When we launched we asked you to tell us what content you wanted and
quite a few of you told us you wanted the basics. Well we are listening
and this is the first installment of a 3 part series for after effects
beginners. Each section lists at the top the topics that are covered
in that section. Even though this series focuses on the latest CS4
release, most of the concepts apply to all the versions of After
Effects.
This first part of the Essential Training series will teach you how
to get started in After Effects. You will learn all the basics you need
to be able to use After Effects and understand the cool tutorials posted
here on AETUTS.
Tutorial
After Effects CS4 - Essential Training
Introduction
Before we get started, let's take a look at what we'll be facing in
the Essential Training series which is intended to teach all beginners
the basics of After Effects.
In this first part of the extensive and hopefully useful Training
we'll learn many features of After Effects CS4. The three sections in
which I split this Training, are:
- Part 1 - Getting Started
- Part 2 - Effects & Animation
- Part 3 - Advanced techniques
Part One - Getting Started
In this section we will go over, how to import and organize footage,
create new compositions, how to handle all the adjustment and project
settings and how to save and export our projects. In the chart below you
can see a listing of the steps explained in this Tutorial:
1. Interface
Before importing any footage, creating a composition or explaining
any features of After Effects we'll need to open After Effects. After
that Iíll start showing you the interface. There are three main
fragments:
- Menu bar
- Toolbar
- Panels & Frames (Standard)
Menu bar
At the top-left-corner you can see the menu bar. The menu bar is
similar to all other menu bars in different programs. Some features are
stored in the same menu items as in other Adobe products. I numbered the
menu items to say one or two words to each of them:
- In the second part of this line you can see the currently open project file name.
- Here you can open, save, import and export your projects and files.
- An important feature in this section is the preferences area and of course all the undo, redo and editable features.
- We'll use this menu item to create a new composition but you should
definetly check out the other features listed in this section.
- As many other Adobe products After Effects works with layers. You can use this to create, edit or arrange your layers.
- Similar to Photoshop you can choose and edit your effects and presets from here.
- Since we want to create animations in After Effects you should check out this menu item and explore all the features in here.
- Everybody who already worked in Photoshop knows that rulers, grids and guides are very useful. Here you can find them.
- Later in this tutorial I'll talk about panels, frames and workspaces. Here you can enable or disable the panels.
- As a matter of course this Tutorial doesn't cover all the functions
and features After Effects is capable of, so you should check out the
Help file for more information.
Preferences
If you want to change the appearance of After Effects you can go to
Edit > Preferences > Appearance and then change the Brightness. If
you have any problems with the performance you can change some memory
settings and optimize After Effects to your needs.
Toolbar
Also at the top-left-corner you can see the Toolbar. The Toolbar
contains all the tools which can be used to work in After Effects. Some
of the tools hide their related tools. By clicking and holding the
little triangle on the bottom-right-side you can reveal the other tools.
Another way to pick a hidden tool is to press the Shortcut several
times. By doing that the Toolbar will switch through the tools. Some
tools also gain access to new functions as you can see at the far right.
Panels & Frames (Standard)
When starting After Effects for the first time the Workspace is set
to Standard. The After Effects Workspace consists of many Panels (1.).
Every Panel has its own name and function. As you can see in the image
below there is an Info, Audio, Preview and Effects & Presets Panel.
All Panels are separate except the Info and Audio Panel. In case two or
more Panels are connected they are sitting in a Frame (2.). You can pick
a panel and move it to another panel to combine them to a Frame. We'll
talk about that throughout this training.
2. Footage
- Import possibilities
- Organizing footage
- Search footage
- Right-click options
- New Composition & Project Settings
Import possibilities
Before creating a composition which holds our media like videos,
images or audio files, we need to import those files to our project
which you should always save after the first changes. Create a new
Project
File > New > New Project and save it using File >
Save As. Now that you've named and saved your project we'll learn how to
import our files. There are several ways to import them to the project
window.
- File > Import > File
- Ctrl+I
- Double-click on the project window
Importing single or multiple files
Use one of the possibilities listed above to import a new file. The
Import File window appears. Now you can select single or multiple files
and import them by clicking Open.
