Adobe After Effects CS4 manual

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iii La s t updated 12/21/2009 Contents Chapter 1: Getting started Installation, activation, and registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Adobe Product Improvement Program . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]

iv USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 3D layers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 Cameras, lights, and points of interest . . . . . . . . . [...]

v USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 Distort effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 470 Generate effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . [...]

vi USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Contents La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compositions and the work area (keyboard shortcuts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 742 Time navigation (keyboard shortcuts) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .[...]

1 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 1: Getting started For an introduction to the basic terminology, concepts, and workflows in After Effects, see “ General workflow in After Effects ” on page 30. Installation, activation, and registration Before installing Adobe® After Effects® software, review complete system requirements and recommendation[...]

2 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Getting started La s t updated 12/21/2009 Register the software 1 If the registration dialog box isn’t already open, choose Help > Registration. 2 Follow the on-screen instructions. Run the software in English when installed in other language You can run After Effects in English or in the language in which you've[...]

3 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Getting started La s t updated 12/21/2009 The sites searched by the default Community Help search engine are hand-selected and reviewed for quality by Adobe and Adobe Community Experts. Adobe experts also work to ensure that the top search results include a mixture of different kinds of content, including results from on-l[...]

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22 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Auto-Save preferences • Automatically Save Projects and Maximum Project Versions: “ Save and back up projects ” on page 50 Memory & Multiprocessing preferences • RAM To Leave For Other Applications: “ Memory & Multiprocessing preferences ” on page 635 • Render[...]

23 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Transform > Flip Horizontal, Transform > Flip Vertical, Transform > Center In View, Open Footage, Open Composition, Convert To Live Photoshop 3D, and Convert To Editable Text to context menu for a layer. See “ Scale or flip a layer ” on page 164, “ Move lay[...]

24 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Project panel • Added text field for searching and filtering. Removed Find button from bottom of panel. See “ Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels ” on page 17. • Added Interpret Footage button to bottom of panel. See “ Interpret fo[...]

25 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added name to Property submenu in Expression Language menu. See “ Property attributes and methods (expression reference) ” on page 677. • Added Separate Dimensions button in Graph Editor. See “ Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually ” on pa[...]

26 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Transform > Center In View. See “ Move layers in space ” on page 145. • Added Arrange submenu and moved Bring Layer To Front, Bring Layer Forward, Send Layer To Back, and Send Layer Backward into it. See “ Change the stacking order for selected layers ” on pa[...]

27 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Added Import Premiere Pro Sequence dialog box. See “ Working with Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects ” on page 42. • Added Save Copy As XML dialog box. See “ About projects ” on page 49. Camera Settings dialog box • Changed default units to millimeters. See “ Ca[...]

28 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Preferences dialog box See “ Preferences ” on page 20. • Previews: • Added Enable Adaptive Resolution With OpenGL. • Replaced Accelerate Effects Using menu with Accelerate Effects Using OpenGL (When Possible). • Import: • Added Composition - Cropped Layers to Default [...]

29 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 User interface La s t updated 12/21/2009 Keyboard shortcuts and mouse actions New keyboard shortcuts • Place the insertion point in the search field for the active panel: Ctrl+F (Windows) or Command+F (Mac OS). See “ Search and filter in the Timeline, Project, and Effects & Presets panels ” on page 17. • Open [...]

30 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 3: Workflows, planning, and setup Workflows General workflow in After Effects More Help topics “ Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie ” on page 31 Online resources for general workflow in After Effects For a video introduction to After Effects, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4064_[...]

31 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Modify and animate layer properties You can modify any property of a layer, such as size, position, and opacity. You can make any combination of layer properties change over time, using keyframes and expressions. Use motion tracking to stabilize motion or to animate[...]

32 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Set an initial keyframe for the Position property: • Click the triangle to the left of the layer name in the Timeline panel, click the triangle to the left of the Transform group name, and then click the stopwatch button to the left of the Position property name[...]

33 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Specific workflows in After Effects Most sections of this document are organized according to general tasks that you can perform with After Effects. However, many questions are more focused on a specific end result rather than a specific task. For example, rather th[...]

34 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Acquiring, choosing, and preparing footage Before importing footage, first decide which media and formats you'll use for your finished movies, and then determine the best settings for your source material. Often, it’s best to prepare footage before importing [...]

