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: Tidying the composition
Stabilizing a shot – Advanced Editing Techniques
Stabilizing a shot If you shoot footage while holding a phone or camera, you will probably end up with shaky shots. Unless this look is intentional, you’ll want to stabilize your shots to eliminate unwanted motion. Warp Stabilizer VFX in After Effects automatically removes extraneous jitters. When played back, the motion appears smooth, because the […]
Setting up the project – Advanced Editing Techniques
If you’ve just completed the first project, and After Effects is open, skip to step 3. Otherwise, restore the default application settings for After Effects. See “Restoring default preferences” on page 3. You’ll start by importing assets and creating the composition. After Effects opens to display a new, untitled project. After Effects creates a new […]
Removing unwanted objects – Advanced Editing Techniques
It can be frustrating and tedious to remove unwanted objects from video, especially if the object moves between frames. The Content-Aware Fill feature in After Effects makes it possible to remove distractions such as microphones or other filming equipment, incongruous landscape elements, or even people. The feature removes the area you select, and then it […]
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 […]
Understanding Particle Systems II properties – Advanced Editing Techniques
Particle systems have a unique vocabulary. Some of the key settings are explained here for your reference. They’re listed in the order in which they appear (top to bottom) in the Effect Controls panel. Birth Rate Controls the number of particles generated per second. The value itself is arbitrary and does not equal the actual […]
Setting up the project – Advanced Editing Techniques-2
The speed adjustments are rather abrupt—not the smooth, slow-motion curve you would expect to see in a professional effect. This is because the keyframes are linear instead of curved. You’ll fix that next. TipClose columns in the Timeline panel to see more icons in the Graph Editor. You can also apply an Easy Ease adjustment […]
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 […]
About compression – Rendering and Outputting
Compression is essential to reduce the size of movies so that they can be stored, transmitted, and played back effectively. When exporting or rendering a movie file for playback on a specific type of device at a certain bandwidth, you choose a compressor/decompressor (also known as an encoder/decoder), or codec, to compress the information and […]