance of Adobe CS six more than the new version, you can toggle the brightness up, and it would look similar to the program from CS six. The only thing here is that you have the blue colors. You can adjust how strongly are displayed. By choosing the interactive colors and the focus indicators, you can make them a bit lighter, and they just stand out more in this lower brightness settings. Next option is the out of safe option, and you can tell after effects how often it will save. And you can also choose a custom folder, for example, on another hard drive. As for the memory goes, this is very important. I have currently on my PC, 16 gigabytes off from installed and the distribution is by basic that after effects can take up up to 10 gigabytes off Bram off course after effects. It's not always taken up 10 gigabytes. This is only when surrendering or something, but by default you can leave this settings. It can eat up to 60 or 70% of your room. That's okay, because you still have some room toe work on your browser or in photo shop. The last setting is the synchronization setting. Each time I make a change here, Adobe will automatically synchronized my settings to the cloud. This option WAAS not available in the CS six version because Creative Cloud has started from CC version. So if you are using an older version off after effect, you can reveal the preferences and Explorer and save your file and eventually replace the file or copy it over. But in the newer version, you don't have as many problems. You can either migrate from another older version or just leave the version in the cloud, and you have no problem because they will update automatically. So this is all I have to say in the explanation off the preferences in the program. I hope you have a better understanding off the program now, and though the most important preferences insight off after effect. If you want to find out how you should properly set up your composition, please head over to the next lecture. 8. 02-03. Importing & Organizing Assets: in this video, we are going to talk about how toe import footage in our project and how toe organize it properly. Will Importing footage in after effects is very simple. All the assets and foot is your importing will appear in the project panel by default. The project panel is here on the left side and tow import anything you only have toe double click on this area. You can also right click and hit import, importing a file or just goto file import and press here file please. Now open up aftereffect toe work along with me and try and import you first few files. You will have your footage folder As I am recording this lesson, I'm still collecting files for the entire course. But I already have some photographs, some videos and some other files. Please double click on the photos folder and select two photographs by hitting the left control or command key and selecting a few and hitting import. Right now, we have imported a few assets in tow. Our project panel double click here again and now import some videos. I will, for example, select two videos here and import them into our project in the product. I immediately see that thes files are images. These files are video footage. Here we have some basic information about the video, like the resolution, its duration and the Kodak in which is was surrendered. Well, if you do not like any off the names, you simply click on any file and hit, enter or return. This allows you to change its name. For example, city and these every video. Please remember about this simple short term because it's used in after effects for layers and for everything. For renaming, you only have to press enter. Now let me populate this a bit more. I create here and create a few compositions, maybe three or four compositions. And I hope you now begin to understand that once you are importing more and more assets and sometimes that's really 50 or 100 different files, you should be organizing them in some folders, For example, I should separate my compositions from my assets and footage. I have the video footage and my photographs. Let's say I want to have the photographs and the videos. In one folder, I click this button to create a new folder. I could also select all items here and just drag him over. Entered this folder. A new folder is appearing, and I'll call it footage, maybe even for my own information, I'll call it. It's completely up to you how you want to name it personally as I'm designing something, I like to make clean names and put them into brackets, because brackets and the hierarchy are red as the first folders. So very often I'm doing something like that footage and they create a new folder. Crump's like that. I dragged all compositions here and now I have a completely better understanding off what's going on in my project because I can immediately go to my compositions. Open up the compositions, which I need, he reckoned off course, close them down, but I have quick access toe all my files. Also, you need to remember that sometimes after effects is creating those folders and footages for ours. For example, if I would like to create a background here, I hit control or comment. Why? To create a new solid and you can notice right away that after effects has created a solid folder. This is a native option in after effects, and it's great that is putting the solid into one folder because as I create more of those solid, for example, they want another layer like that, a rat one. It could be smaller. You will be working with those solids. I'll copy it, and they automatically are in the solids folder. I have copied the same solid several times. This is why only one is here and not several of them. Importing footage, images and videos is very simple, and please always try to stay organized within your project. Importing Photoshopped files and illustrator Fars is not very much advanced, but it's very important toe import them properly to be able to work on animations with them . It's crucial for you to know this before we start designing anything in after effects. So please head over to the next lessons where I will show you how to properly import Pius the AI files and what problems you might come across while working with those files. 9. 02-04. Importing .PSD files properly: in this video, I want to show you how to properly import Photoshopped files. What are the different import settings and what troubles you might run into at first? Let me open up photo shop. I will talk about what is a composition in after effects. I will tell you that compositions in after effects are similar to groups in photo shop, and now you will see the first example. Why? Because once you are importing Photoshopped files with groups, those groups create separate compositions inside of after effects. This is very convenient because you can open the group's right away and work with the layers. Here we have three example stems. Let me maybe close the guides so you see the stems and they have some effects on them. I will release one of the color overlays to make one black, and the rest will stay as is. We have a square at Rangel and a rectangle, and now comes in the entire beauty off. Working with Adobe softer because Photoshopped illustrator aftereffect. They're very tight together in terms off the native tools, and you will see that adobe after effects is also handling those layers tiles. So it's not like you create something in Photoshopped, you save it and you have absolutely no more control in after effects. But certain elements and effect can be used natively also within after effects. Let me move toe aftereffect importing, as you've learned in the previous lesson, can be done by double clicking in the project panel, I double click. I go back to my PSD and AI finds folder. Currently, I have one file here. I will use this temps. You can click once on them and on the bottom side you have import is footage, compositions to retain the layer sizes or a simple composition. I can