Lessons

Lesson Info

Basics Q&A

In photo shop you have history panel where you can just pick where you want to go back to do you have that here no you've got you're you're undo and then you've got your history here we can grab it it's just right up here on your edit menu so there's history there and it depends on how many levels of undo that you've got set let's go ahead and take a look at our preferences right now um that's under our after effects menu up here when go to preferences and let's just start right from the top with our general because this is where you set your levels of undue you can go up there and put in you know I want three hundred levels of undue it's going to say you can't have three levels of three hundred you only have ninety nine that's all we're going to let you have that depends on your your disk cash and all of that what you really want to do that's a lot of processor you're taking up I typically sometimes I'll leave it at thirty two sometimes we'll go less depending on how complex my projec...

t iss if I've got a really intense project I may only go to like twelve because it's just it's having to keep all of that information ready and waiting for you to go back you know and if you're doing a really heavy duty stuff that's tough ah, a couple other things, if you don't like the color picker, they've gotten used to the system color picture, which is just the apple default or the windows default color picker there's a lot of things in here, we're going to skip over because it could be pretty daunting looking at it for a previews pretty much the same thing here, too. I leave most of this at its default, uh, same with our display there's a lot of stuff in here, that's a little more advance it's things that are important to look at uh, maybe you're grids and your guides you may want change your color of of the guidelines you can change where they're the dashes, dots or just lines I like just straight lines because it gives me a nice clean edge toe look at for my grid labels by default already have names and colors, but you can change those and that's when you want to change how things look, these little square boxes over here in your project panel or down here in your timeline, this little box here, you can click on that being said it to a different color, and that really depends on your own personal preferences what you liked to do, I like to change the colors of things by what kind of contents, innit? Like if I'm doing green screen tournament with all the green ones green that I know so I've got a whole bunch of layers in there I can see just by color you know the color tags that aaron there the labels you know what I'm what kind of layer looking axe I'm a very visual person I'd liketo work that way this is an important one here media and dis cash now if you have either an external fire not firewire but like a thunderbolt drive that's an sst with your machine that makes a really good cash drive when you have a second internal sst or an external makes a really good cash drive which means it's almost like buying a whole bunch more ram the way that that after effects works and it's a real ram hog as it is so that allows you to disc ash which gives you more room to move things that gives you you a lot more to work with so you can go in there you can choose where that's going to affect to be placed right now everything is all on the internal hard drive here so I'm leaving everything right where it is but if you have other drives either internal or external that you can use for cashing that really helps speed things up gives you longer ram previews and better performance another thing is thie memory and multi processing if you have a lot of ram you khun dictate how much ram is left for other applications on it tells you which adobe aps are open right now right now I've got photo shop and after effects open and and the ram is shared by that and this one here for multi processing if you have a multi processor machine you can select that and that's going to actually make it work a little harder for you so those air some major parts of the preference is that that are really important to go in there and tweak and understand those they give you a little more access to your hardware and how things are previewed but do we have any questions by chance? Absolutely. First I would like to give a shout out to ten year old tristen who's watching today from harker heights, texas learning after effects I think that's very cool unusual ten years old watching your awesome, very cool welcome, tristen. Thanks for watching. All right. We have a question here from a lar lee who says, how do you keep it from being a gradual change in the ball when I add key frames and becomes a gradual change in shape as opposed to being a sudden squish? Okay, well, that would probably be a matter of how close your key frames are together, so let's, take a look at that lets go back teo are cartoon bounce here let's take a look at one layer at a time here and see what we've got going on so I've got my first key frame. Actually, I didn't start my first key frame for the scale right out here at the top. I didn't I didn't move that kiefer I didn't change the scale key frame until right before I wanted it to start the squish, so I wanted it it's even though it's kind of starting before it hits the ground that's again that's that's subjective thing where it's like what looks best when it plays back so you have to kind of go back and forth a bit because if I start the squish right when it hits the ground, say I kind moved this key frame up, then it happens too fast and it looks kind of like a flash when we look at it back so it's a little little more springing, but if you want it to be smoother, you just move your key frames farther apart or closer together. So if I want that that really spring effect toe happen quicker, I just move all my key frames together for my scale and again anything that you move so that that does the springy squish a lot quicker see if I want that squished to be ah, a little softer, a little smoother and probably a little more exaggerated like a cartoon I'm going to move them a little farther parts it's really noticeable zay, you know, you get that real cartoon character effect out of it, so I hope that answers the question of that cool. And so just like the studio audience pointed out, you really have to plan ahead. You have to think in multiple dimensions, right up and down wishing what's going to happen it's like you're almost like a you're running a puppet or a marionette? Yeah, you're a director. Yeah, you know, this is your chance to direct characters and you're making them do things and like a puppeteer or yeah, and then and the animators job is to bring things to life cool remedial question here from the beginning when you made that that first animation you