One month trial After Effects - advise please.

I have a one month trial After Effects software. It's fully functional and I can save the results. But what do I do with it? I don't mean everything that I can do with it;

what are the three basic functions of Adobe After Effects? How do I get started? There's no time for tutorials, please ... just tell me what to click on. LOL 123... click on this then click on that then click on the other, etc.

Thanks for your help.

3 basic functions? I think you are confusing After Effects with iMovie...

Sorry but tutorials and/or reading the manual are the only way to learn AE - download some tutorials from creativecow.net or RTFM which will be in the form of the Help menu as per most apps on Mac.

Or pay for a course.

Ben



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

Got to read the manual filmman filmman. No getting around it.

Michael Horton
-------------------

Vic I gotta add this and please understand.

LAFCPUG is a Final Cut Pro user group

Yes on occasion we will help on issues regarding other hardware/software.

Yes we will point you in the right direction if it's off topic.

But demanding a custom walk through (which incidentally IS a tutorial), is just rude. Now maybe you didn't mean it that way but considering your wording it's hard to see it in another light.

Use google and be prepared to spend your time learning the ropes. There are 1000s of articles out there for AE.


Ben


Vic please try these 3 simple rules I have lovingly prepared for you:

1. Google... Is Vic's new best friend and needs to be consulted first.

2. Google... for all Filmman questions, queries and quandaries.

3. Google first before OT posting on LAFCPUG (or any other forum for that matter)

You will be amazed at the wealth of information you can find with it. Especially on topics not pertaining to FCP...



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

AFTER EFFECTS CLASSROOM IN A BOOK. Look for it on Amazon.com.

After Effects isn't a simple program...takes a while to learn.

Basic Functions?

-Compositing
-Motion Graphics
-Titles

Sorry...this isn't a simple "click 1-2-3" application.


www.shanerosseditor.com

Listen to THE EDIT BAY Podcast on iTunes
[itunes.apple.com]

Thank you, Shane
Finally a shane answer. LOL

Compositing ... I understand what that is. In fact I'm pretty good at it in FCP.

Motion graphics ... yes, this too I understand what it is. In fact I've used a bit of Motion from the FCP motion tab.

Titles ... oh, yes, I know how to do titles in Boris and Lower Third. I can give some advice on Lower Third title in fact :-) I don't mind helping out too.

And, Ben, please forgive me for being rude. When I use LOL, I'm not laughing AT ANYBODY or ANYTHING. I'm simply trying to say, "don't take this seriously."

Okay, so I'll have to slug my way through the application ... as, alas, my eyes can't take reading the black fonts over the white backgrounds.

Whatever happened to the wonderful grey Apple background of the early 1990s ?

Ah now that is something I can help with.

In After Effects:

? Go into preferences

? User Interface Colors

Then Drag the slider down (to the left)

Voilá you should now have a dark interface with white text


Ben

PS dont forget my 3 rules now!



For instant answers to more than one hundred common FCP questions, check out the LAFCPUG FAQ Wiki here : [www.lafcpug.org]

the coolest thing about after effects is that it can be many things to many people. there are a number of ways to use it. it all depends on your expectations...

you'll save yourself a LOT of heartache if you peddle down to your nearest big-chain bookstore and grab the "classroom in a book" it'll walk you in from the basics forward. the $50 you'll spend on that will save you HOURS of aimless meandering...

the thing i like about after effects is that its SUPER intuitive and i consider it the easiest to learn program ever! i got my first copy as a pre-release when CoSA owned it back in like 1993 or so - and there WAS NO MANUAL and i didnt have any trouble getting right to business with it...

personally i use it mainly for text and graphic overlays and my basic workflow overview is:

1. create a composition that matches your target settings (command N)
2. import layered illustrator or photoshop files as comps
3. animate over time using the various after effects controls and filters (click the little triangle to the left of the layer name in the timeline, then the similar triangle to the left of "transform" to access the basic controls)
4. animate to my hearts content.
5. make movie (command M) export at "best settings" as "lossless with alpha"
6 lay that renderd movie into FCP

you might search the forum for after effects posts. i know that joey, myself, derek and others have done a bit of chatting about it.

i left out a pretty important step:

2b. drag desired comp layers to the timeline

That was very generous, Wayne. I'm going to write the suggestions on an index card and play around with them.

And thanks, Ben, for the trick for changing the background color. It might save what's left of my eyes.

ok, another tidbit. once you have a graphic on the timeline and the two triangles have been clicked to reveal the transform options, click the little stopwatch next to a property (opacity, position, scale, etc...) to enable keyframes for that property. then anywhere you move the playhead and change that property, the tween animating will occur.

Hey, Filmman.
After Effects in a nutshell: outstanding, second to none motion graphics, and nice (though probably not in the same league) compositing. However, the truly beautiful thing is how it provides BOTH things in a single environment!