go it footage. This time I will take on import. And now there appears an important window. Do you want to have creditable layer styles from photo shop? Or do you want toe? Merge the layers to make the project a bit lighter to make it easier for aftereffect. And if you are sure that you will not need to edit those preferences, let me import the file both ways, and you should do this. Also, please open up after effect and import this temps file At first. Let us stay with this option. I hit OK, And now what happened? On the left side we have a new composition called Stamps and we have a new folder called Stan Players. This is something that aftereffect does for us not only with imported the PSD file, but we also got all the layers separate because if you would like to use only one layer here and use it right away, we can drag it right from the layers panel. Also, as I told you, that groups are compositions the rectangle square and triangle So we could say eventually the after effect is doing even too much for us. But this is only for our convenience. Because we have free access to the PSD file to the PSD layers and to the PSD groups. And I can go, for example, light within the stems. It also copied over my rulers and guys, which is also very useful. Now let me go inside one off the rectangles. This rectangle is a composition Since compositions are similar to group As I'm telling you , I go to photo shop. I see this group itself has no effect. Only the layers in sight off this group have some effects, so let us head over to aftereffect. I have direct angle group composition. I double click on it. And now I arrived at the two layers that we had in photo shop. As I will open up those layers here, I opened them. I see the layer styles panel appeared, and we have the inner shadow, the color overlay the stroke. And he could also add new elements by right clicking on the layer going toe layer styles. And we can either at the inner glow, the bevel and ambos, the Saturn and more options, just as you do in photo shop. You write like here you go toe blending options, and you have all the different tools to work with. So as you can notice, we have the same native tools. Maybe they are a bit harder to use an after effect because you have to open the panels each separately. You have to work with their separate properties, and this is getting really difficult. One enhancement that we have. We can press the tilde key by holding the mouth here and expressing on it to enlarge one particular element off after effect to the entire screen. Let's do it the other way around that will take here. Press on the stamps, hit footage or composition to import immediately and composition. And this time around, Murch. The layer styles inter footage as I hit OK, A new folder, of course, disappeared. A new composition has appeared. I go inside. This composition stems, too. I go once again inside the rectangle and as I opened up the Layer seven here, it will not have the effect because those effects will be flattened and merged. Entered this layer just as if you would open up photo shop, hit on the layer and rest. Arise the layer style and this is how you can work an import property. PSD files. So always remember that you can use the native tools and have them still insight off after effects for future editing. Also notice that grouping is very important in terms off. How many compositions do you want to have insight off the after effects file? Because if I will have three groups here, I will import it. I will become later in the stems three separate compositions to work on. Thank you for your attention in this lesson. The next lesson will be about importing illustrator files. This is also very, very important, and illustrator files are like the best to for using an after effect because you can create and convert them to shape layers and scale them infinitely. So stay tuned for this upcoming lesson to learn how to properly do it. 10. 02-05. Importing .AI files properly: in this video, we will talk about how to properly import illustrator files. Let us start right away. I have an illustrator file with social icons prepared. We have here several art boards, but I would like, for example, this arbor Toby imported. Now, how to achieve this If you go straight into aftereffect import the file I have here eight. Our board said I imported maybe as a composition I imported. It's now insight off after effect. We have eight art board set and the illustrator file nothing else. As I double click here to open up the composition, I see that only one art birth has imported. The layers are not separate. So how can I edit the Facebook? I can the Twitter Aiken separately, I wanted to create some animations. But right now I have completely no control over this. I could eventually right click on the illustrator file. Since this is a vector file, you can create shapes from a vector layer. But this doesn't help me as much because now insight off this shape layer in the contents off this shape layer, I have 20 different groups. Each group is an icon and I have to open the group and I have to. Pat's here. One Pat is the icon. One Pat is the background and this is completely not optimal for working with illustrator. So what? You have to remember about toe work with separate layers here and after effect, you have to do the same in Illustrator. It can't be like that that one layer is holding all the information about all the icons in the world. You would need to have the icons on separate layers. Now let me first hit the art. Bored to hell on the left are you see, this is art bore one and that why it was imported Because it's the first art board. I want one of those colorful art boards. So let me click on each artwork and just delete all the rest. Now I take the selection tool to delete all the icons I don't want. Ideally, this and I'm left with one art board. What can I do to make separate layers off those icons I see on the bottom here? Some guides. I'll also take them and delete them to clean up my project and less step I want to take is to make separate layers for those icons. Luckily, you don't have to press new layer import new layer import for each icon. I will delete that you can simply right click here on the top and select released two layers sequence I will release. The layers are only the first layer is as the main layer. But I can select all the other layers. I paste them over the first layer and I no longer have to use one master layer. I would delete it Now I have perfect layers to use an illustrator. Let me save notice. Filed toe one art board set. I goto file safe ass. I save it. This one one our board set safe. Okay, the options are fine. I goto aftereffect. I double click here. I select one art board said I import it and now I can choose. So I want to merge the layers off course not. I want to import a composition. I want to remain with footage Dimension I click. Ok, And what do I have now? I have a composition one art. What set? And I have access toe each layer separately. I could now go on, create animations on the timeline work with the icons copied them over to other projects and compositions. And I have full control off what is going on because they are now on separate layers. If you are importing something from illustrator, it has to be on separate layers, depending on what you want to achieve and what you want to animate. This is something very important to remember for the future. Thank you for listening to my explanation on how to properly import illustrator file to prepare them for animation in after effects. 11. 