35 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition settings After you prepare and import footage items, you use these footage items to create layers in a composition, where you animate and apply effects. When you create a composition, specify composition settings such as resolution, frame size, and pixel[...]

36 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use these tips when shooting video for mobile devices: • Tight shots are better. It’s hard to see a face on a tiny screen unless it’s shot in relative close-up. • Light your subjects well, and keep them separated from the background; the colors and brightnes[...]

37 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 It’s best to store footage in the same folder as the project file or in another folder within that folder. Here’s a sample hierarchy: /newproject/project_file.aep /newproject/source/footage1.psd /newproject/source/footage2.avi You can then copy the newproject fo[...]

38 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To reveal a file in Adobe Bridge, select a file in the Project panel and choose File > Reveal In Bridge. • To use Adobe Bridge to open template projects, choose File > Browse Template Projects. • To use Adobe Bridge to browse for animation presets, cho[...]

39 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 To see a video tutorial on rotoscoping with After Effects and Photoshop, visit the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4107_xp . The animation and video features in Photoshop Extended include simple keyframe-based animation. After Effects uses a similar interface[...]

40 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color After Effects works internally with colors in an RGB (red, green, blue) color space. Though After Effects can convert CMYK images to RGB, you should do video work in Photoshop in RGB. If relevant for your final output, it is better to ensure that the colors in[...]

41 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Exporting QuickTime video from Flash If you create animations or applications with Flash, you can export them as QuickTime movies using the File > Export > Export Movie command in Flash. For a Flash animation, you can optimize the video output for animation. F[...]

42 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Exporting XFL Format from After Effects to Flash (Tom Green, Layers Magazine) Importing Flash SWF files into After Effects Flash has a unique set of vector art tools that make it useful for a variety of drawing tasks not possible in After Effects or Adobe® Illu[...]

43 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 • www.adobe.com/go/vid0256 • www.adobe.com/go/lrvid4108_xp Working with Adobe Encore and After Effects You can use After Effects to quickly create buttons and button layers for use in Adobe Encore®. Adobe Encore uses a naming standard to define a button and the[...]

44 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edit audio in Adobe Soundbooth or Adobe Audition While working in After Effects, you may want to use the more comprehensive audio-editing capabilities of Adobe Soundbooth™ or Adobe Audition® to fine-tune your audio. You can use the Edit In Adobe Soundbooth or Edi[...]

45 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Changes you make in After Effects to a dynamically linked composition appear immediately in the linked clips in Adobe Premiere Pro, Encore, or Soundbooth. Changes you make to dynamically linked sequences in Adobe Premiere Pro appear immediately in After Effects, Enc[...]

46 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create and link to After Effects compositions with Dynamic Link (Production Premium or Master Collection only) Create a composition from clips in Adobe Premiere Pro You can replace selected clips in Adobe Premiere Pro with a dynamically linked After Effects composit[...]

47 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Dynamically linked After Effects compositions Modify a dynamically linked composition in After Effects (Production Premium or Master Collection only) Use the Edit Original command in Adobe Premiere Pro or Encore to modify a linked After Effects composition. Once Aft[...]

48 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Workflows, planning, and setup La s t updated 12/21/2009 Do one of the following: • In After Effects, choose File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import Premiere Pro Sequence. Choose a Premiere Pro project, and then choose one or more sequences. • Drag one or more sequences from the Premiere Pro Project panel to the Afte[...]

49 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 4: Projects and compositions Projects About projects An After Effects project is a single file that stores compositions and references to all of the source files used by footage items in that project. Compositions are collections of layers. Many layers use footage items (such as movies or still images) as a sour[...]

50 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Project links embedded in QuickTime, Video for Windows, FLV, and F4V files When you render a movie and export it to a container format, you can embed a link to the After Effects project in the container file. Container formats include FLV, F4V, QuickTime (MOV), and Video[...]

51 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can’t directly save an After Effects CS4 project for use in After Effects CS3 or earlier. Jerzy Drozda, Jr. (Maltaannon) provides instructions on his website for a manual—but still relatively efficient—way of copying data from an After Effects CS4 project into [...]

52 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mid-gray lines between tiles in the flowchart indicate that the Video or Audio switch for those items is deselected in the Timeline panel. Black or light gray lines indicate that the switch is selected, depending on the Brightness setting in the Appearance preferences. ?[...]