Import folders
After Effects is also capable of importing folders which contain
acceptable files. Select a folder and then click on Import Folder (1.).
Project Window
Now our files are imported to our Project Window. The files are
ordered by name. As you can see After Effects gives us information about
the name, file type, size and more.
Renaming files
You can change the name of any file listed in the project window by
clicking on it and pressing the Return key. Changing the name in the
project window does not change the files real name. The original files
aren't imported to our project, they are just linked. I'll talk about
this later in the course of this tutorial.
Organizing
Keeping the project organized is very important. Unless you are
working on very short projects with just a few files its ok but as soon
as the project is getting extensive it is very important to keep
everything organized and named. When working with co-workers you want
them to be able to understand what you've done so far. To do that you
can create Folders (1.) where you can store your files.
Moving files
You can select single or multiple files in the project window and move them to a folder.
Hiding files
The files stored in a folder can be hidden by pressing the little triangle which collapses the folder they are in.
Searching files
Since our project doesn't contain many files it is manageable. Once
we have many files it gets unclear which means we need to search for a
file. The best way to do this is using the search bar. Type in the file
you are looking for and as you type in After Effects sorts out the files
which contain the same letters.
Right-click Options
You should always right-click anything to explore the capabilities of
any product. In After Effects there are some interesting features like
being able to replace a file with another updated version of that file.
After Effects will keep all settings and replace the old one with the
new one.
Create a Composition
We imported our files and now we have to create a composition which
will later contain our files. To do that you can either click on the
button (1.) and then changing the composition settings by clicking on
the button next to it (2.) or you can go to Composition > New
Composition.
3. Composition
- Adding footage to a composition
- Adjustment & Project Settings
- Pre-comp
Composition Settings
When creating a new composition by going to Composition > New
Composition the Composition Settings will appear. You can change the
Size of the composition, the type of Resolution, Aspect Ratio, Frame
rate, Duration and so on. In the Advanced section you have a few extra
options. Apart from your projects you should try out different settings
to see what they look like.
Adding footage to composition
There are several ways how you can add footage to your composition or
Timeline. You can drag & drop your files from the Project Panel to
the Composition Panel (2.), the Timeline (3.) or to the area where the
layers are sitting (4.). When dragging & dropping a file to a
certain area named above After Effects creates a composition itself but I
think it's better to create a composition (1.) and then add files to it
since you have more controls.
Pre-comp
Pre-comp is a terrific feature of After Effects and one of the
various reasons why you should use this feature is that it simplifies
your main composition and makes your work more effective. There are many
considerable advantages when using the Pre-comp function. Imagine how
effective it would be to create a master movie clip with a complex
composition which you can use in multiple locations throughout your main
composition. Now let's talk about the different operations of
Pre-compositions.
Pre-comp Options
You can select single or multiple layers and create a Pre-comp by going to Layers > Pre-Comp or by using
Ctrl+Shift+C. The Pre-compose window will appear. When that happens you have two different options and one extra checkbox.
- Leave all attributes:
This creates a new composition which contains only the source file
and leaves all effects, masks and other changes applied to the Pre-comp
layer.
- Move all attributes to new composition:
This creates a new composition which creates a duplicate of the
master composition and moves all applied effects, masks and other
changes to the new composition.
- Open new composition:
By checking this checkbox After Effects will open the recently
created Pre-composition. The new composition will dock on the Panel
where the other compositions sit. You can also Alt+double-click on the
Pre-comp Layer to open the new composition.
4. Projects, Save and Export
- Information about Projects
- Saving possibilities
- Export composition
Project Files
When we create a project and save it, all of our work is being saved
in a Project file with the file extension .aep which is a shortcut of
After Effects Project. This file keeps track of everything we do in
After Effects. As mentioned before when we bring in files to the project
panel the files won't be stored in the project, the original files are
only linked to our project. This means that we have to be careful with
the original files and their directories where they are stored in. When
we move the files, rename them or delete them we won't be able to
complete our project. The benefit of this, are the low After Effects
Project File sizes. Since you can't work on two projects at the same
time you always need to save the project when switching to another one.
