After Effects Workshop 5

Today we are going to look at
-Keyframes
-'Grouping'
-Audio   

  
  If you select all layers and press U it shows all the properties have been applied to it.

                                    
Acceleration and deceleration 

 To accelerate an objects movement you select the key frame, go to animation > key frame assistant > easy ease out

The key frame then turns into an arrow.

It moves at a slower rate but ends at the same time as the other layers.


To make an object ease in and out select both key frames.

Select easy ease.

You can view the timeline as a graph

The horizontal line indicates constant speed.


You can select key frames in the graph view like in the timeline

If you move the handles you can manipulate the speed

On the buttons along the bottom of the graph, make sure the second button has edit speed graph selected

Swinging Pendulum

By clicking the layer then double clicking the ellipse tool we create a circular mask.


Use the pan behind too to move the pendulum,

We are going to use the rotation property to move it 

if we add three key frames then apply easy ease it swings as if applied to gravity.

Parent and Child Relationship between layers

All layers group to the parent layer, they all share the anchor point of the parent layer. The child will always goes where the parent goes.

You can still apply individual movements to the child layers

If you change the opacity of the parent layer it doesn't change the child layers opacity.

Select the red solid as the wheels parents

Nested Compositions


Its the way you can out one composition inside another.


Select all layers and click pre compose.

It puts all the layers into one composition/layer.


If you open the new composition and makes changes, it will change in the original composition, 

They are linked together.


The Collapse transformations tool lets you see everything that is going on from your original composition.

Audio
The best files to work with are AIFF or WAV.
If you need to convert audio file open with quick time player 7 then go file, export and you can change the sound file format.


When you render make sure you check audio output in output settings.

After Effects...Session 4

Today we are looking mainly at type and the type tool.

This is our text layer, we can't work with individual letters like with an Illustrator or Photoshop file of text.

Animating it is the same as any other files.

The anchor point isn't in the middle, it rotates from the bottom left hand corner.

The pan behind tools allows you to change the anchor point without changing the position of the layer.

There are properties that just apply to text.
The source text property allows you to change the contents of the text layer over time and its format.

You can make different words appear over time.

You can change the colour and size over time.

The animate tool opens up a new list of options for animations.

When you choose an animation a new property opens up called animator 1, stating the animation you have selected.

We can animate the start and end of the text.

You can also change the movement of the text by changing the Offset value.

If you open the advanced options you get a lot more choices to make

If you change the units to Index it works with number of characters not percentages.

You can choose how you animate your text, by characters, words or lines.

We are now looking at the scale animator

For more options open up the more options tab

If you change the anchor point grouping you can change that each word scales around its own anchor point.

You can add more properties 

You can change the tracking between each letter

You can also change the colour of each letter as its animated

 

Path Options

You can use the pen tool to create a mask and paths.
Here we are creating a path.

If you select the mask it attaches the type to the path