53 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change time-display units • To cycle through Timecode Base, Frames, and Feet + Frames, Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the current-time display. The current-time display is in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel and at the bottom of the Layer, Co[...]

54 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition basics About compositions A composition is the framework for a movie. Each composition has its own timeline. A typical composition includes multiple layers that represent components such as video and audio footage items, animated text and vector graphics, sti[...]

55 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating layers ” on page 138 “ Preview video and audio ” on page 195 “ Flowchart panel ” on page 51 “ Basics of rendering and exporting ” on page 688 Create a composition You can change composition settings at any time. However, it’s[...]

56 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Select Single Composition and other settings in the New Composition From Selection dialog box: Use Dimensions From Choose the footage item from which the new composition gets composition settings, including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio. Still Du[...]

57 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 A Preview composition is also created. The Preview composition consists of a grid of device-specific compositions so that you can preview your master composition in the context of several mobile devices simultaneously. After you render and export the compositions, you ca[...]

58 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composition settings You can enter composition settings manually, or you can use composition settings presets to automatically set frame size (width and height), pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for many common output formats. You can also create and save your own cust[...]

59 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ About precomposing and nesting ” on page 60 “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Set composition background color ❖ Choose Composition > Background Color, and then click the color swatch or use the eyedropper to pick a color. Note: When you add one composition to a[...]

60 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Precomposing, nesting, and pre-rendering About precomposing and nesting If you want to group some layers that are already in a composition, you can precompose those layers. Precomposing layers places them in a new composition, which replaces the layers in the original co[...]

61 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Add another set of transform properties to a layer The layer that represents the composition has its own properties, in addition to the properties of the layers that it contains. This allows you to apply an additional set of transformations to a layer or set of layers. F[...]

62 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 Select one of the following: Leave All Attributes In Leaves the properties and keyframes of the precomposed layer in the original composition, applied to the new layer that represents the precomposition. The frame size of the new composition is the same as the size of [...]

63 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Arrows between the composition names indicate the direction in which pixel information flows for this flow path. The default is to show compositions in the Composition Navigator bar with downstream compositions on the left and upstream compositions on the right. This def[...]

64 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Upstream compositions in the Composition Mini-Flowchart are sorted from top to bottom either alphabetically or by layer order. To switch between these sorting orders, press the S key when the Composition Mini-Flowchart is open. When sorting by layer order, a composition [...]

65 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 Transformations are changes to those properties grouped under the Transform category in the Timeline panel, including Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation, and Opacity. What you see in the Layer panel is the result of the rendering before transformations are performed[...]

66 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Projects and compositions La s t updated 12/21/2009 When a closed mask (with mask mode other than None), a layer style, or an effect is applied to a nested composition with collapsed transformations, the layers in the nested composition are first rendered on their own, then masks and effects are applied, and then the resu[...]

67 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 5: Importing and managing footage items Importing and interpreting footage items About imported files and footage items You import source files into a project as the basis for footage items and use them as sources for layers . The same file can be the source for multiple footage items, each with its own interpre[...]

68 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 When After Effects imports video and audio in some formats, it processes and caches versions of these items that it can readily access when generating previews. This caching greatly improves performance for previews, because the video and audio items do not ne[...]

69 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • GIF • JPEG (JPG, JPE) • Maya camera data (MA) • Maya IFF (IFF, TDI; 16 bpc) • OpenEXR (EXR; 32 bpc) Note: 3D Channel effect plug-ins from fnord software are included with After Effects to provide access to multiple layers and channels of OpenEXR fi[...]

70 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • QuickTime (MOV; 16 bpc, requires QuickTime) Note: David Van Brink provides the qt_tools toolset on his omino website . This toolset is useful for converting and examining QuickTime files. • SWF (continuously rasterized) Note: SWF files are imported with [...]

71 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight ” on page 73 “ Import a single still image or a still-image sequence ” on page 103 “ Footage (keyboard shortcuts) ” on page 745 Import footage items using the Import dialog [...]

72 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 The interpretation settings tell After Effects the following about each footage item: • How to interpret the interaction of the alpha channel with other channels (See “ Alpha channel interpretation: premultiplied or straight ” on page 73.) • What frame[...]

73 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Apply Interpret Footage settings to multiple footage items You can ensure that different footage items use the same settings by copying interpretation settings from one item and applying them to others. 1 In the Project panel, select the item with the interpre[...]