Let's break it into specific aspects, in case that's helpful to you.
* The text animation engine is simply brilliant. As an example, Motion's Sequence Text behaviors are a subset of what AE can do in this regard (FWIW, that would be called a Range Selector in AE). Then you have the wiggly and expression selectors, which are completely new worlds themselves.

* It has a 2.5D system that has been imitated countless times. It features virtual cameras with depth of field simulation, several types of light sources ,with the ability to cast shadows and even projections. You also have control of how layers react to specific aspects of light.

* It has a nice motion tracking system, which although probably not the best of them all, can be used with everything I'm mentioning here. So it's really useful in that sense.

* It has (as Grafixjoe noted recently) about a dozen different keyers. Including Keylight, which is as good as keying can get, IMHO.

* The keyframe handling is simply awesome: you can scale a range of keyframes to quickly speed up or slow down a whole animation. You can quickly reverse a range of keyframes, so the animation goes the other way around. You can select and do things with keyframes across mutliple properties, multiple layers, etc. You can have keyframes that don't interpolate (hold keyframes) or that exist as spatial nodes but don't affect speed (roving).

* Finally, if you have the guts, it was the first application of its' kind that got an expression engine. What are expressions? A simple programming language that makes it easy to do things that would be too cumbersome with keyframes. For example, repeat this cycle of keyframes three times, increasing the value each time. Or make the Z position of layers a consequence of its' stacking order, so that every time a duplicata a layer, it's 100 pixels further in 3D space. Or you can make an object's properties react to the amplitude of audio, so that the music drives the text tracking, for example. How about that?

Hope this helps.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

(edit)

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

Wayne, Adolfo, you guys are fantastic! I feel like the guy in the movie INDEPENDENCE DAY when they approach the alien spacecraft and the scientist (Wayne) first gives the low down on the craft (AE) and then Adolfo takes over and talks about some of the esoteric aspects of the alien technology -- I'm simply blown away. What do I do to fly this thing? LOL

I'm going to click on "try" (sorry, Joey, that's what is says on the trial version of AE :-) and I'm going to DO a few tricks on it. Even if I mess up, I'll learn something.

I can't wait to make my movie flow like celluloid into the frames and have a flying wheel punch out the sprocket holes and my story paste into the keyed out portions of the frame-line... LOL

And then I'll throw in some impressions to create my cinema verite impressionistic style. I can't wait to learn AE.

Seriously, thank you, gentlemen for helping out a poor struggling artist with a limited budget and big dreams :-) This is LAFCPUG at its best.

dont wax to poetic there vic - its just a tool. but thanX none the less for your enthusiasm ; )
and GO GET THAT BOOK!!!!! what we've told you here wont hardly even get you of the ground

after effects is second only to illustrator in the list of my favorite applications in the world.

the flexibility of these two apps, allows you to do just about anything you can imagine (within reason of course) and together have pretty much kept me in business for the past 13 years...
once you get your head around the rudiments the rest comes down to design skills - and THATS the hard part!

here is 6/8ths of the verticle of a timeline from a photoshop/illustrator animation i just wrapped for schlumberger. all still images animated in after effects - animation will be psoted on "show and tell" in the coming days...

[understandinc.com]

Adolpho, great list of features. I've been interested in AE for some time and this looks great, along with all the glowing testimonials. I see that there is a "regular" and a "Professional" version of AE8, with a $300 difference in price tag. Can someone lay out the key differences between the two?

Scott

There's no AE 8 (yet)...we're at 7.0.1. No need to "lay out the differences" when it's already been done for you by Adobe:

[www.adobe.com]

When life gives you dilemmas...make dilemmanade.

>>There's no AE 8 (yet).

Oops, got tangled up with other Adobe versions. Thanks for the link, that indeed answers my question. Even knowing it's there, I can't find a link on Adobe's site to that page.

I guess my question now is whether anyone is using the "regular" version of AE, and if so are you satisfied with it? It looks like the really great features are only in Professional.

Scott

I think the $300 difference is minimal, considering the gigantic difference in features between the two versions. I'd say at this point the standard version only exists so it can be bundled in a "lite" version of their video collection. Among other things, you loose: Motion tracking, the most sophisticated keyers (like Keylight), animation tools like exponential scale/the wiggler/the smoother, network rendering, Timewarp (formerly Kronos retimer), 3D channel effects to read embeded 3D data from 3D applications, the bundled Color Finesse and many advanced effects.
I'd say go for the Pro version, no doubt about it. AE Pro used to cost $1500 until two years ago.

Adolfo Rozenfeld
Buenos Aires - Argentina
www.adolforozenfeld.com

Thanks, Adolpho, that's pretty much what I figured.

Scott