02-06. Relinking Missing Assets: Sometimes when you move files or rename your project files, you will run into such a dialogue box when you open up after effects and your project as I hit. OK, I see my Bagram has disappeared. Don't get confused if you see those rainbow color bars instead off the graphical elements, because this is indicating us that after effect has lost the link connecting the original footage to the after effects project. If you want to quickly find the files which are missing, you can type in here. Miss after effect will automatically sort out the files which are missing. Then you can double click it and re link it with the footage you have changed or the fires you have moved. I will do this right now. I'll double click on my photograph. I will find the photograph in my footage files. I know it's in photos, and I have changed the name to read Will x x x just so I can show you this example if I would have all those images in this project after clicking on this one, Image after effect would also search all those file and identifies he confined to replace them right now, I have replaced my asset and my project is working properly again. This is how easy you can re link footage If you lose the connection between the project and the original footage, this was too easy for you. Am I right? Don't worry. Harder lessons will come ahead. Please open up the next lesson and it can move forward with our after effects learning. 12. 02-07. Composition Settings: let us talk about what is a composition and how to create it. Witten aftereffect. You can think about the composition as a sort off group or a container, which contains layers. Enter informations. It's very similar to groups in photo shop. In photo shop groups can contain group object like layers, and those layers can have effects or other things of flights to it. In aftereffect, compositions deal as those containers, which contain information about what is going on in our videos. You can create a composition by going here on the top to the composition panel and clicking on new composition or using the shortcut control or command plus N. You can also use this button as a shortcut to quickly create our compositions as I click on it that composition settings pop up. This is my first composition, and let's call it first test police open up after effects and follow along with me. Under the basic sections, we have the presets, the size of our composition, the frame rate and a few other things like the duration. With the presets, we can choose a pre defined composition setting. For example, Powell is the European standard in television. NTSC is the North American standard in television, and we have some other composition settings, like HD or Film four K and two K. These are all different options and settings. But if you're creating animations mostly which will be used on the computer screen on YouTube on your website, you'll most likely not use those presets. Just take this first preset a TV HDTV 7 $2029.97 frames. I will select the preset, but I want to go through the options with you. Well, the width and the height is pretty self explanatory. This is the size off our working canvas. Our composition will have this size, and everything we put inside of this composition and will be bigger will be either trimmed . All we will have to scale it down to put it into this resolution. Next, we have the pixel expect ratio, and in 99% of cases you will leave it out on the square pixels because you want to create your videos and animations for you do for your websites as we were talking before, and all of those media's like computer screens after pixels displayed in squares so you want to leave it at scores. If you're working something towards cinematography or with filming, you might want to look inside all their options. The frame rate for me personally. In my project, I most often used 30 frames per second. Frames per second means how many still images will be displayed during one seconds. The basic standard for videos if you are recording something, is 25 frames or 30 frames. Let me select 30 frames for our first test. That was the roof into full and on the bottom. We have the duration settings, which will tell us how long will our composition last? You can change up the duration. The first are the frames. Then we have seconds, then minutes and then hours. The maximal length of a composition in after effects is three hours, but that's definitely completely enough for what we are doing and for animations. And if you want to quickly type in, for example, five minutes, you plus five dot dot that dot means zero for frames and 04 minutes. If you want five seconds, you press five dot and this automatically create five seconds off duration. In our composition, you can also write 500 after effects will interpret this. You can see a little preview here as five seconds OK are composition is prepared, the background color can be left to black. I hit OK and my first composition is appearing on the screen by default after effects opens up the composition in the layers panel, we see our timeline and the composition is open in the preview window. As you can notice in my project files. On the left side I have two videos and the composition. The composition. The composition has a little different icon, which is similar to the icon to creating a new composition. Now, once I have my composition, I can drag those videos inside off my composition. Let me, for example, take the first video, which is a time lapse of a city. I drive the composition, and as I see in the product, that composition is as I see in my project preview. The composition is 12 87 20 resolution, which is exactly the same as my composition settings. This is why it fits perfectly into the canvas as I scrub. True with the timeline, that time lapse is happening and I have started to create a video. Now let me hit on the Facebook address video. This video is a bit bigger. If I drag it here, it will go beyond the canvas. And I have no several ways off adjusting that. Let me make it may be to the front as the first layer, so it will be visible. So this is the Facebook video. And now what can I do to adjust it? I can either pull the handles and hold the shift key to make it smaller and somehow fit it . Or eventually I can hit control or command K and change the size off my composition to be as big as the Facebook video. This is just on example off how you could adjust the composition. Toby. Exactly like your video. Now what other problems you might run into creating composition. Let me say you an example. If this video would have 25 frames, my composition has 30 frames. Each second contains 30 frames. This video would have toe emulate working in 30 frames, so a few frames would be interpolated. This maybe wouldn't stand out as much, but in complex videos and in professional videography. You want to try to work with footage, which has the same frame it as your composition or even the other way around. If you want the composition to have the exact settings, like the video you are importing, you just drag the video and drag it over this little button. This will create a new composition with the exact settings, like the videos. Now the composition would have this resolution, desperation and this frame rate. As I hit control or Command K, I see its current settings. The Facebook Address video has the settings, this frame rate and desperation. If you are creating layers, for example, let me take a layer, maybe the polygon tool, and make it very, very big. Now it would be too big and not cover inside of the screen. You can always go to layer, go to the transform options and select fit to camp. This will fit the object you have and make it smaller. The same goes for video. If you would like to have this video, the video would be too big, and you would like to resize it with one click. It would just go to layer, transform and fitted to the screen. All the composition can be opened by double clicking here and closed the same way. If you, for example, didn't want to see those handles here on each sites, you would go to the preview panel settings here, goto view options and just de select the layer controlled right now, even if I have this layer selected this Facebook layer, the handles would not be visible, and I have more freedom while creating something like additional elements. If you