74 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Some software lets you specify the background color with which the channels are premultiplied; otherwise, the background color is usually black or white. Straight channels retain more accurate color information than premultiplied channels. Premultiplied channe[...]

75 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Straight - Unmatted Interprets the channels as straight. Premultiplied - Matted With Color Interprets channels as premultiplied. Use the eyedropper or color picker to specify the color of the background with which the channels were premultiplied. Set the defau[...]

76 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Conforming can change the synchronization of visual footage that has an audio track, because changing the frame rate changes the duration of the video but leaves the audio unchanged. If you want to stretch both audio and video, use the Time Stretch comma[...]

77 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio Pixel aspect ratio ( PAR ) is the ratio of width to height of one pixel in an image. Frame aspect ratio (sometimes called image aspect ratio or IAR ) is the ratio of width to height of the image frame. A 4:3 frame aspe[...]

78 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 After Effects reads and writes pixel aspect ratios directly from QuickTime movies. For example, if you import a movie captured as widescreen (16:9 DV), After Effects automatically tags it correctly. Similarly, AVI and PSD files contain information that explici[...]

79 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Projects and compositions created in After Effects CS3 or earlier are upgraded to use the correct pixel aspect ratios when these projects are opened in After Effects CS4. Note: If you have a custom interpretation rules file, then you should update it with the [...]

80 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Working with footage items Organize, view, and manage footage items in the Project panel Compositions and footage items are listed in the Project panel. Unlike items in the Timeline panel and Effect Controls panel, the order of items in the Project panel has n[...]

81 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Show information for items • To show information about a footage item or composition, select it in the Project panel. Information is displayed at the top of the Project panel next to the thumbnail image. • To show the file creator ID for a footage item, Al[...]

82 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 To open a QuickTime or Video for Windows movie in the Footage panel instead of a player window, Alt-double-click (Windows) or Option-double-click (Mac OS) the footage item in the Project panel. The QuickTime and Video for Windows player windows play the source[...]

83 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To remove unselected compositions and unused footage items from selected compositions in the Project panel, choose File > Reduce Project. This command is available only when the Project panel is active. This command removes both unused footage items and[...]

84 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Proxy items in Project panel A. Proxy assigned and in use B. Proxy assigned, but original in use C. No proxy assigned D. Proxy name More Help topics “ Render settings ” on page 697 “ Post-render actions ” on page 702 Work with placeholders and missing [...]

85 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 For best results, set a proxy so that it has the same frame aspect ratio as the actual footage item. For example, if the actual footage item is a 640x480-pixel movie, create and use a 160x120-pixel proxy. When a proxy item is imported, After Effects scales the[...]

86 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Loop a footage item If you intend to loop a visual footage item continuously in your project, you only need to create one cycle of the footage item in After Effects. 1 In the Project panel, select the footage item to loop. 2 Choose File > Interpret Footage [...]

87 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: After Effects on Mac OS can’t import Adobe Premiere Pro 1.0, 1.5, or 2.0 projects. After Effects on Mac OS can import Adobe Premiere Pro CS3 and CS4 projects and Adobe Premiere 6.0 and 6.5 projects. Not all features of an Adobe Premiere Pro project are[...]

88 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 • From either After Effects or Adobe Premiere Pro, you can copy and paste footage items to the other’s Project panel. Note: You can’t, however, paste footage items from the After Effects Project panel into the Adobe Premiere Pro Timeline panel. If you wa[...]

89 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Copy from Adobe Premiere Pro to After Effects You can copy a video or audio asset from an Adobe Premiere Pro sequence and paste it into an After Effects composition. After Effects converts assets to layers and copies the source footage items into its Project p[...]

90 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Importing and interpreting video and audio High-definition (HD) video High-definition (HD) video refers to any video format with pixel dimensions greater than those of standard-definition (SD) video formats. Typically, standard-definition refers to digital for[...]

91 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Trish and Chris Meyer provide tips for planning and delivering high-definition and widescreen work in articles on the ProVideo Coalition website: • The High-Def Checklist • Open Wide: Creating That Widescreen Look Adobe digital video applications include p[...]

92 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Interlaced video, noninterlaced video, and progressive scanning Interlacing is a technique developed for transmitting television signals using limited bandwidth. In an interlaced system, only half the number of horizontal lines for each frame of video are tran[...]

