Are you an experienced graphic designer looking for adventure and a chance to further develop your skills? Does living and working in Dubai sound appealing to you? Dicesol Animation is a start-up animation studio located in Dubai, and we are looking for a passionate graphic designer with the ability to design both beautiful compsitions and characters for motion graphics. A perfect candidate is somebody who is passionate about learning new techniques and is focused on working efficiently and producing high quality content at a fast rate.

Tasks will mainly involve reading storyboards, creating interesting compositions, illustrating and designing characters, and developing art styles and colour palletes. You will have plenty of room to develop your skills as we have a small team of 4 members to begin with. Someone willing to take ownership to ensure that the final product is exceptional. Someone who has a desire to be along in creating some compelling and inspiring animation films.

Our first two projects are from a Norwegian client, looking to produce a series of motion graphic films aimed at anylizing text and diving into the lives and beliefs of important historical figures. We are a new animation studio based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The kind that make you want to go create something yourself when you watch them. If you are ready for adventure and filmmaking, then we would love for you to join us on our journey! Send your application to denzel dicesol. Our bold and iconic work has given us the opportunity to work with leading brands and agencies across the world. Postproduction: Compositing and Motion graphics. Preproduction Artist. Please send a link to your site or examples of your work to jobs madebyradio. Radius: Auto 1 mi 5 mi 10 mi 50 mi mi 1, mi 5, mi.

Job Description Are you an experienced graphic designer looking for adventure and a chance to further develop your skills? Our Projects Our first two projects are from a Norwegian client, looking to produce a series of motion graphic films aimed at anylizing text and diving into the lives and beliefs of important historical figures. Please attach to your application Highly skilled in Ps and Ai Strong illustration ability Strong graphic design ability Ability to create a variety of styles Ability to read a storyboard Good understanding of cinematography and composition An exceptional candidate could also be: experienced in animation and the after effects workflow Work location: Dubai, on-site What we offer: Visa Health Insurance Relocation Assistance Similar Animation Jobs.

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Those shortcuts are a handful; context-clicking the layer for the Transform menu is nearly as easy. The ; key toggles all the way in and out on the Timeline: single frame to all frames. The slider at the bottom of the Timeline zooms in and out more selectively. The scroll wheel moves you up and down the layer stack. Hold down the Shift key as you drag the Current Time Indicator to snap current time to comp or layer markers or visible keyframes.

The Comp Marker Bin draw out into the Timeline ruler. You can replace their sequential numbers with names. There are keyboard shortcuts to each Transform property. For a standard 2D layer these are 46 I: Working Foundations. A for Anchor Point, the center pivot of the layer. P for Position, by default the center of the comp. S for Scale in percent of source. R for Rotation in revolutions and degrees. This keeps only what you need in front of you.

A 3D layer reveals four individual properties under Rotation to allow full animation on all axes. There are selection tools to correspond to Transforms:. V activates the Selection tool, which also moves and scales in a view panel. Y switches to the Pan-Behind tool, which moves the anchor point. Below the grid that appears in place of the layer stack are the Graph Editor controls Figure 2. There is no option to see both together.

Show Properties By default, if nothing is selected, nothing displays; what you see depends on the settings in the Show Properties menu. Three toggles in this menu control how animation curves are displayed:. Show Selected Properties displays animation whatever property names are highlighted. To work in the Graph Editor without worrying what is selected, disable Show Selected Properties and enable the other two.

Show Animated Properties shows everything with keyframes or expressions. You decide which curves need to appear, activate their Graph Editor Set toggle, and after that it no longer matters whether you keep them selected. You have to restart After Effects before this preference is enabled. Basic Animation and the Graph View Figure 2. I: Working Foundations Figure 2. To get to this point. At frame 24, move the ball off right of frame, creating a second keyframe. Now add the bounces: At frame 6 and 18 move the ball straight downward so it touches the bottom of frame.

Also, the default Graph Editor view at this point is not very helpful, because it displays the Speed Graph, and the speed of the layer is completely steady at this point—deliberately so, in fact. To get the view shown in Figure 2.

This is a toggle even advanced users miss, although it is now on by default; in addition to the not-very-helpful Speed Graph you now see the Value Graph in its X red and Y green values.

However, the green values appear upsidedown! For this purpose After Effects offers the automated Easy Ease functions, although you can also create or adjust eases by hand in the Graph Editor. Fix this in the Composition viewer by pulling Beziers out of each of the keyframes you just eased: 1. Deselect all keyframes but leave the layer selected. Switches to the Pen tool with the G key; in the Compo- sition viewer, drag from the highlighted keyframe to the right, creating a horizontal Bezier handle.

