The After Effects Thread :: Q&A, Advice, Resources
The After Effects Thread
As most of you know I absolutely love After Effects. I thought it would be fun
for me to make a thread dedicated to After Effects that would be useful for anyone
using the application. My goal of this thread is to answer large and small questions,
and catalogue them for referencing so the community can learn as a whole.
I encourage everyone that seeks AE advice to post in this thread,
so I or others can reply and I will create a little database for common questions, errors, etc.
We can help you with everything involving AE, including:
Basics
Formats
Comps
3D
Titles
Rendering
Expressions
Importing/Exporting
Workflow
Anything you need help with, any question, problem, or error, this
is the place to come.
Everyone's welcome.
Q&A:
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Originally Posted by Q
What is AE used for?
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Originally Posted by A
Professionally After Effects is mostly used for Motion Graphics and smaller scale
compositing. But for enthusiasts its used for just about everything video/image/audio related. |
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Originally Posted by Q
What's the best way to learn After Effects?
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Originally Posted by A
I cannot possibly know how everyone most efficiently learns but
the best way to I've found is to watch a tutorial and follow along. Just pause it every step or so
u can keep up. You'll learn much faster when you're actually doing something. Trying to
digest basic walkthroughs without hands on experience is very difficult.
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Originally Posted by Q
Why can't I hear audio when I preview my video?
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Originally Posted by A
You need to RAM Preview in order to hear audio. Or you can preview just the audio with the period
key on the numpad.
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Originally Posted by Q
Is there any specific ways to mark on the workspace where I would want to sync something?
Like in Sony Vegas, I would press M and it would put a marker on the track.
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Originally Posted by A
* on the numpad
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Originally Posted by Q
How can I create my own Audio Bars animating to music?
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Originally Posted by A
Answer
Note: If you actually are looking deeply into this,
I have written a much more sophisticated expression
that will animate much better. Msg me if you'd like it.
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Originally Posted by Q
What does the CC Composite plugin actually do?
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Originally Posted by A
It's a really clever little plugin. All it does is retrieves the original image source, and layers
it on top/bottom with various blending modes. This allows you to do some things that
otherwise require multiple layers.
So take a Red Solid, duplicate it, add generate-fill to the duplicate, set the fill to green,
and set the blending mode of the duplicate to add. The result will be a yellow image.
Using CC Composite allows you to do all that with 1 layer.
Take a Red Solid, apply generate-fill to it, set fill to green, add CC Composite, set
and set the blending mode of CC Composite to add. vuala
It's also great for color correction. Simple applying the CC Composite plugin to a clip
and playing with the blending modes will produce some cool stuff.
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Originally Posted by Q
How can I mask a clip that has Twixtor on it, without having to render it out first?
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Originally Posted by A
Precompose the clip with Twixtor, making sure to select "Move All Attributes". A precomp just encapsulates
everything inside it as if it were a single rendered video.
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Originally Posted by Q
How can I make 3D text in After Effects using just the built in tools?
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Originally Posted by Q
When masking, would it make more sense to hit the tilde key, zoom up at 1600% and mask around each individual pixel,
while holding down the shift key or to just eyeball it and use beziers?
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Originally Posted by A
Nooooo! lol Imagine doing that for an Imax shot. Would take a millenium.
Straight lines and bezier curves are the way to go.
If you were to literally roto around every pixel it would essentially nullify any antialiasing
and make the clip look blocky/crusty/ugly.
Since masks and shapes are vector they aren't governed by the same rules as pixels.
So you can basically mask pixels in half, and go into infinite detail. This is good because it
then allows AE to calculate and antialize the edge you just made, which will result in a much
smoother result than you had originally, let alone the result of masking each pixel. =]
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[/quote]
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Originally Posted by A
How do I put a Lens Flare on a transparent layer
so I can render/save it out with transparency?
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Originally Posted by A
Apply the lens flare to a black solid.
Then pre-compose that black solid and check "Move all attributes..."
Then apply Channel - Set Matte to the layer with the pre-comp.
In the Set Matte properties set "Use For Matte" to Lightness, and ignore the other settings.
Then set the blending mode of this layer to Luminescent Premultiply.
Now when you render
go into the Output Module and set Channels to RGB + Alpha and set Color
to Straight.