want to open them back into the preview window, just go to view options and open up the layer controls again in the preview window. Not only compositions, but layers can be visited. Also, if you want to do some changes on the layer, for example, paint with a brush you can open up the layer, close it down, and now the composition has the informations about this layer. Soto quickly recap in a few words what we have learned in this lesson. Compositions are containers which composite our layers inside off after effects. You can create composition by going to composition, new composition or editing the current composition settings by going to composition and composition settings. You can change the wit, the frame read and the duration off any given composition. You can, of course, also nest one composition into another composition. Here we have the first test composition, and I can direct the Facebook address composition one time. Here, I can drag it a second time. I can duplicate. I can. At effect, I can make it invisible on the timeline. Everything can be composited within one container composition. That's all I wanted to share about compositions. As the work progresses, we will learn more about aftereffect. Thank you for listening to this lecture. 13. 02-08. EXERCISE - Prepare a Quick Title with Burn Film Effect: in this lesson, we will have so much fun. I'll teach you how to make a title like that with the usage often effect with pre composing with loom, omitting and some other fancy stuff. So go right in and try to create your own. You are still not prepared to do everything I will show you. But just have fun with this exercise, and you will surely be able to follow along and create one of your first animations in after effects. Let us start right away. I click on this icon and I create my first new composition. It is aged, decides 30 frames and 10 seconds long. Please right click, Select New and select a solid at first, make a black solid. I'll make a completely black solid and then create a new one because we need to solids and make it a white one. Those layers will reveal the stuff we want to show, so I select now window and I select the effects and presets and I select film Burn The CC burn film is a great effect and I have the play had right at the beginning. I person the key frame to make the first key frame. I goto one second and I can be certain where I am by hitting one second here because we have turkey frames. I have to be precisely on one second. Okay? And at one second I want to burn to reach a level off 100. So the entire screen is covered in tow. Black. Now I go forward, depending on how long my title should stay on the screen. Let's say it will stay for three seconds. So at about four seconds, I once again check here If I have four seconds, Okay? I want to place a new key frame. And to do this I click on the white solid. I press you to reveal all key frames and I click on this button. This will add a new key frame and boat off. These key frames have a value off 100. I go again, one second forward to five seconds. And now the burn can have zero. So the burn flows in, stays on the screen and then flows out. That's everything you need to have prepared in order to reveal something. Now I click on both of these. I right click and I select pre composed. You can also use the shortcut control or comment shift. See, this will pre compose, and I'll call it met. Reveal. Er okay, because I want to remember what this layers were about. All right? I don't need so much information, so I click this button and now let us prepare the title text. This will be very simple at first, a select title. Here, let me select something bolder. Maybe the Baba's fund. Okay, that's definitely more bold. And I select Bullock for here are maybe even stay right. I'll see in the moment. Okay, let's start out with Grey. The first Another second title will be a subtitle. Subtitle here Maybe I select another phoned. So they are not completely the same. I don't think to find anything interesting, but it doesn't really matter. Let's stay with the school form. It will be a bit wild, but that's OK Now I can select another color, maybe read. Read this. Okay. And from the character settings, I make it smaller so it fits the screen a bit better. All right, we are fully prepared. These two should be also pre composed because this will make it easier to change the name of it. Right? Click on these two. If you have the two text boxes prepared, pre composed, and I'll call it change title here because always, if I want to change the text here, I'll double click on this composition. I can double click here, and I can change the text as I want, for example, to your name and your tag line or the video title or something else. Okay, I'll close this composition. Let's go back to Camp One, and the Comp one name isn't convenient at all. So I select control and Command K, and I rename it too tightly simply. Okay, we have our title prepared. What is the last step we need to take? We need to put the mat, reveal er above the title. We need to click on the title and in the track. Matte options select the last one Loomer inverted Met, Met reveal er, if you don't see the trackman and remote options, you can go on bottom here and open them up with the second button after effects wants to make it convenient. So if you don't need those options, you always hide them, but in this case I will use them. So I will select the second track. Matte I place Louima inverted Matt and now watch what happens. Instead of a boring reveal, we have something really, really cool. That text is slowly revealing as the mat reveals the screen. How does this work? The aluminum at uses the brightness settings off this layer. Everything which is on black is revealed. Everything which is on white is hidden, so want This screen is fully revealed. Also, this text reviews and this creates such a nice animation you can really see the title appears. It's not boring. It's a really cool animation, and later it disappears as the screen fades out. To make it even a bit more interesting, I can click on the change title here. I activated three D for this layer so it can move not only up, down left right, but also four and backwards on the Z axis. You don't have to know everything about it. Just activate the treaty. Click on it, press P toe, open up the position and you can see I have three values. The X axis, the Y axis and Z X is if I deactivate the treaty layer, I have only X and y Okay, let me activate it. Because I want to work with the 3rd 1 I clicked on the Turk value. Maybe I go to the beginning somewhere here. Okay, third value negative to 20. Okay. What happened? This revealed psalm or in the back. Going forward to me. I'll click a keeping here one second later. I make it zero. So it comes back now I only take those key frames. Place them on the left side so they start and watch what happens. Instead of just a boring animation, I'll go slowly forward. The title shows up and reveals slowly. This recreates a night animation and you can change the key frames. If you wanted to appear a bit quicker, a bit more smooth, we are nearly done. Really? Now I have to select those key frames in order for them to not be so boring. I select the 2nd 1 right click key frame assistant. Easy East. What happens now? The animation is a bit different. You can notice, but it's still not quite there. So you select both key frames. You go to the graph editor and make one slight adjustment. The graph editor allows us to edit Dickie Frames more in detail. I hope this is not to advance. We are going slow here. You only have to select those two key frames. Okay, Here, maybe select disk you frame. I pulled this little handle towards the middle. So what will happen now? That text, the value will go very quickly at the beginning. And then it will slow down. Why do I wanted to do this? Because I want the text to very quickly come and then slowly fate into the place into the right place. Okay, let's preview it. You can notice it. It starts really quick and swift, and then it stops for a while. And this creates a really, really nice motion here. When its fate out, we can do the opposite. I will select those key frames. It starts somewhere here. I just paste them. I select both off them. Rightly key frame assistant time, reverse key frames. I don't have to do anything. It will automatically go out off the screen like previously just it's reversed. I can make them a bit closer because I don't quite like the motion. OK, it should start a bit earlier, right? And that's it. That's how you make an interesting title like that in the grand scheme of things. This is what I wanted to teach you how to prepare for such a title. I hope this was a great exercise for you and after effects and really quick thing to do to make your videos have it better with interesting titles. Thank you very much for your attention in this lesson. And I hope I'll see you in the next one. 14. 