Stop before crossing the second keyframe. Why is that? The red X graph shows an unsteady horizontal motion due to the eases. The problem is that the eases should be applied only to the vertical Y dimension, whereas the X animation travels at a constant rate. This allows you to add keyframes for one dimension only at a given point in time, or to add keyframes in one dimension at a time.

Select Position and click Separate Dimensions. Now try the following: 52 I: Working Foundations 1. Select the middle three X Position keyframes—you can draw a selection box around them—and delete them.

Now take a look in the Composition viewer—the motion is back to linear, although the temporal eases remain on the Y axis. Not only that, but you cannot redraw them as you did before; enabling Separate Dimensions removes this ability.

Instead, you can create them in the Graph Editor itself. Show Graph Tool Tips displays values of whatever curve is under the mouse at that exact point in time. Figure 2. The Transform Box lets you edit keyframe values in all kinds of wacky ways. Toggle on Show Transform Box and select more than one keyframe, and a white box with vertices surrounds the selected frames. Drag the handle at the right side left or right to change overall timing; the keyframes remain proportionally arranged.

So, does the Transform Box help in this case? Well, it could, if you needed to. The Snap button snaps to virtually every visible marker, but not—snap! Add a decay to the animation so that the ball bounces lower each time: Alt-drag Option-drag on the lower right corner handle Figure 2.

If you leave them as linear keyframes, the ball oscillates between opaque and transparent, but if you toggle them to Hold keyframes, it snaps on and off Figure 2. Beyond Bouncing Balls In the possibly likely case that the need for a bouncing ball animation never comes up, what does this example show you?

Three preset keyframe transition types are available, each with a shortcut at the bottom of the Graph Editor: Hold , Linear , and Automatic Bezier. Adjust the handles or apply Easy Ease and the preset becomes a custom Bezier Shape. Roving Keyframes Sometimes an animation must follow an exact path, hitting precise points, but progress steadily, with no variation in the rate of travel.

This is the situation for which Roving keyframes were devised. Got Excel or another spreadsheet application? Copy a set of keyframes from After Effects and paste them into a spreadsheet, and the After Effects keyframe format is laid bare.

You can paste from one property to another, so long as the format matches the units and number of parameters. Copy the source, highlight the target, and paste. Once done, copy and paste back into After Effects. Therefore, pay attention to the current time and what is selected when copying, but in particular, when pasting animation data. Layer vs.

Block in keyframes with respect to the overall composition. Compare spatial and temporal data. However, when you scale a set of keyframes using the Transform Box, keyframes will often fall in between frames whether or not this option is enabled.

Change keyframe type Linear, Hold, Ease In, and so on. U toggles all properties with keyframes or expressions applied. UU U twice in quick succession toggles all properties set to any value besides the default; or every Property in the Timeline that has been edited. E toggles all applied effects. EE toggles all applied expressions. You want all the changes applied to Masks and Transforms, not Effects?

Lose the Masks? But UU—now that is a full-on problem-solving tool all to itself. It allows you to quickly investigate what has been edited on a given layer, is helpful when troubleshooting 58 I: Working Foundations your own layer settings, and is nearly priceless when investigating an unfamiliar project.

Highlight all the layers of a Comp and press UU to reveal all edits, enable Switches, Modes, Parent, and Stretch columns, and you see everything in a Comp, with the exception of. Locked layers Nerd-Based Compositing Flowchart, the After Effects nodal view, reveals the truth that all compositing applications are, at their core, nodal in their logic and organization.

Shy layers disable them atop the Timeline to show all. Comp settings themselves, such as motion blur and frame rate In other words, this is an effective method to use to understand or troubleshoot a shot. It quickly maps any upstream or downstream comps and allows you to open any of them simply by clicking on it. You have to see it to believe it: a nodal interface in After Effects Figure 2. This view shows how objects layers, compositions, and effects are used, and in what relationship to one another.

Click the icon to switch the view to flow left to right, which fits well on a monitor, or Option-click it to clean up the view. Its usage has largely been superceded by the new Miniflow b, bottom , which focuses interactively on the current comp.

Click Property name to select all keyframes for a property. Read on; you are not a keyframe Jedi—yet. Keyframe Offsets Keyframe multiselection in standard Layer view but not Graph Editor is inconsistent with the rest of the application: you Shift-click to add or subtract a single frame from a group.

