Course Content
Getting to Know the Workflow
- About the After Effects work area
- Getting started
- Creating a project and importing footage
- Creating a composition and arranging layers
- About layers
- Adding effects and modifying layer properties
- Animating the composition
- About the Tools panel
- About timecode and duration
- About the Timeline panel
- Previewing your work
- Optimizing performance in After Effects
- Rendering and exporting your composition
- Customizing workspaces
- Controlling the brightness of the user interface
- Finding resources for using After Effects
Creating a Basic Animation Using Effects and Presets
- Importing footage using Adobe Bridge
- Creating a new composition
- Working with imported Illustrator layers
- Applying effects to a layer
- Applying and controlling effects
- Applying an animation preset
- Previewing the effects
- Adding transparency
- Rendering the composition
Animating Text
- About text layers
- Installing a font using Typekit
- Creating and formatting point text
- Using a text animation preset
- Animating with scale keyframes
- Animating using parenting
- About parent and child layers
- Animating imported Photoshop text
- Animating type tracking
- Animating text opacity
- Using a text animator group
- About text animator groups
- Animating a layer’s position
- Timing layer animations
- Adding motion blur
Working with Shape Layers
- Adding a shape layer
- Creating custom shapes
- Duplicating shapes
- Duplicating and modifying a composition
- Positioning layers with snapping
- Adding compositions to a 3D project
- Adding the finishing touches
- Extra credit
Animating a Multimedia Presentation
- Using Creative Cloud Libraries in After Effects
- Adjusting anchor points
- Parenting layers
- Precomposing layers
- Keyframing a motion path
- Animating additional elements
- Applying an effect
- About solid-color layers
- Animating precomposed layers
- Animating the background
- Adding an audio track
- Supported audio file formats
- Editing audio files in Adobe Audition
Animating Layers
- Preparing layered Photoshop files
- About Photoshop layer styles
- Simulating lighting changes
- Duplicating an animation using the pick whip
- About expressions
- Animating movement in the scenery
- Adjusting the layers and creating a track matte
- About track mattes and traveling mattes
- Animating the shadows
- Adding a lens flare effect
- Adding a video animation
- Rendering the animation
- Retiming the composition
Working with Masks
- About masks
- Getting started
- Creating a mask with the Pen tool
- Editing a mask
- About mask modes
- Creating a Bezier mask
- Feathering the edges of a mask
- Replacing the content of the mask
- Zooming and panning by touch
- Adding a reflection
- Creating a vignette
- Using the Rectangle and Ellipse tools
- Adjusting the timing
- Tips for creating masks
- Trimming the work area
Distorting Objects with the Puppet Tools
- About the Puppet tools
- Adding Deform pins
- Defining areas of overlap
- Stiffening an area
- Animating pin positions
- Squash and stretch
- Recording animation
- Act it out with Adobe Character Animator
Using the Roto Brush Tool
- About rotoscoping
- Getting started
- Creating a segmentation boundary
- Using Adobe Premiere Pro with After Effects
- Fine-tuning the matte
- Refine Soft Matte and Refine Hard Matte effects
- Freezing your Roto Brush tool results
- Changing the background
- Adding animated text
- Outputting your project
- Extra credit
Performing Color Correction
- Previewing your project on a video monitor
- Adjusting color balance with levels
- Adjusting color balance with Color Finesse 3
- Replacing the background
- Color-correcting using Auto Levels
- Motion tracking the clouds
- Replacing the sky in the second clip
- Color grading
- Extra Credit
Using 3D Features
- Creating 3D text
- Using 3D views
- Importing a background
- Adding 3D lights
- Adding a camera
- Extruding text in After Effects
- Working with Cinema 4D Lite
- Integrating the C4D layer in After Effects
- Finishing the project
Working with the 3D Camera Tracker
- About the 3D Camera Tracker effect
- Getting started
- Repairing rolling shutter distortions
- Tracking the footage
- Creating a ground plane, a camera, and the initial text
- Creating realistic shadows
- Adding ambient light
- Creating additional text elements
- Locking a layer to a plane with a null object
- Animating the text
- Adjusting the camera’s depth of field
- Rendering the composition
Advanced Editing Techniques
- Using Warp Stabilizer VFX
- Bicubic scaling
- Warp Stabilizer VFX settings
- Using single-point motion tracking
- Checking for drift
- Moving and resizing the track points
- Using multipoint tracking
- mocha for After Effects
- Creating a particle simulation
- Understanding Particle Systems II properties
- About high dynamic range (HDR) footage
Rendering and Outputting
- Creating templates for the Render Queue
- About compression
- Exporting using the Render Queue
- Preparing movies for mobile devices
- Rendering movies with Adobe Media Encoder
- Preparing a movie for broadcast output