have a key frame and then you made you move the ball. You made a second key frame right in creating that third key frame did you go back in copy that? You just copy that first key frame and then pasted it down here, right? And that's a power would you use that often? I use that all the time because a lot of times when you want to loop something you want you know that means that's closing the loop that's closing the ring you want to end? You want to end right where you started it's like going three hundred sixty degrees think of a za loop I wanted to loop this animation I wanted to make sure that the last frame looks like the first frame so that when I put them side by side I can then I'm starting off I'm stopping where I started off and I'll start off again and that way any time you're repeating in action you want to loop it so closing that luke means you know, making sure the last key frame is exactly the same as the first and it copies all the properties from that single frame. Well, it is that it it's only that key frame because if you think about it the only property that that key frame is is affecting is just the one property that key frame that I copied and pasted on lee only attribute it has to think about is the position it's not thinking about scale or rotation or rapacity it's only thinking about the position the scale on this line has all its own key frames see so I just made sure that my first key frame there I met a hundred percent and it's it's a hundred and a hundred and my last key frame for that part of the animation is one hundred and one hundred so again it's the looping you've got to think about each attributes is having its own the line of key frames so the beauty of that isthe I can make this loop and I could have a loop a whole bunch of times but like as I showed you in our master I've got this is you know what we call nesting? You know when you've got sub comscore cops inside of camps like I did hear I'm nesting that cop inside there so the only thing I had to do here to change these key frames I'm not thinking about the bounce anymore because that's already happening in another cop right? But it's but if I if I only think about how fast this is moving across the stage those the only key frames I have to worry about is where I'm putting uh that bounce so if I move in close together is gonna bounce you know much faster but almost looks like it's sliding now it doesn't look right I would need to go back and change my my bounces in this comp and if I open that compa I would have to go in and shortened all my key frames squish those together to make each bounce faster you know, but that's what happens when you start nesting things? It does give you the flexibility of going back and changing that the first comp the first route of things without affecting your your final but it doesn't mean you have to drill down if you have to fix something you do have to drill down and find out where it is you need to make those those changes is the basketball a smart objects similar to photo shop as if or has it once it's in there you can't change the color it's embedded in town oh no this is actually the beauty of it if I want to change anything about this basketball I can just select that layer in my project panel here come up here to edit edit original and it's going to open it up in photo shopped for me just like that and say I want to do something else to the ball I can oh let's just change its color let's go to colorize and we'll make it a different color and make it let's make it green green's a good color for me I like that and just do something like this to it saturate it make a green ball okay and going to save it dangerous I'm going go back and change it later okay so now I've got a green ball s o anything I do to that layer in photo shop instantly gets updated in after effects so now I can look at that and see that it's and even in my master because everything goes straight through the ball bounces across and it's a green bouncing ball now so that's a beautiful part of working with photoshopped having photo shop open at the same time is after effects he works well with raster graphics and images date does a support vector graphics considering that the video is a fixed resolution. Is there any reason to use vector graphics? Yes, that's a very good question we are going to get into vectors after the break because vectors, ah lot of times I'll convert vectors to raster graphics, and I'll do that usually in an illustrator all ah, well, if I'm going to be animating something, I'll tend to make things bigger than I need to because I always it's much easier and cleaner to scale things down that will be to try toe up press you know it's just like in photo shop, you don't want to take a little graphic, it pulled off the internet and you'll make a great big huge logo and try to print it or animated because it's gonna look horrible, but with vectors they do allow you to scale, but when you bring a vector graphic in two after effects, you can now convert them to shape layer and we'll get into that which means you can extrude it, you can do things in three d with it, which is really exciting but typically like the animations I showing at the beginning say with the sales force with the characters and that was all illustrator to start with but what I would do is I would separate out all the elements say a person and they're holding something I'd separate those out is two different elements save them out as ping files png files because that way retained the transparency and then I excuse me I can bring those ping files into after after effects and they'll be larger than what I need on screen but least will be clean and they'll be easy to work with, so I typically will convert things ahead of time because they're easier to manipulate and I can also bring them into photo shop and do other things kind of eraser fix things or had a drop shadow or give him a little cheap bevel or whatever there's a lot of things that you can do to graphics in after effects that you can also do in photo shop, which is some of the layer attributes and we'll get into some of that here you know, after the break as well, something if you're familiar photoshopped, a lot of tools you're going to feel are very similar in after effects, but the cool thing about it is you can animate that attributes over time if you got to stop washing, we'll get into that too cool. Thank you. And I got I'm gonna throw in two questions because I can beat for thirty five asks as faras thie nesting of the cops and the master when you make changes to the original comp, does it automatically update in the master? Most? Definitely. So if I have my master here spread this out a little more here. So if I got my master here with the book the now green ball done right, I'm going to change it back. That's really bugging me