93 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Importing and managing footage items La s t updated 12/21/2009 Separate video fields and determine field order If you want to use interlaced or field-rendered footage (such as NTSC video) in an After Effects project, you get the best results if you separate the video fields when you import the footage. After Effects separ[...]

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270 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 than the surrounding image (such as a burning candle carried through a room). Select Saturation if the tracked feature has a high concentration of color, surrounded by variations of the same color (such as a bright red scarf against a brick wall). Process Before Match Tem[...]

271 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can rename trackers and track points and modify and animate their property values in the Timeline panel just as you do for other layer properties and property groups. You must click Apply in the Tracker panel to apply the property changes to the target. Feature Center[...]

272 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To move only the feature and search regions together, drag the edge of the feature region, or Alt-drag (Windows) or Option-drag (Mac OS) with the Selection tool inside the feature or search region. You can also hold Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac OS) while pressing the [...]

273 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Animation and keyframes La s t updated 12/21/2009 Motion source and its motion path A. Moving the feature and search regions B. Keyframe marker More Help topics “ Motion paths ” on page 223 Correct drifting by adjusting the feature and search regions 1 Move the current-time indicator to the last well-tracked frame. 2[...]

274 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 9: Color Color basics Charles Poynton provides an excellent set of resources on his website regarding color technology and color terminology. Color depth and high dynamic range color Color depth (or bit depth ) is the number of bits per channel (bpc) used to represent the color of a pixel. The more bits for eac[...]

275 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 To change the format in which color values are shown in the Info panel and in some effect controls, choose an option such as Percent or Web from the Info panel menu. Choosing Auto Color Display automatically switches between 8 bpc, 16 bpc, and 32 bpc, depending on the color depth of the pr[...]

276 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Because we can see only a subset of the luminance values in a real-world scene in an HDR image on a monitor, it is sometimes necessary to adjust the exposure —the amount of light captured in an image—when working with an HDR image. Adjusting the exposure of an HDR image is like adjusti[...]

277 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 A. Opacity stop B. Color stop C. Opacity midpoint D. Eyedropper E. New-color rectangle F. Original-color rectangle Choose a color picker ❖ Choose Edit > Preferences > General (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > General (Mac OS), and do one of the following: • To use [...]

278 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 (Optional) To prevent panels from updating with the results of your color selection until you accept the color by clicking OK, deselect Preview in the Color Picker dialog box. The Preview option is not available in all contexts. Note: Selecting Preview is convenient for seeing the result[...]

279 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edit a gradient A gradient is defined by color stops and opacity stops . Each stop has a location along the gradient and a value for color or opacity. The values between stops are interpolated. By default, the interpolation is linear, but you can drag the opacity midpoint or color midpoint[...]

280 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Additional resources for color correction and adjustment John Dickinson provides visual aids on his Motionworks website that illustrate how to use the Curves and Levels effects for color adjustments: • Curves effect diagram on Motionworks website • Levels effect diagram on Motionworks [...]

281 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Histogram showing highlight clipping Histogram showing shadow clipping Color models and color spaces A color model is a way of describing color using numbers so that computers can operate on them. The color model used within After Effects is the RGB color model, in which each color is desc[...]

282 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Harry Frank provides a video tutorial on his graymachine website that shows how and why to use color conversion expressions to convert colors from the RGB color model to the HSL color model when randomly varying colors. The specific example that he shows uses the Radio Waves effect. Gamma [...]

283 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color profiles are said to be scene-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical scene. Color profiles are said to be output-referred if their tone-response curves are based on the conditions in the typical viewing environment. By default when you use c[...]

284 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Cineon and DPX footage items A common part of the motion-picture film production workflow is scanning the film and encoding the frames into the Cineon or DPX file format. The DPX (Digital Picture Exchange) format is a standard format closely related to the Cineon format. Cineon data is sto[...]

285 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Overview of color management Color information is communicated using numbers. Because different devices use different methods to record and display color, the same numbers can be interpreted differently and appear to us as different colors. A color management system keeps track of all of t[...]

286 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 By setting a working color space for the project (which enables color management), you do two things: • You define a common color space for compositing and other color operations. • You control the appearance of colors in your composition. If a footage item has an embedded color profil[...]