03-01. Timeline Pt. 1 Layers and Buttons: in this video, I'll explain you everything you need to know about the timeline. You come across the different options on the timeline, nearly with everything you do in after effects. So it's very important to get familiar with its layout and to learn a few options in its set up right at the beginning. The timeline covers the entire bottom area off the program. Let us start with the taps which are here. Those types are compositions. Once you open the composition, it opens in a new tab on the timeline panel. You can click on the X sign to close different compositions and open up a few off their options in this button, about which we will talk later. Okay, I'll close the second composition. Let me go back to the main composition and start explaining the timeline. We will start at the far top left side, and here we have informations about where we are on our timeline. You can know this on the timeline. This composition has about six seconds off duration and they are playing 30 frames per second. The timer on the left shows you where you are on the timeline. You can click and wreck around to move around. The timeline on the bottom. We have frames and the frames per seconds off this particular composition. If I hit control or command and click here, I have the frames on the top because sometimes when you're doing animations, you do not want to work with time. You want to see frames because you're editing something frame by frame. You can also hold down the bulky to move slower because normally it goes very fast. But if I hold the old key, it gets me a bit slower. The same is with the shift key. The shift key. Make me go very fast here. Okay, I prefer the seconds. So I once again hit control or comment and click here to have the seconds as the first. And if I would like to navigate here, I can press and I can go to one second by hitting one and a dot. If I would only write your run, I will go to the first frame because this is listed as frames, seconds, minutes and hours. Next up is the search mark. It is sometimes used if you want to open up a different property in the layer, for example, the scale for all of the layers I hit control or comment A to select all layers and I write scale. This will open the scale property for each layer. This is a neat little a shortcut if you have to edit several properties each time in each layer the same thing. Okay, let's not talk more about the search bar. Now. There is something very important to know about layers and compositions on our timeline. Those items are the layers which we are working on. Those layers are inside off the main come composition. Several options we are editing are related to those icons. But you can notice that, for example, this icon and this icon looks the same. Also, this little icon and this icon looks the same. So why do we have it twice here? Because those icons are specific to each layer and those icons applied to the entire composition. I can, for example, turn on the motion blur for the 1st 3 layers, but they will be not visible until I turn on the motion blur for the entire composition, and this is a general rule to remember. Okay, let's not skip parts. Let's go from the far left site on the left side. We can turn on the visibility turn on or off the sound. If you want to hear the sound of a certain layer, for example, this video has some salt in it. I pressed double L to view the way form. Well, it actually doesn't have a real sound. But since this is a video, aftereffects tells us that it has a sound channel that's not important in this moment. The next is soul layers. Once you click here, you can display only one layer in this entire composition, and this is a very useful option. For example, I would like to see the text, but I'm not certain where the text is. So I just pressed the solar layer here, and I can see the text layer is on the top side. The solar layer is not available here because those two layers are linked with attract meant I will turn off the solar layer. Next up, we have our block option. The lock auction is very useful if you click something and dragged around by mistake. For example, if I'll click here, I would move the adjustment layer, I would move the background. But I never want the background to move. What I have to do is click the Locklair and now I cannot click on it. I can open it, but I can not change any effects. I cannot touch anything until I will unlock it. Let me close it down. And this brings us to the next item. You probably already noticed that I'm clicking very often on this triangle. This triangle opened up the properties off each different layer. For example, this layer has some effect on it. It has a for ical or radiant. Let me maybe place it back in the middle. Everything which has done to a layer, for example added effect change. Its size is added. Key frames can be found in the properties. We will have a separate tutorial about the properties because they are very, very important right now, you only have to see an overview that each property can be found here. As I entered in the full Cora gration effect, I can edit the effect here. But I can also open up this property, open up the four color Grady int and added my options here. This is when it comes down to properties. I have every possible property and I can even at more. But we will jump into that later. Next up is our label color. We can change the label. Carlos, as we have learned in the lesson about options, we can click, change the color, and this is also useful if you want to select all labels with the same color, I click on this red label I click Select Label Group, and this will select all layers which are affected with the same color. Next up is our layer number, and this is very important because sometimes you're hiding layers like we'll do in a moment . I will hide a few layers. I wish I them down and I can see I have number one and immediately number five. This tells me that somewhere underneath in this composition not visible to me right now are a few layers. I'll turned his back on and let us go forward. These are the names off the layers you can notice on the topside, we have source name and if I click ones here, I get layer name because you can have the original source names and your private layer names. I ought, for example, like this to be called Text this to be called video and maybe this layer to be called adjustment. Now, if you want to remember how the original layer was named, he only click here and you have the source names, Facebook address, mawf, text and adjustment layer one. But if I goto my private names, I have adjustment text and video. I made a small mistake here. Sorry for that. Okay. This is when it comes to layer names and source names. A few more things I want to show you because some of those things will have its own separate tutorials. But for now, a nice function which I showed you a while ago is shying players shying allows us to hide certain layers. For