now? So one nice thing is, even though I saved this, I can still undo come on, go back, step backward. There we go. Um and I'm going to recieve it. There we go. I left it open in photo shop just for the demo. So now that I re saved it, I can hide photo shop and it will automatically update come on, update. Sometimes you just have to say reload, please there we go. So I write clicked on that and I hit reload footage sometimes it doesn't automatically update. You have to force it to go out there and say, hey, there's a change so so let's, look at our our first comp here and so say I I just turned off a layer okay. That'll make it easy. Turn off a couple different layers in this common. So this is the cop. That's got the loop. So there it is. What goes away here it is. Goes away. So now when I look at my master comp, those same things happen through their point goes away, goes away. So if I was to make any other changes in there such as any time in changes on my position, anything like that do anything like this to it. Um, that's going to automatically update as well in my master. So everything carries through all the way from the original photo shopped file to the new animation things. Everything you know, kind of has bread crumbs and carries through. Yes, let's say you wanted it to disappear and then come back as a green. Could you do that? You would need to separate files to do that. There's there's different ways of doing that. Now, what I would probably do in that case is because I'm lazy eyes. I would actually do exactly what I did before, uh, in in photo shop. I would do that here. I would go upto layer and then go to layer styles and then color overlay, okay, and then you have to open that up. This gets down in there a little bit but I would go to just color so this is just like working in a photo shop if your familiars doing that I want to make it green a little darker green okay and then how much color do on want to add to it? You change it there so now what I've done is I've only affected this one little instance of it this one layer that's the on ly layer that have affected with so now it goes back to normal so what I look at it I play it back I've got normal goes away green because they're so instead of making another hole another whole file a photoshopped filed and half reimported and reattach it and do all of that to it I was able to just do a layer style to it make the change their cheat, cheat, cheat, cheat as much as you can because it's about, you know workflow and you know, production so I'm kind of gory end it that way any any more questions from the internet? Absolutely there's always question always always questions all right question from studio modern can you explain why thirty francs per second not twenty four not fifty well those again those air video standards animation if we're only dealing with animation typically I start with thirty I'll go to twenty for if I know them good be mixing in video footage that has that is a twenty for standard or the client you know prefers twenty four there's usually a specific reason to go twenty four has more of a film like look and feel and a lot of times if you have animation that has to go with video footage that was shot at twenty four frames per second, you have to make sure everything matches so again that's pre planning that's knowing ahead of time okay, this has to match I've got to do that now if I was to go to fifty that's actually european standard that's pal, that is a lot more frames to animate, you know? So you've got to consider that as well sixty frames per second that's a little hyper really that's that's sometimes that's what they're shooting now they're calling high frame rate uh, he saw the hobbit in, you know, when that came out in december that was shot at that super high frame rate and again, animation has to match that and I think that was a challenge for that movie, too, because in special effects they've got render time and its frame by frame by frame of rendering all the c g I work that goes in that we have to think about that here too if I got all these layers and I'm trying to match sixty frames versus thirty that's twice as much rendering time you have to deal with so you gotta have a purpose for you have to know why you have to match that that frame rate cool thank you j v mastermind wants to know can you copy and paste multiple key frames at the same time and is there a way for copying all of the relevant key frames? Yes, you can actually if I go back to my uh basketball comp here may turn these back on let me open up this right here and get back down to it. Come on, there we go a little bit of a real estate issue here, let me bring these back out here and drag him out. Um this goes all the way out to twenty five believe yes. So what I'm going to do actually going to turn off these frames some on lee looking at are those layers I mean and on lee looking at this particular piece now I can grab the end of this remember I cut it off some only looking at that little piece uh it doesn't mean it's gone it just means I just cropped it there so I can click on the end of it here you'll see that that gives me a little different cursor here I can click and drag that out, pull it out so you just pull that out there a bit and that gives me a little more length here so what I can do is I can grab all these key frames just do a command sea or a control c on the pc come back down to this point and if I hit uh paste that will paste them because I've got my my time indicator there that'll paste them there and that will allow me to repeat this animation over and over and over again I would just have to make sure that goes right down to the same point and hit paste at each point and I can repeat that uh again it's one layer as I'm going through here I'm not duplicating my layers or anything and for the ease to work correctly I have to convert each one of these in between guys right now it's ease in or if you're a member of the car pulling in the parking spot it's not easy out again so what I have to do is click on that and go down to key frame a system assistant and just click eazy e's what that means it's going to ease in and he's out so I do that on each of these key frames so I can command click those key frames and that can convert it back to uh no easing at all or I can right click on it and go teo eazy e's each one of these that air in between that need he's in and out, he's, easy on dh. Then, when I play that back, you'll see that all those attributes are there. So if you're doing something that's fairly simple like this, that may be a good way to do it's a very short piece. But if you're going to do something that's much longer and you need longer loops, I'd like to, you know, split it up and, you know, put out the sequence that we don't have to copy and paste so many key frames helps.