With multiple keyframes selected you can also. After Effects is generally designed to preserve the appearance of the composition when you are merely setting up animation, toggling 3D on, and so forth.

Therefore editing an anchor point position with the Pan Behind tool triggers the inverse offset to the Position property. Parent a layer to another layer and the child layer maintains its relative position until you further animate either of them. The Option key is key to all options. The Position offset is for that frame only, however, so if there are Position keyframes, the layer may appear offset on other frames if you drag the anchor point this way. To reposition the anchor point without changing Position.

Change the Anchor Point value in the Timeline. Use the Pan Behind tool in Layer view instead. Hold the Option key as you drag with the Pan Behind tool 61 Chapter 2 The Timeline Any of these options lets you reposition the anchor point without messing up an animation by changing one of the Position keyframes. You can also animate the anchor point, of course; this allows you to rotate as you pan around an image while keeping the view centered.

For the bouncing ball, you could move the anchor point to the base of the layer to add a little cartoonish squash and stretch, scaling Y down at the impact points. Parenting remains valid even if the parent layer moves, is duplicated, or changes its name. A parent and all of its children can be selected by context-clicking the parent layer and choosing Select Children. Parenting can be removed by choosing None from the Parent menu.

You might not know what happens when you add the Option key to Parent settings:. Hold Option as you select the None option and the layer reverts to the Transform values it had before being parented otherwise the offset at the time None is selected remains. Hold Option as you select a Parent layer and its Transform data at the current frame applied to the child layer prior to parenting.

This last point is a very cool and easily missed method for arraying layers automatically. It behaves like the Duplicate and Offset option in Illustrator Figure 2. The trick is to create the first layer, duplicate, and offset; now you have two.

Repeat this last step with as many layers as you need; each one repeats the offset. Tip of the hat to Danny Princz! It is the natural result of movement that occurs while a camera shutter is open, causing objects in the image to be recorded at every point from the shutter opening to closing. The movement can be individual objects or the camera itself.

Although it essentially smears layers in a composition, motion blur is generally desirable; it adds to persistence of vision, relaxes the eye, and is a natural phenomenon.

Aesthetically, it can be quite beautiful. The typical idea with motion blur in a realistic visual effects shot is to match the amount of blur in the source shot, assuming you have reference; if you lack visual reference, a camera report can also help you set this correctly. A moving picture camera has a shutter speed setting that controls the amount of motion blur. Motion blur occurs in your natural vision, although you might not realize it—stare at a ceiling fan in motion, and then try following an individual blade around instead and you will notice a dramatic difference.

This seems to have started with live television sports coverage and the use of extremely fast shutters for slow motion replay cameras.

Shutter Angle controls shutter speed, and thus the amount of blur. Any changes you make here stick and are passed along to the next composition, or even the next project, until you change them. Shutter Phase determines at what point the shutter opens. Samples Per Frame applies only to 3D motion blur; it sets the number of slices in time samples , and thus, smoothness. Adaptive Sample Limit applies only to 2D motion blur, which automatically uses as many samples as are needed up to this limit Figure 2.

The reason for the difference is simply performance; 3D blur is costlier, but like many settings it is conservative. Unless your machine is ancient, boost the number; the boosted setting will stay as a preference. The angle is its radius Figure 2. This is the look of film; electronic shutters can have a higher equivalent radius, blurring nearly continuously from one frame to the next, or a very fast shutter, which permits little or no blur.

Electronic shutters are variable but refer to Shutter Angle as a benchmark; they can operate down in the single digits or close to a full degrees. After Effects motion blur goes to degrees simply because sometimes mathematical accuracy is not the name of the game, and you simply want more than degrees. Shutter Phase determines how the shutter opens relative to the frame, which covers a given fraction of a second beginning at a given point in time.

If the shutter is set to 0, it opens at that point in time, and the blur appears to extend forward through the frame, which makes it appear offset. Otherwise, the track itself appears offset.

Add, Do Not Subtract Although software may one day be developed to resolve a blurred image, it is much, much harder to sharpen a blurred image elegantly than it is to add blur to a sharp image. Motion Blur comes for free when you keyframe motion in After Effects; what about when there is motion but no blur and no keyframes, as can be the case in preexising footage? Directional Blur, which can mimic the blur of layers moving in some uniform X and Y direction.

Zoom Blur, which can mimic motion in Z depth or spin. Timewarp, which can add motion blur without retiming footage Yes, you read that last one correctly.