example, I've made those three red solid, and I know that I will no longer need them in my current state of events. What I can do is click this little shy guy. It will hide behind the wall height this height this and activate the shy layers for this entire composition. This will hide or reveal the layers which have too shy button activated. I can go back just by taking it, but for now, I don't need those medium solids, so I'll show them off. Next up is our collapse transformations button, which will talk about later as well. But for vector layers, you can notice, it says continuously, rest arise. This button indicates me that this is a vector layer, and I can scale it as much as I want. It will be always perfectly visible, and after effects will rest, arise it continuously. The next button is to turn down the quality off certain layers. If some layers are very heavy, in most cases, you don't have to use this button. But if something is very heavy for your PC and you want to lower its quality just for the sake off your work and that you work faster, you can lower down the quality by clicking on this icon. This I can indicates that it will have lower quality. Let me go back to the original and move forward. The next button allows us to turn on or turn off effect off a layer. As I click on my Redwall, I will unlock it I have here to effect the trite on and the curves I could turn this effect off turned this effect off. But if I would like to do this with one click, I can click here and turn all effects off for this particular layer. I'll turn them back on and let's move forward. We have three buttons here. The motion blur the adjustment layer and the three D layer. This allows us to turn motion, blur on for layer to make our movements more realistic. Let me maybe turned this on for this layer because this is moving and for the entire composition. And as the red text animation happens, you see, it gets a little blur exactly like here. Without motion blur, it would just have a static movement. So if you want your animations to look a bit cooler, you only have to turn on motion blur. Motion Blur should be used not for every animation, but it depends on the product you are doing. I will turn motion blur off for this composition, and for this layer, this little Aiken shows us that a particular layer is an adjustment layer. You can turn this on and off for other layers as well. This layer is an investment it has a four color Grady in because I just wanted to pop up some colors. If I turn this off, the entire screen will turn white because I have the blending mode said to soft light and the opacity to 100%. If I go to none, I will only see the grade in. But I wanted it to be an adjustment layer. So I clicked this and I made the blending mode too soft light. Now it better visible and it only adjust the layers under it. That hurt, I can hear, is very important because it turns any object into editor Dimension. What means that our dimension Let me click this shape layer and press p. I have the position on the X axis and on the Y axis. But here I have turned on three D and I have another access, which is the Z excess. Dizzy access allows us not only to move left and right, but also operate on clothes. And far this is very useful to create, for example, simple animations that it would fade off or you can work with to view cameras. Let me quickly create two views on the left side. We see this image from top on the right side. We see this from front as I see it from top. I can move this layer, Toby closer and more far away on the right. You see the graphical interpretation off what I'm doing with the Z axis. Let me turn one view back again and continue explaining that things on the timeline. 15. 03-02. Timeline Pt. 2 Switches and timeline: it takes a bit of time, but we need to get through this together to get a deeper understanding off how to edit our product. On the bottom side, you have three switches and the tree switches. Allow us to open up more options in our project. This is also why this toggle switches. Most button exists because once clicking on this button you can notice on the left side it searches. Between this view and this view, you can also use a shortcut F four to change it quickly. Why does adobe do this? It's very simple because when you're working in after effects, you want to keep your work space in general as clean as possible. So you do not want to have everything open while you are working on Lee when you need it, you want to have your navigation as clean as possible. So it was easier for you to work. And Adobe has implemented those shortcuts and buttons for us so we can add everything manually. You can also right click here, click columns and open up every column you want separate one bite one. Okay, since I showed you what can appear, let me briefly touch on it on the parenting. We will talk later, so I'll switch off the parenting and open up the transfer control panels. Here we can use the blending modes and the track matte. We will talk about blending most and track met separately. But for now you can see that for each layer, you can set another blending mood just like in photo shop and use the track matte as alpha matte or Lou moment. In the original and inverted version. I will hit once again F four to hide those options. And as the last but not least, I'll reveal the timing options. Let's say that I know that this video place for 10 seconds. I would like it to play for two seconds and disappear. The quickest way how to do this is stretching it with this button and everything, which is on blue or on yellow, and the older versions off. After effects like CS six can be clicked and adjusted. I'll adjust the time off the movie by stretching it down to two seconds. I place it here above it's visible for two seconds, and then it disappears because it has only two seconds off duration. Now that we know everything, what is going here on the left side, let me close the durations and moved to the editing on the timeline itself. Now working on the timeline itself is very similar in each video editing software. No matter if you use Cam Tasia. Final cart Sony Vegas screen slow If you perhaps saw those programs that timelines are, they're very similar. You edit video clips, you trim the federation and your shuffles on effects around. So that's our timeline. We can zoom in and out with this button on the bottom side or by clicking and dragging the handles in the time navigation start. This will either zoom in from the left or zoom in from the right side. You can also use a shortcut right next to the zero button on your keyboard. You have the plus and minus signs with those two buttons. You can also zoom in and out. You can zoom in s clothes that you see each frame separately. Let me now Rhys Ice is back to the full size and edit a few things. Here we have our work area start and end. If you decided that your animation will not hold the entire duration. But it will start by 2nd 1 Let me maybe moved the timer exactly to the 1st 2nd I'll right here one dot as we've learned and press a shortcut b the end, then allow us to trim their work area exactly to the place where we are. I press control Z because I want my animation to take 123 seconds. I will go exactly to four and now press and on the keyboard, this will trim might work area down. If I want to preview my work and I pressed the play or stop button, it will not render above the working area. Layers off course can be trimmed by moving our mouth cursor to the beginning off the layer and just dragging to make it shorter. Let me maybe make the adjustment layer shorter, and I can drag it around and see how long the adjustment layer will be displayed. You need only to be aware of a few things because this is an image. An image can last for hundreds off. Second. I can make it longer as long as I want, but if I would go to my project. I have another composition here. It's called another camp. Let me open it. Very briefly. I press control