Layer Properties
Philip Ebiner
Lessons
Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates
06:22 2Understand the After Effects Workspace
05:39 3Starting a New Composition
08:15 4CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage
01:55 5Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline
05:08 6Using the Basic After Effects Tools
10:20Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors
03:04 8Working in the Timeline
10:59 9Layer Properties
08:57 10Quiz: After Effects Basics
11Animating in After Effects
07:35 12Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations
05:17 13Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral
04:21 14Using the Graph Editor
05:32 15Challenge - Bouncing Ball
01:01 16Solution - Bouncing Ball
13:00 17Quiz: Animating with Keyframes
18Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects
07:07 19Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths
06:24 20Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients
03:44 21Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag
05:54 22Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers
23Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear
08:37 24Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers
05:34 25Easily Reverse Complicated Animations
02:14 26Playing with Time
05:54 27Blend Modes
06:05 28Stabilize Shaky Footage
04:04 29CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts
00:46 30CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time
03:36 31CC 2019 Content Aware Fill
03:55 32CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates
08:37 33Quiz: Important After Effects Skills
34Intro to Motion Graphics Projects
00:53 35Clean Lower Third
09:22 36Logo Reveal Animation Bumper
13:25 37Colorful Transition
16:59 38Text with Mask Path Animation
10:05 39Text Bubble Animation
13:39 40Weather App 1
16:41 41Weather App 2
08:21 42Weather App 3
06:59 43Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects
44Flat Animation Challenge
02:47 45Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene
01:23 46Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect
15:02 47Removing Green Screen Background
06:46 48Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground
07:55 49Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool
06:26 50Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect
06:07 51Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge
52Intro to 3D
10:04 53Swinging 3D Text Animation
12:11 54Build Out Your 3D Composition
05:47 55Animating Our 3D Scene
07:38 56Create Stars in After Effects
05:11 57Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)
58Using the Rotoscope Tool
06:55 59Cleaning Up Your Edges
07:21 60Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation
07:33 61Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool
62Easy Screen Replacement with Masks
09:56 63Replacing a Screen Version 2
13:49 64Screen Replacement with Mocha
07:13 65CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin
05:08 66Quiz: Rotoscoping
67Using the Puppet Pin Tool
04:33 68Animating Your Puppet Pins
03:04 69Animated Blinking Eyes
08:21 70Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds
07:10 71CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool
02:08 72Quiz: Screen Replacements
73Applying Text Animation Presets
05:59 74Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn
10:05 75Radial and Linear Wipes
03:20 76Color Correction in After Effects
03:33 77CC 2019 Update - Selective Color Adjustments
03:25 78Quiz: Puppet Tool Animations
79Motion Tracking Basics
09:51 80Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip
06:21 81Tracking Rotation and Scale
11:33 82Adding Details to Our Text
04:04 83Quiz: Motion Tracking
84Intro to Character Animations
01:31 85Design Your Character
14:32 86Rigging Your Character
02:50 87Animating Our Character
09:55 88Adding the Animated Background
09:12 89Adding Details to Character Movement
06:46 90Adding the Paper Cut Out Look
05:29 91Quiz: Character Animations
92Exporting an H264 File from After Effects
07:03 93Exporting from After Effects with a Transparent Background
04:03 94Exporting from After Effects through Adobe Media Encoder
04:40 95CC 2018 Update - Exporting an Animated GIF from Adobe Media Encoder
02:14 96Create an Animated GIF from After Effects CC 2017
07:03 97Audio Tips for After Effects
02:19 98Working with Premiere Pro
05:54 99Quiz: After Effects Workflow & Tips
100Expressions Basics
07:24 101Animate a Flickering Light with Expressions
17:35 102Quiz: Expressions
103Conclusion
00:44 104Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Layer Properties
let's talk about our layer properties to do that. I'm going to delete this red circle but I'm also going to just leave this blue circle on and our photo, I'm just going to extend this one to the left and extend this one to the right. You'll see that when we created the shape layer that we automatically have some of these options already opened the contents and the ellipse option and the transform menu. Every layer has the transform menu. So if I go into our kangaroo layer and I click this drop down button, you see this transform menu that pops up to open up this menu. All we have to do is click this little drop down and you'll see all of the transform properties, anchor point, position, scale rotation and opacity. These are transform properties for every single after effects layer. We already looked at scale. This is how you scale up or down a layer, anchor point. We already kind of saw that with the pan behind tool. This is just the representation of it in pixels based off of where it...