An element perfectly matched for color and lighting will look wrong until its motion blur also matches that of the surrounding scene. You can retime footage or mix and match speeds and timing using a variety of methods. Absolute Not Relative Time After Effects measures time in absolute seconds, rather than frames, whose timing and number are relative to the number per second. Think of a musician playing 3 against 4; one second in After Effects is the down beat of each rhythm.

Enable Frame Blending for the layer and the composition, and After Effects averages the adjacent frames together to create a new image on frames that fall in between the source frames. There are two modes:. Frame Mix mode overlays adjoining frames, essentially blurring them together. The same underlying technology is also used in Furnace plug-ins for Shake, Flame, and Nuke. Confusingly, the icons for these modes are the same as Draft and Best layer quality, respectively Figure 2. Pixel Motion can often appear too blurry, too distorted, or contain too many noticeable frame artifacts, in which case you can move back to Frame Mix, or move up to the Timewarp effect, with greater control of the same technology later in this chapter.

Posterize Time often breaks preceding effects. This forces After Effects to use only whole frame increments in the underlying composition, just as if the comp were pre-rendered with that frame rate. The philosophy is elusively simple: Time has a value, just like any other property, so you can keyframe it, ease in and out of it, loop and ping-pong it—basically treat it like any other animation data.

All true, but the concept of animating and bending time can become complex. Pixel Motion is an automated setting described earlier, and Timewarp adds a set of controls to allow you to improve on its result using the same basic technology.

Timewarp works by calculating the motion in the footage in order to generation motion vectors; these describe how each pixel moves from frame to frame. With an accurate analysis it is then possible to generate an image made up of those same pixels, interpolated along those vectors, with different timing. Timewarp is just like Time Remap in the following ways:. It can be used to speed up, slow down, or dynamically animate the timing of a clip.

Time Remap keyframes can even be transferred directly to Timewarp, but it requires an expression see note because one uses frames and the other seconds to measure time. However, used with the default Pixel Motion Method setting, Timewarp goes beyond Time Remap plus Frame Blending with the same setting in a couple of ways:. Enable Motion Blur toggle kicks in when footage is sped up to add motion blur.

Timewarp is most typically used to slow footage down, which requires one extra bit of setup or the layer ends short. To transform this into a slow-motion visual effect requires optical-flow retiming, and because the foreground travels in one direction and the background the other, it helps Timewarp to add a matte.

Sequence courtesy of fxphd. Matte Layer and Matte Channel menus can point to a matte channel used to isolate foreground and background motion, as in Figure 2. This can be the source alpha channel, or a matte channel from a separate layer. The following settings control how Timewarp analyzes footage:. Raising Vector Detail certainly increases accuracy; a setting of assigns one vector per pixel.

Not only does this drastically increase render time, it will in some cases simply increase artifacts with fast motion. This is because it is analyzing too much detail, similar to setting a motion track to too small and noisy a search region. Smoothing relates directly to Vector Detail; vectors must join similar pixels of adjacent frames but not be 73 Chapter 2 The Timeline noisy.

You can raise Global Smoothness all vectors , Local Smoothness individual vectors and Smoothing Iterations in order to combat the noise, but go very far and lots of detail will be missed. The Foundry claims that the defaults, which are balanced, work best for most sequences.

It typically takes two adjacent images—before and after—to make a vector, but you can choose Build From One Image to use only one if that helps. LME depends on object brightness remaining consistent throughout the shot. Error Threshold evaluates each vector before letting it contribute; raise this value and more vectors are eliminated for having too much perceived error.

Block Size determines the width and height of the area each vector tracks; like Smoothing, lower values generate more noise, higher values less detail. Weighting lets you control how much a given color channel is factored.

If one channel is particularly noisy—usually blue—you might consider lowering its setting. Filtering applies to the render, not the analysis; it increases the sharpness of the result. Despite that Timewarp is included free, many knowledgeable After Effects artists still depend on Twixtor RE:Vision Effects ; like 3D trackers, keyers, and other automated solutions, this is more a question of what works for you than of one being better than another.

Timewarp can add motion blur to speed up footage; it can even add motion blur to footage with no speed-up at all, in either case using the same optical flow technology that tracks individual pixels. It looks fantastic. The Timeline and Graph Editor, once mastered, give you the control you need over the timing and placement of elements.

If compositing were simply a question of taking pristine, perfect foreground source A and overlaying it onto perfectly matching background plate B, there would be no compositor in the effects process; an editor could accomplish the job before lunchtime. Often, it is one element, one frame, or one area of a shot that needs special attention. By the clever use of selections, a compositor can save the shot by taking control of it.