K. This composition has five seconds off duration. If I place my composition here, this another comp, I will nest it into this camp. You see, it has a little indicator in the corner that the duration off this particular layer is restrained by some options and I can not make it longer. I can, of course, trim it. But I will not be able to make it longer unless I use some tricks like stretching it or going into the composition and changing its settings to be, for example, 15 seconds long. Now the entire composition would be longer. But also be aware that if you make a composition longer, the layers inside will remain as they were before. So I don't have to resize those layers like that. I would go back. And now the composition that I'm editing would have inspiration extended to 15 seconds. This is something important to remember about. Let me delete this composition and show you a few shortcuts. If you want to quickly move your time indicator toe the in or out. So put off this layer, you select this layer and you press I for input or oh, for output. And next useful shortcut is, if you would, for example, this layer to start from this place. You can use the left or right bracket heat, depending if you wanted toe end in this place or start in this place. I wanted this layer to start it one second. I'll move my timer toe one second and I Oprah's there. Left bracket key There are off course. Many shortcuts like you can move a layer one layer down or up by holding control or comment and using the bracket keys, you can go up and down with a particle are layer. There are plenty off more shortcuts which will not cover in this place because for the beginning to get an understanding what is going on on the timeline? What are layers? What are the different options off layers and how you can trim them around? This is perfectly enough. Now you have a deeper understanding on how the Timeline panel is connected with all other panels and after effects. It's connected with the effect with the project with compositions with the preview window. Everything else possible you determine how long a layer is displayed, how it is displayed. You preview all properties here and you add it all key frames here. Thank you for staying tuned in this extensive lesson on what is the time I and what you did need to learn here. From now on, it will get only easier right now. You know, a big chunk off after effects. More. There are still a few elements to cover, like the graph editor, but slowly and surely we will get there. Stay tuned for the upcoming lessons. 16. 03-03. Properties: Hello. Welcome back in our composition. In this short lesson, I want to touch on properties. What are properties and why are they so important properties once I hit the triangle, as we've explained before, all the different options and possibilities you confined inside of a layer are called properties. The anchor point, the position, the scale. All those options are separate properties. Now. Different kinds of layers have different properties but to speak. In general, properties are very similar, and a property by definition is always the same. It's one separate option insight off a layer. Now let me show you a few examples. Around here we have the Red Will Jay Peak. It's an image, and a image has a few separate options off its own. Here we have the material options. These are specific options toe an image, but overall each layer. But in general, layers, by basic, have their transform options. Those transform options are related to the anchor point, the position, the scale. We also have the opacity and rotation, and it all depends. What do we attach to a certain layer? Let me make quickly a new composition. I have a new composition and I'll show you something very interesting. I make one rectangle. Let me maybe filled with any color. It can be great. Its OK. And now, by having this first shape layer selected, I place another rectangle here. Now watch what happens. My shape, layer shape. Players are specific types off layers has now two rectangles. They are placed in sight off the contents off the shape layer content is something like a container a group. For this, we have global transform options which will apply to both off those rectangles. As we move the position, both rectangles move as we change the scale Boat off those rectangles will be bigger because both off those rectangles are on the same layers. But if I open rectangle one and rectangle to you can notice they have their own properties and this is what might look complicated. But this is actually the beauty of the program. You have so many properties to work with and you can add it so much things that it gives you complete freedom off what you are doing. For example, we have our rectangle to here I have the fill option and inside of the fill option, I have my gray color. And if I would like only to work here inside of the properties, I would not always have to find the fill option. The stroke option. I can change the color right here. I'll change it to a red color A few lessons. Before, we were talking about terminology. Things like rendering composition and so on. And property is just an important work. Like those words before. Please remember that properties are those options here inside of after effects, each layer has its own properties and those properties can be adjusted. They can be changed. It all depends which layer you are editing. I also wanted to show you that if I had any effect here, let me even Treaty channel. It doesn't really matter. As I added a new effect until the shape layer the effect is also appearing as property. So everything, really everything you're doing to a layer if you change the color, the size, all those changes you are making are reflected insight off properties. If I change the black point here, I can always go to this effect inside of the properties and I have the same options here. This is only a graphical interpretation, and the same things are shown in another panel. But the properties hold everything every information about a layer together and put it in one place for you. Thanks for listening. This is all I wanted to explain when it comes to the properties. And please keep this in the back of your head and you'll start using the proper terminology while working in the software. 17. 03-04. Pre-Composing: any time you have a composition, what's made up off many different layers, just like we have here. If you would like to gain more control over those layers, you might want to consider using that pre composing function. Pre composing is something amazing. And as we've talked previously about compositions, it's related to that because you can take a few layers and put them into one container, which is called a composition. As you can see on my left side, I have a few compositions here. I have my main come open and I have an example Come, which we have from a previous lesson. Let me know, show you how compositions work and how to fit this all together. If you want to have everything under control compositions at and level off extra depth into what you are doing, let's for example, take this animation. We have this animation here on the top, which is made up off one shape layer and one text layer. If I'm doing any adjustment to this composition, I would not like to hurt this little animation. So I take this layer, I press the shift key. I also select the shape layer and by hitting control or command on Mac Shift see or right clicking here and hitting pre composed, I can create a pre composition out of those two layers. Let me maybe call it red animation. And as you can notice, this little red animation is now a separate composition. Now, what are the pros and cons off a pre composition? The vesting inside of a pre composition is that you can always access all the layers which are inside those layer have a completely separate working area, and I can, for example, at effects here, and those layers insight would remain the same. I would