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Originally Posted by Q
Do you know why the pen tool in After Effects isn't the same kind as the one in illustrator? IMO the one in Illustrator is alot easier to mask and such with.
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Originally Posted by A
It's actually the same type of pen tool (Bezier) although the convert anchor tool
functions a little differently. Might be because different teams develop different programs
and also Adobe purchased Illustrator from another developer. I'd assume in CS5 they will be identical.
You can always copy-paste paths from Illustrator into AE if you find that easier.
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Originally Posted by Q
This ALWAYS bugged me. When using shatter effect, is it possible to change the timing of the shatter to be later in the clip, or do you need to duplicate the layer and then cut it so that the start of the clip is where you want the shatter to happen.
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Originally Posted by A
The animation itself is built into the plugin, so you really cant change it. That method
seems to work fine tho.
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Originally Posted by Q
How can i get my AAE to take full Advantage of ALL my 4 cpu cores and 8 gigs of RAM. aqlso is there a way to involve your GPU into rendering video? thnks a lot
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Originally Posted by A
By default it will use all cores, however AE CS4 and below can't use more than 4 GB of ram.
GPU always renders video.
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Originally Posted by Q
Where do you find that setting to make clips automatically crossfade?
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Originally Posted by A
Effects and Presets -> Animation Presets -> Behaviors -> Fade Out Over Layer Below / Fade In Over Layer Below
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Originally Posted by Q
Is there a rather straight forward way to add a animated fog to a comp? Will I have to use a complex particle system for my kind of standards? Volumetric to a certain degree. Not in a 3D sense.
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Originally Posted by A
You can do it fairly easily with the Trapcode Particular plugin. For the
particle type use the smokelette particle and feather it out a ton, also change
the particle to the screen blending mode. Screen will create the volumetric look.
For the emitter type use a box emitter thats slightly larger than your comp.
Set velocity to something realitively low.
Or you could create a few solids with the Fractal Noise effects and set their
blending mode to screen then animate the evolution and offset turbulence of Fractal Noise. Might want to blur them too.
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Originally Posted by Q
How can I take say take 3 pixels on the screen and display the RGBA values for each?
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Originally Posted by A
Add this expression to the "Source Text" parameter of a text layer:
Code:
layerSource = *LayerYouWantToSample*; // Layer you want to sample
pixel1Pos = [1, 1]; // First Pixel you want to sample [X,Y]
pixel1Rad = [1,1];
pixel1 = layerSource.sampleImage(pixel1Pos,pixel1Rad) * 255;
pixel1 = [parseInt(pixel1[0]),parseInt(pixel1[1]),parseInt(pixel1[2]),parseInt(pixel1[3])];
pixel2Pos = [2,2]; // Second Pixel you want to sample [X,Y]
pixel2Rad = [1,1];
pixel2 = layerSource.sampleImage(pixel2Pos,pixel2Rad) * 255;
pixel2 = [parseInt(pixel2[0]),parseInt(pixel2[1]),parseInt(pixel2[2]),parseInt(pixel2[3])];
pixel3Pos = [3,3] // Third Pixel you want to sample [X,Y]
pixel3Rad = [1,1];
pixel3 = layerSource.sampleImage(pixel3Pos,pixel3Rad) * 255;
pixel3 = [parseInt(pixel3[0]),parseInt(pixel3[1]),parseInt(pixel3[2]),parseInt(pixel3[3])];
'[' + pixel1.toString() + ']' + '\r' + '[' + pixel2.toString() + ']' + '\r' + '[' + pixel3.toString() + ']'
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Originally Posted by Q
What would an expression be for a Square Wave function?
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Originally Posted by Q
I'm trying to make a custom thing, where there's a circle and then 2 arrows that rotate counter clockwise and clockwise around the center of the circle.
I want them to rotate at a constant speed through the video(and i know there's an expression for it) but more importantly i need to be able to have them rotate,
and then be able to have them move out towards the edges of the circle when i need them to.
Whenever i move the anchor points to the center, the object follows them there to, so it's rotating directly on the anchor point instead of around it, like in an orbit. Thanks
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HD Capturing - Msg me
Aim: RobotikDesigns
Last edited by RoboSteeze; 02-11-2010 at 12:45 AM.
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Linear Mode