This chapter focuses on how a layer merges with those behind it. Matte Mattes do not only apply when keying out the blue or green from a visual effects shoot Figure 3. You can effectively matte an image with itself—with its own highlights or color areas. Chapter 6 goes into depth about using mattes—the process involves using pixel values to create transparency. None disables the mask Figure 3. Enable it. I: Working Foundations Figure 3.

It will behave as it should if you set another full-frame mask at the default Add mode just double-click the rectangle mask , then add the Subtract mask as the second or later. To keep multiple masks organized. Chapter 7 demonstrates how effective rotoscoping involves multiple simple masks used in combination instead of one big complex mask.

These modes should be applied to the masks that are below overlapping masks in the stack in order to work. It prevents two masks from building up density as in Intersect mode right. It prevents two masks from building up density as in Add mode right. Just as the name implies, the Alpha Add blending mode directly adds transparent pixels, instead of scaling them proportionally Figure 3.

You can cut out a piece of a layer, feather the matte, and apply the inverted feathered matte to the rest of the layer. Recombine them with Alpha Add applied to the top layer, and the seam disappears. Alpha Add does just what the title implies, adding the alpha values together directly bottom right. Mask movement can be eased temporally, but there are no spatial curves; each mask point travels in a completely linear fashion from one keyframe to the next.

An arced motion requires many more keyframes. It works not just for Mask Shape keys but for any keyframed property. This means it can be used, for example, to correct a drifting track.

You can only adjust a mask point on one keyframe at a time, even if you select multiple Mask Path keyframes before adjusting. If you must arc or offset the motion of an entire mask animation, one workaround is to duplicate the masked layer and use it as an alpha track matte for the source layer, then keyframe the track matte like any animated layer. To draw an entirely new shape for an existing, keyframed mask path, use the Target menu along the bottom of the Layer panel to choose the existing mask as a target, and start drawing.

This replaces the existing shape Figure 3. If the target mask has keyframes, After Effects creates a new keyframe wherever the new shape is drawn. This also can be imperative for effects that rely on mask shapes, such as Reshape described in Chapter 7.

Whichever mode you select also carries over to the Adobe Color Picker and all other color controls within After Effects. Normalized Pixel Values Most digital artists become used to color values in the 8 bpc range of 0 to , but the internal math of compositing is all done with pixel values normalized to 1.

This means that a pure monitor white value of is expressed as 1, and black is 0. Chapter 11 shows how values above 1 and below 0 are also possible; these operations also make much more sense when working with values normalized to 1, which is an optional mode in the After Effects Info panel—and all associated color controls—no matter the bit depth Figure 3.

Contextual examples using these blending modes follow in the next section. They also subdue darker pixels such that the blacks are not factored. Screen mode yields a subtler blend than Add mode in normal video color space, but Add is preferred with linear blending details in Chapter The result is clipped at 1 for 8- and bit pixels.

The two blending modes are identical. In Screen mode, fully white pixels stay white, fully black pixels stay black, but a midrange pixel 0.

The difference between Add and Screen is more fully illuminated in the discussion of a linearized working space in Chapter Screen mode yields a result similar to Add, but via a slightly different formula. Multiply or Add has the inverse effect of Screen mode, darkening the midrange values of one image with another. It emphasizes dark tones in the foreground without replacing the lighter tones in the background, useful for creating texture, shadow, or dark fog, as in Figure 3.

Overlay and the Light Modes Overlay uses the Screen or Multiply formula, depending on the background pixel value. Hard Light does the exact same thing but bases the operation on the top layer, so the two have an inverse effect. These modes, along with Linear and Vivid Light, can be most useful for combining a layer that is predominantly color with another layer that is predominantly luminance, or contrast detail, as in Figure 3.

Overlay and the various Light modes do not work properly with values above 1. Reversing layer order and swapping Overlay for Hard Light yields an identical result. Difference Difference inverts a background pixel in proportion to the foreground pixel. When two layers with identical image content become completely black in Difference mode, you know they are perfectly aligned.

Color takes both the hue and saturation from the top layer, using only the luminance or brightness from the underlying background Figure 3. Stencil, Silhouette, and Preserve Transparency Stencil Alpha and Silhouette Alpha are useful to create custom edge mattes a technique detailed in Chapter 6 as well as a light wrap effect, demonstrated in Chapter Commonly overlooked, Stencil and Silhouette blending modes operate only on the alpha channel of the composition. Stencil makes the brightest pixels opaque, and Silhouette the darkest.