not hurt this text layer and this shape layer. A little problem, however you might sometimes run into, is if your original composition is longer. Let me go control or comment K, and I'll extend the duration off my original composition here 2 20 seconds. Now my composition is longer. I can, of course, make all my layers longer my background longer. But I cannot make this composition this pre composition longer because a composition has its own settings. I would have to go manually inside of its composition. Press control K here and extent. Also, this compulsion, it's rather rare. Did you run into such problems because while designing, you already know that the certain elements you want a pre composed will be displayed only during a few seconds. So once you are pre composing them, you already know. Why are you be composing them? Let me show you another small example, which is very important, which we were talking about when explaining the timeline. But I didn't explain it fully. It is regarding this little button which has collapsed transformation. I'll make a new layer. Now let's make me make a big text. It will say, Wow, now I add a few shapes to it. Maybe with the Ellipse stole some ice here. Some ice here and I have a shape layer and the wild text. I take them boat I press control or command shift. See, I pre composed them and now I have this composition. If I take my selection tool and I move this composition, it's cropped on the right. By default, compositions will be cropped. But if you would like to remain the informations and display all the layers to its full extension, you need to hit the collapse Transformations button. This little button will allow the entire composition to display, no matter how big it is, by default after effect is uncheck ing this because if you are pre composing something, you most likely wanted to be a small as possible. But if you are for example, animating it and you needed to be bigger, you just open up this option and inside off the layer, no matter how big it will be, it will be always displayed inside of the composition in which it is placed. That's all I wanted to explain you about compositions and pre composing. Now this is an essential option you'll use very often inside of after effects, so get used to it. Write this down in your mind. An action item for you, for this lesson is going inside after effect, creating a few layers and pre composing them on your own. I want you to create three compositions and place one composition inside off another composition off course. Don't try to place the same composition inside of the same composition because that's not possible. Create one composition, pre compose something and use those pre composed items to place insight off this composition. Thank you very much and see you in the next lesson. 18. 03-05. Keyframes and Interpolation: in this video. I want to explain you. What is a key frame and what is interpellation? Key frames is the actual tool which allows us to create animations. Let me open now the properties and show you how key frames are set and what they actually are. I have a little WiFi I can hear. I'll open up the properties, I have my transform options open and I have the anchor point. The position that scale, all these are properties and on the left off them, we have a little stopwatch. Let us maybe work with the scale at the beginning. Off the composition, the scale off this icon is 120%. I will press the little stopwatch. And on my timeline, a little key frame has appeared. A key frame represents change in the value off any given property inside off any layer, I will move a few second forward, maybe to the TERT. Second, as we see on the timeline, I'm exactly at three and I will once again either click this little icon to create a key frame. Let middle it Dickie frame or eventually since on this layer, key frames are active because the little stop what is on blue? As I change any value in this scale property, a key frame will set automatically. And that's the whole juice and beauty off after effects. Because we can set key frames at the beginning, the icon has 120% off scale. At the end, we have 160% off scale, and I don't have to go manually here and here and here and make it bigger and bigger and bigger. Because those two key frames their values between those two key frames are interpolated between those two values. Aftereffect is mathematically counting the values to make them flow seamlessly between the first value and the second value. Depending on what type off key frame you have, it will count faster or slower. But in general, interpolation automated our animation process. We only do a few things. We set a few key frames and they are automatically animated within after effects 19. 03-06. Keyframes in action - transition animation: So let us create one off our first simple animations. Please go to your project files and open up the key frames and interpolation file either CIA six version or the C C 15. If you have the newest version off the program once you open the program, the same screen should appear before you. You should have the two icons and several layers here. Please go to the left side and turn all the layers on by clicking on the 1st 1 and dragging down. Now we have solid layers in front of us. I would like to reveal those bottom layers with a nice transition. The transition will be made off those layers. Let me use key frames and a few tricks. To prepare this animation, go to the very beginning off the animation. Place your timer on the zero second. Now, please click on the black solid could be on your keyboard toe, open up the position property and hit the little stopwatch. Now I want my transition to take about maybe one second, maybe two seconds. I will see how it looks and we adjusted later. Once you have put your timeline on the 1st 2nd click on this black layer and start moving it. I will press my shift key to remain on the same access, and I will place the black background just outside of the composition like this. Two key frames have appeared, and now I have several possibilities off editing. I can take the next layer and also plays the key frames. Or I can select those two key frames. Hit this layer and click Control V or Command V. If you're under Mac and the same key frames will be added to the layer, which I have selected here, let me president peaky What has happened? Those key frame were added exactly where the timer is in our animation, but I wanted those key frames Toby here in the front. That's no problem. We can, of course, adjusted, and I'll see later that I have made a mistake. So I will select the second layer. I pressed the I key on my keyboard to go to the input. I select the key frames, and I just drag him over here to the first place. An animation like that would be boring, so I either can take this layer and place it a few frames forward or I can take the key frames and place them a few frames forward. This would create a nice animation that one layer is fighting after another layer you can do as you want. You can either move their key frames or move this layer. Okay. I decided that I am moving the key frames. I will first copied them and then start moving. I control. See those key frames? Control V control the Contrave. Now I select all five players. I press you on the keyboard to reveal them. I could also press P to reveal the position property I have all keep brings visible. Now I want to click my page down key three times for each layer 12 tree. Select the key frames. Move them here 12 tree. Select the key frames and move them here so they will be placed a bit forward. 123 Key frame here and want to tree key frame here. Now let us preview the animation. We are doing well. It's OK, but it's very plain and boring. What you can do inside of after effect is select all key frames. Right. Click on them Goto key frame assistant and press on Easy East. This will ease the animation. We'll talk a bit more extensive once we go inside off 