is on your composition here. So if I take my pan behind tool and then I click on the anchor point and I move it around. You can see that it actually moves the anchor point numbers down in the timeline back with my selection tool. If I move this photo around my composition now you can see that the position is also changing. We can also change these things just by clicking and dragging these numbers here in our timeline or by clicking the number and actually putting in the exact number that we want. So if we want this to be at 100% scale we can put in 100%. If we wanted to be at 25%, You'll see 2%ages for the scale and that's the width and the height percentage. And these are typically locked which you can see with this little link icon which is the constrained proportions option. If I want to be able to edit the scale of the width and height individually, I can click on that to unlock it and now I can stretch this photo with the different scale for width and height. So you can see this is also scaling from the anchor point. So it's scaling from this point. And you'll also notice that I can go negative and so when I go negative it actually flips the image if you wanted to flip exactly from the center. An easy way to put the anchor point in the exact center is to hold the command and shift buttons down. And you can see now as I drag the pan behind tool around, you see these crosshairs pop open and this helps you and it kind of locks the anchor point to the center horizontal and the vertical center lines if we want it to be in the center we can drag it and it snaps to the center. Now you can see if we flip the scale. It flips exactly from the center of the image which makes it a little bit easier, we have rotation which we also saw before with the rotation tool. If we rotate that changes that. And then the other thing we didn't see is opacity. So this is the transparency of this layer also known as opacity 100% opaque means that it's fully there. None of it is transparent. If we put it down to say 50% and then we toggle on the transparency of this composition, you'll see that there is some transparency. I say we move this kangaroo above are blue circle and then we turn on our blue circle again. Now we can see the blue circle behind our kangaroo. That's because we're at 50% opacity for this photo layer. I can turn off the toggle transparency grid and you can still see that this circle is behind this photo layer. So let's bring that back up to 100%. All of these transformed properties have their own keyboard shortcut and by the end of this course you will be well aware and fluent in using them. So for anchor point it's a for position, it's P for scale, it's s for rotation, it's our and for opacity, can you guess what it is? It's actually not? Oh which would make so much sense but it's actually t which you can think of as transparency. So with any of these layers selected, you can bring up those different properties and if you want to quickly close down this layer instead of just clicking this triangle button which is relatively fast. But I think keyboard shortcuts make everything faster. You can use any of those buttons for example s to bring up scale. And then when you press s again it closes down the scale property so none of them are open T t again closes it down. You can also select multiple layers in your timeline by shift clicking them or by control clicking them or command clicking on a Mac. And then you can bring up any of the properties together. So scale T. For opacity A for anchor point and so on and so forth. So if I drop this down and open it up again for the kangaroo image, we've gone through all of the transform properties in the shape layer. You'll see that you have your transform properties but you also have this contents dropdown. This is different for shape layers And you'll see this with shape layers, you won't see the contents for layers like photos. And here is actually the ellipse. And let me turn off our kangaroo so we can see the lips. This is the lips shape that we created in this layer. The confusing part is that we can create multiple shaped within this one layer, we're gonna be going over shapes in much more depth in the future. But let me just quickly take the lips tool with this layer selected if I click and drag you can see that I'm creating another circle. It doesn't create a separate layer, it creates another ellipse within the contents of this one shape layer. So if I turn this on and off it's both of those shapes in one and underneath this ellipse layer we have more options. We have the ellipse path, the stroke, the fill and transform properties. So there's individual transform properties for each shape layer within this shape layer, confusing. Right? And within these transform properties there's more options for shape layers such as skew which skews a shape or skew access which changes where it skews from confused. I know it is confusing and you're going to learn these things as we go and as we use them. But just note that while all layers have the basic transform properties. Some layers have different properties. For example the mask layer. So let me delete the blue circle which deletes both of those circles we created. Actually let me undo that and show you that you can drop down our contents folder and then if you want to just delete one of these ellipses we can select that. Ellipse and then delete it if you want to delete the whole layer entirely. Just select the layer itself and not the content layer down below and delete. So if I turn on the kangaroo then we create a mask. Do you remember how we did that? We went up and used the shape tool, such as the rounded rectangle tool or the pen tool. Let me show you the polygon tool because that's a good one to know too. With this layer selected now I click and I drag and I have this polygon. It starts out as a pentagon with five points. Now we have this mask which is another option underneath this layer. So if I open up the mask tool we have mask properties, feathers, opacity expansion. All these things you can adjust the same way by clicking and dragging to the right or left or by clicking and inputting a specific number. I think that's a lot to grasp right now. Go ahead and play around with your layers. Play around with your timeline. Play around with all these properties for your different layers. And in the next section we're going to jump right into animating in after effects. It might sound confusing, but once you know the basics of it, it actually is relatively simple. So get comfortable with everything that we've learned in this section so far and I'll see you in the next one
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