Suppose you have a foreground layer that is meant to be opaque only where the underlying layers are opaque, as in Figure 3. Premultiplication over black causes all I: Working Foundations Figure 3. Here the same gradient is simply placed over a text layer; without this mode, the gradient would fill the frame as a solid. Luminescent Premultiply is used to remove premultiplication for cases in which edges have somehow become multiplied within After Effects.

In Figure 3. Luminescent Premultiply right fixes this. In other words, if you create an Adjustment layer with a Levels effect in Add mode, the Levels effect is applied to underlying layers and that result is then added to them. Leave Levels at the default in this scenario and the area defined by the Adjustment layer—usually the entire underlying image—is added to itself.

Track mattes allow you to use the alpha or luminance information of one layer as the transparency of another layer Figure 3. In both cases, you have pixels with an 8-bit value between 0 and , whether derived from a grayscale alpha matte or the grayscale average of three channels of color, a luma matte.

With color, the three channels are simply averaged together to make up a single grayscale alpha. The small icons to the left indicate which is the image and which is the matte. To set a track matte, place the layer that contains the transparency data directly above its target layer in the Timeline and choose one of the four options from the Track Matte pop-up menu:.

Alpha Matte: The alpha channel of the track matte layer is the alpha. Alpha Inverted Matte: Same but the black areas are opaque. Luma Matte: Uses the average brightness of red, green, and blue as the alpha. Luma Inverted Matte: Same but the black areas are opaque By default, the visibility of the track matte layer is disabled when you activate it from the layer below by choosing one of these four modes.

This is generally desirable. Some clever uses of track mattes leave them on. For example, by matting out the bright areas of the image and turning on the matte, and setting it to Add mode, you could naturally brighten those areas even more. They also help overcome limitations of After Effects.

Chapter 7 describes more uses for them. Gotchas Even an advanced user has to pay attention when working in a composition with track mattes. Unlike parented layers, track mattes do not stay connected with their target if moved around; they must occupy the layer directly above in order to work.

After Effects does help manage changes in certain ways. Include the track matte when you duplicate and it also moves up two layers, so layer order is preserved Figure 3.

Share a Matte Node-based compositing programs make it easy for a single node to act as a selection for as many others as needed without being duplicated. The way to do this in After Effects is using the Set Matte effect, detailed below, which has the disadvantage of having no visible reference in the Timeline or Flowchart views.

The standard way in After Effects to provide one-to-many operation is to precomp the matte being shared and then duplicate the nested comp layer as needed, but this complicates dynamic adjustments such as animating the matte layer in the master composition. There is a workaround that allows a matte layer to be anywhere in the Timeline, but it offers its own perils.

It also offers a few custom mattehandling options regarding how the matte is scaled and combined. However, nothing you add to the other layer, including Transform keyframes, is passed through; these would need to be added in a precomp. Chapter 9 focuses on 3D compositing; for now, keep in mind that while you might want to use a 2D layer as a track matte for a 3D layer, or even a 3D layer to matte a 2D layer, rarely will you want to matte a 3D layer with another 3D layer.

Combine a track matte and an image with an alpha channel, and the selection uses an intersection of the two. Then undo or revert. This brings us to render order with track mattes. In most cases, adjustments and effects that you apply to the matte layer are calculated prior to creating the target matte. To see how this can break, however, try applying a track matte to another track matte. Right Tool for the Job The goal of this chapter is to give you a comprehensive look at your options for creating a selection in After Effects and some hints as to where you might ideally use each of them.

In many cases you have more than one viable option to create a given composite, and this is where you must learn to look a little bit into the future. Which can be done with the fewest steps? Which is most lucid and easily understandable to anyone else who might work with your project?

Once you. This section demonstrates. Artists may sometimes let a composition become unwieldy, with dozens of layers, rather than bite the bullet and send a set of those layers into a precomp.

Yet precomping is both an effective way to organize the timeline and a key to problem solving and optimization in After Effects. Two options appear the second option grayed out if multiple layers have been selected : to leave attributes effects, transforms, masks, paint, blending modes in place or transfer them into the new composition. Precomping is the action of selecting a set of layers in a master composition and assigning it to a new subcomp, which becomes a layer in the master comp.

Closely related to this is composition nesting, the act of placing one already created composition inside of another. Why Precomp? Precomping prevents a composition from containing too many layers to manage in one timeline, but it also lets you do the following:. Reuse a set of elements and manage them from one place.