Saving Projects
A good habit is to save in short intervals. There is a possibility to
let After Effects save in given intervals. To do that go to Edit >
Preferences > Auto Save. Here you can set the interval and the
project variations till it overwrites the first file. Another cool
function in After Effects is File > Increment and Save. By clicking
this saving method After Effects will save your current file as
Filename_01.aep and the next time it will save a new copy called
Filename_02.aep. This way you can always go back if the project isn't
going in the direction you like.
Export Composition
There's 2 ways to get your project exported or rendered. To Export
your project go File > Export and choosing the File type. Choose this
method if you wish to output to any of the formats available in this
menu. Otherwise, the best way to export your projects is to render them
using the render queue. You can "queue" many compositions to queue at
once then let After Effects process or "render" them all at once.
Rendering time can vary from a few seconds to many hours depending on
the complexity of your compositions.
5. Render
- Render Settings
- Output Module Settings
- Compression Settings
Render
The last step when working in After Effects is rendering the movie
you've created. As mentioned above you can use the Export function but
now I'll explain the Render Queue. Other than the Export function the
Render Queue gives us total control of our composition we want to
render. In this section we'll talk about the different settings and
options we can modify, codecs and types of media.
Add to Render Queue
I memorized the Shortcut Ctrl+Shift+/ of the Render Queue since this
way I can find it very fast. But you can also go to Composition > Add
to Render Queue. Make sure to select a composition.
Render Queue Panel
After selecting the Render Queue the proper panel will appear
somewhere in your workspace. Normally at the bottom where the
composition Panel sits. You can retrieve information about the current
settings of your composition by clicking on the little triangle next to
Current Render (1.). As you can see we have three fragments which are
modifiable before rendering the movie. You can set the Render Settings
(2.), Output Module (3.) and the directory where you want your files to
be saved (4.). The Output Module is the main fragment we will take a
look at since this is where we tell it what settings to use.
Render Settings
To change the Render Settings you need to click on the text in
orange. By clicking on the dropdown menu you only select which Settings
you want to use. Usually Best Settings is the best choice.
Output Module
The Output Module works the same way. You can select the Output
Module by clicking on the triangle next to the orange text which would
open the actual settings window.
Render Settings window
After clicking on Render Settings the Render Settings will appear and
you'll have a few options to modify. For the most part the settings are
self-explanatory. We'll leave the settings for now.
Output Module window
By clicking on Output Module the Output Module Settings will appear.
This is where we will make some changes. For example change the Format
to QuickTime Movie (1.). At the bottom you can also enable audio
rendering by clicking on the checkbox Audio Output and modify some
settings.
Formats
While we want to select the Quicktime Movie format you can see that
there are plenty of formats which contain the word Sequence. That means
the movie will be based on still images. You should always consider what
you will use the movie for. For example Adobe Flash Video is good for
web usage. You can render your movies to DVD, CD, FLV, SWF and more:
Compression
After choosing the format you like, the Compression Panel will
appear. Compression (codecs) is very important and you need to be
careful when choosing one because the codec you use to compress your
files will be the same codec your viewers need to decompress your
footage, to watch it.
Codecs
This dropdown menu can vary on different computers. Different DVD
Player softwares install their own codecs like Divx. You can go with
Animation if you can work with big file sizes. An interesting
compression type is Photo-JPEG which renders your movie in JPEG images.
You can change the output quality with the slider. Its not necessary to
set it to 100%. To reduce the output file size you can set it to
90%-100% achieving good results.
Output To
To set the directory where you want your files to be saved you have
to click on Output To (1.). The proper window will open where you can
select the directory, give the file a name and click save.
Render
After setting your Render Settings, Output Module and the directory
where you want to save your files to, you are ready to render your
movie. Click on the Render button (1.) and the rendering will start.
Rendering process
You can see the File name (1.) and the rendering process (2.) in form
of a orange bar. You will hear a beep when the rendering process is
done.
Conclusion
I hope you liked this first Part of our three Part Essential Training. Make sure to check out Part 2.
Kalo mau copy/paste jangan lupa created authornya oke ^^ "
DANIELSPUTRA"
