You created the advertising copy in After Effects, but the crabs’ expressions are in quotation bubbles, which are easier to include as images. You’ll attach the PSD files to solid layers in After Effects to lock them to specific planes. After Effects creates a Track Solid 1 layer, and a colorful solid square appears in […]
Category: Creating realistic shadows
Adding an effect – Working with the 3D Camera Tracker
The 3D elements, camera, and lighting are all complete, but you can make the video more interesting by adding a ripple effect to the quotes. The crab quote disappears, but it will gradually appear and ripple on the screen. Previewing the compositionAll of the elements are in place, along with cameras, lighting, and effects. You’ll […]
Applying Warp Stabilizer VFX – Advanced Editing Techniques
Warp Stabilizer VFX starts analyzing footage as soon as you apply it. Stabilization is a background process, so you can work on other compositions while it finishes. How long it takes depends on your system. After Effects displays a blue banner while it analyzes the footage and an orange banner while it applies stabilization. 3. […]
Moving and resizing the track points – Advanced Editing Techniques
In setting up motion tracking, it’s often necessary to refine a track point by adjusting its feature region, search region, and attach point. You can resize or move these items independently or in groups by dragging with the Selection tool. The pointer icon changes to reflect one of many different activities. Track point components (left) […]
Applying Content-Aware Fill – Advanced Editing Techniques
You’re ready to replace the masked area with content-aware fill. The Alpha Expansion setting increases the size of the area to fill. Content-Aware Fill often performs better when the selected area includes pixels outside the object you’re removing. The Fill Method determines how the feature samples pixels and accommodates motion in the video. Range determines […]
Creating a particle simulation – Advanced Editing Techniques
After Effects includes several effects that do an excellent job of creating particle simulations. Two of them—CC Particle Systems II and CC Particle World—are based on the same engine. The major difference between the two is that Particle World enables you to move the particles in 3D space rather than in a 2D layer. In […]
Creating the sun – Advanced Editing Techniques
You will now create a bright halo of light that will go behind the particles. Lighting the darkness Since the sun is bright, it should illuminate the surrounding darkness. The Gradient Ramp effect creates a color gradient, blending it with the original image. You can create linear ramps or radial ramps, and vary the position […]
Getting started – Rendering and Outputting
Lesson overview In this lesson, you’ll learn how to do the following: The total amount of time required to complete this lesson depends in part on the speed of your processor and the amount of RAM available for rendering. The amount of hands-on time required is less than an hour. If you haven’t already done […]
About rendering and output – Rendering and Outputting
Rendering a composition creates the frames of a movie from all the layers, settings, effects, and other information that makes up the model for that image. After Effects renders content every time it creates a preview, but this lesson focuses on the rendering process that occurs when you’ve completed your composition and are ready to […]
Preparing movies for mobile devices – Rendering and Outputting
You can create movies in After Effects for playback on mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones. To render your movie, add the composition to the Adobe Media Encoder encoding queue, and choose an appropriate device-specific encoding preset. For the best results, consider the limitations of mobile devices as you shoot footage and work with […]