Fix render order problems. For example, masks are always applied before effects in a given layer, but a precomp can contain an effect so that the mask in the master comp follows that effect in the render order. Organize a project by grouping elements that are interrelated.

Specify an element or set of layers as completed and even pre-render them, as discussed later in this chapter. Many After Effects artists are already comfortable with the idea of precomping but miss that last point. When sharing with others, however, good organization becomes essential. I know, I know, eat your vegetables, clean your room.

Figure 4. At minimum right , you should have Source and Precomps folders, as well as a Reference folder, to keep things tidy. When you need to return to a project over the course of days or weeks, this level of organization can be a lifesaver. I: Working Foundations Here are some ideas to help you create your own comp template:.

Use guide layers and comments as needed to help artists set up the comp Figure 4. If nothing else, a locked, untouchable Final Output comp prevents losing a render to an incorrectly set work area because you were editing it for RAM previews.

Organize Source folders for all footage, broken down as is most logical for your project. Place each source footage clip into a precomp.

Unexpected changes to source footage—where it is replaced for some reason—are easier to handle without causing some sort of train wreck.

The basic organization of master comp, source comp, and render comp seems useful on a shot of just about any complexity, but the template can include a lot more than that: custom expressions, camera rigs, color management settings, and recurring effects setups. Access it via or simply press the Shift key with the Timeline panel forward to enable it.

Both scripts are by Lloyd Alvarez. Click on any arrows or items in between the ends and that level is brought forward. The Always Preview This View lets you work entirely toggle in a precomp but switch automatically to the master comp if this is toggled in that comp when previewing. Lock the master comp and doubleclick a nested comp to open its Timeline panel; as you make adjustments, they show up in the master comp.

To locate a comp in the Project panel, you can. Ways to Break the Pipeline Precomping solves problems, but it can also create more problems—or at least inconveniences. Here are a few ways that render order can go wrong:. Some but not all properties are to be precomped, others must stay in the master comp?

The script preCompToLayerDur. Changed your mind? Do the layers being precomped include blending modes or 3D layers, cameras, or lights? Their behavior changes depending on the Collapse Transformations setting detailed below. Is there motion blur, frame blending, or vector artwork in the subcomp?

Switches in the master composition affect their behavior, as do settings on each individual nested layer, and this relationship changes depending on whether Collapse Transformations is toggled. Layer timing duration, In and Out points, frame rate and dimensions can differ from the master comp. When this is unintentional, mishaps happen: Layers end too soon or are cropped inside the overall frame, or keyframes in the precomp fall between those of the master, wreaking havoc on, for example, tracking data.

Are you duplicating a comp that contains subcomps? The comp itself is new and completely independent, but the nested comps are not see Script at right. No wonder people avoid precomping.

This script can reside in a panel ready to create an entire new hierarchy. Highly recommended. Therefore it is helpful to take precautions:. Make source compositions longer than the shot is ever anticipated to be, so that if it changes, timing is not inadvertently truncated. Enable Collapse Transformations for the nested composition to ignore its boundaries Figure 4. Collapse Transformations In After Effects, when a comp is nested in another comp, effectively becoming a layer, the ordinary behavior is for the nested comp to render completely before the layer is animated, blended, or otherwise adjusted with effects or masks in the master comp.

The Grow Bounds effect overcomes one specific and fairly rare problem in which the embedded layer is too small for an applied effect , but it is also useful in cases where other effects create a comp boundary that leads visual data to appear cropped. However, there are immediate exceptions. Keyframe interpolations, frame blending, and motion blur are all affected by the settings including frame rate and timing of the master comp—they are calculated according to its settings which can become tricky; see the next section.

Enable the toggle and it is almost as if the precomposed layers reside in the master comp—but now any 3D camera or lighting in the subcomp is overridden by the camera and lights in the master comp. It is now what the Adobe developers call a parenthesized comp. Such a nested comp is both collapsed and not: You can apply a blending mode, but 3D data is passed through Figure 4.

Will you run into this exact situation? Nested Time Annoyed to find sequences importing at the wrong frame rate? After Effects is not rigid about time, but digital video itself is.

You can freely mix and change frame rates among compositions without changing the timing, as has been shown. The nested comp left is a 3D box made up of solids, each with a Multiply blending mode.

In the master comp right a Levels effect with no adjustment is set, allowing an Add mode to be applied, yet the box can still be rotated in 3D—those values are passed through. The Posterize Time effect will force any layer to the specified frame rate. Preserve Frame Rate maintains the frame rate of the composition wherever it goes—into another composition with a different frame rate or into the render queue with different frame rate settings.

Typically, if an element is scaled down in a precomp and the entire composition is nested into another comp and scaled up, the two operations are treated as one, so that no data loss occurs via quantization. If the data in the subcomp is to appear pixilated, as if it were scaled up from a lower-resolution element, this toggle preserves the chunky pixel look.

Any layer can be toggled but the typical way to set it is to create a unique layer. The adjustment layer is itself invisible, but its effects are applied to all layers below it.

It is a fundamentally simple feature with many uses. Adjustment layers allow you to apply effects to an entire composition without precomping it. Move the adjustment layer down the stack and any layers above it are unaffected, because the render order in After Effects goes from the lowest layer upward. Use Opacity to attenuate any effect; most of them work naturally this way.

If you enlarge the composition, you must resize the adjustment layers as well. Alpha channel effects change the alphas of the layers below, not of the adjustment layer itself.

But applying Add mode to the adjustment layer bottom causes the adjusted image to be added to the original, giving it a subtle extra pop that can be seen in the brighter highlights in one simple step. You can use this for. A picture-in-picture layer shows timing reference from the plate, along with a text reminder that does not render, either. None of this is visible in another composition, or in the render.

Control the Render Pipeline The render pipeline is the order in which operations happen; by controlling it, you can solve problems and overcome bottlenecks. For the most part render order is plainly displayed in the timeline and follows consistent rules:.

Layer properties masks, effects, transforms, paint, and type are calculated in strict top-to-bottom order twirl down the layer to see it. So to review: In a 2D composition, After Effects starts at the bottom layer and calculates any adjustments to it in the order that properties are shown, top to bottom. Then, it calculates adjustments to the layer above it, composites the two of them together, and moves up the stack in this manner Figure 4.

Layer properties render in the order shown when twirled down; there is no direct way to change the order of these categories. Although effects within a given layer generally calculate prior to transforms except in the case of continuously rasterized vector layers , an adjustment layer above a layer guarantees that its effects are rendered after the transforms of all layers below it.

Track mattes and blending modes are applied last, after all other layer properties masks, effects, and transforms have been calculated, and after their own mask, effect, and transform data are applied.

To avoid render errors, precomp them in a nested 2D layer. The Transform effect allows you to transform before other effects are applied in order to avoid precomping solely for this purpose.

No such thing actually exists. It is disabled by default because it requires some extra processing power, but I would argue you get that time back from the ability to spot and solve an obvious bottleneck. Pre-rendering a subcomp does, however, lead to another decision about how it behaves after you render it. Post-Render Options Tucked away in the Render Queue panel, but easily visible if you twirl down the arrow next to Output Module, is a menu of three post-render actions.

After the render is complete, you can use. Import to simply bring the result back into the project. Proxies and Pre-Renders Any image or clip in your Project panel can be set with a proxy, which is an imported image or sequence that stands in for that item. Its pixel dimensions, color space, compression, and even length can differ from the item it replaces. For example, you can use a low-resolution, JPEGcompressed still image to stand in for a full-resolution moving-image background.

I: Working Foundations Figure 4. Both items are listed atop the Project panel, the active one in bold. Chapter 1 contains more information on multiprocessing, caching, and previewing. On a modern system with multiple processors, you can do much better than that. Network Rendering The aerender command is also used by third-party rendering solutions that go beyond what BG Render can do by distributing your render across multiple machines on a network. These programs run scripts that manage the process of running aerender on multiple machines and are capable of far more than just straight-ahead renders; you can, for example, have a render wait until a certain time or until another one completes before commencing, and you can automatically re-queue renders that fail for any reason.

All of the third-party rendering options—Rush Render Queue, Qube! Information on where to locate the code can be found on page xxvi. Mark Christiansen christiansen. Mark has done work directly for the Adobe After Effects development and marketing teams, is a founder at provideocoalition.

 

Adobe after effects cc visual effects and compositing studio techniques free.Senior Video Editor and Animator – Generalist

 
Only the layer data needed to render that area is calculated and buffered, lengthening RAM previews. It shows only the effets neighbor comps Figure 4. However, when you scale a set of keyframes using the Transform Box, keyframes will often fall in between frames whether or not this option is enabled.

 
 

Adobe after effects cc visual effects and compositing studio techniques free

 
 
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