287 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 The DPX Theater Preview and DPX Standard Camera profiles provided by After Effects 7 for use with the Proof Colors command have been replaced by the Kodak 2383 and Kodak 5218 profiles used with the Simulate Output command. Proof Colors has been replaced by Output Simulation. If you open an[...]

288 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Do one of the following to calibrate and profile your monitor: • For best results, use third-party software and measuring devices. In general, using a measuring device such as a colorimeter along with software can create more accurate profiles because an instrument can measure the colo[...]

289 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color models and color spaces ” on page 281 “ Color depth and high dynamic range color ” on page 274 Linearize working space and enable linear blending If you have enabled color management (by specifying a working color space), you can perform all color operation[...]

290 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 In some cases, files that you import have ICC profiles embedded in them. When you import these files, you can be confident that the colors that you see are as the producer of the footage originally intended. After Effects can read and write embedded color profiles for Photoshop (PSD), TIFF[...]

291 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 The output color profile for a render item determines what calculations are performed when converting the colors of a rendered composition from the working color space of the project to the color space for the output medium. If a project working space has not been set—that is, if color m[...]

292 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Enable or disable display color management When color management is on, the default behavior is for RGB pixel values to be converted to the color space of your computer monitor from the working color space for the project. Color appearance is preserved; RGB numbers are not preserved. This [...]

293 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 During output simulation, colors are converted from the working color space for the project to the color space of the monitor through the following flow: 1. Colors are converted from working color space for the project to output color space. Colors are converted from the working color spac[...]

294 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Macintosh RGB Show how colors will appear when displayed by a non–color managed application on a Macintosh computer (with a gamma of 1.8). This option is not available if Linearize Working Space is selected. Windows RGB Show how colors will appear when displayed by a non–color managed [...]

295 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Color La s t updated 12/21/2009 Broadcast-safe colors Analog video signal amplitude is expressed in IRE units (or volts in PAL video). Values between 7.5 and 100 IRE units are considered broadcast-safe ; colors in this range do not cause undesired artifacts such as audio noise and color smearing. (In practice, some spike[...]

296 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 10: Drawing, painting, and paths Paint tools: Brush, Clone Stamp, and Eraser Paint tools and paint strokes The Brush tool , Clone Stamp tool , and Eraser tool are all paint tools. You use each in the Layer panel to apply paint strokes to a layer. Each paint tool applies brush marks that modify the color or tran[...]

297 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select paint strokes in the Layer panel, use the Selection tool to click a paint stroke or drag a box around portions of multiple paint strokes. To momentarily activate the Selection tool, press and hold V. • To show only selected paint strokes in the Timeli[...]

298 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Paint tools and paint strokes ” on page 296 “ Paint tools (keyboard shortcuts) ” on page 754 Choose a brush gallery display mode ❖ Choose a display mode from the Brushes panel menu: Text Only, Small Thumbnail, Large Thumbnail, Small List,[...]

299 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Brush strokes using 100% roundness (left) and varying percentages (right) Hardness Controls the transition of a brush stroke from 100% opaque at the center to 100% transparent at the edges. Even with high Hardness settings, only the center is fully opaque. Hardness s[...]

300 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Blending mode reference ” on page 172 “ Layer properties in the Timeline panel ” on page 159 “ Paint tools (keyboard shortcuts) ” on page 754 Select a color for the Brush tool Do any of the following with the Brush tool active: • To select a foregroun[...]

301 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Clone Stamp tool You can use the Clone Stamp tool to copy pixel values from one place and time and apply them at another place and time. For example, you can use the Clone Stamp tool to remove wires by copying from a clear patch of sky, or you can create a herd of co[...]

302 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displaying the clone source overlay while cloning between two different layers A. Clone source overlay B. Current stroke point C. Current sample point Important: To specify settings for a paint stroke before you apply it, use the Paint and Brushes panels. To change a[...]

303 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: You can manually manipulate the time and coordinates from which sampling begins by modifying the Offset, Source Time Shift, Source Position, or Source Time values in the Paint panel. You can reset them to zero with the Reset button. 3 Alt-click (Windows) or Opt[...]

304 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eraser tool If you use the Eraser tool in Layer Source & Paint or Paint Only mode, it creates Eraser strokes that can be modified and animated. In contrast, using the Eraser tool in Last Stroke Only mode only affects the last paint stroke drawn and does not creat[...]

305 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Layer properties in the Timeline panel ” on page 159 “ Managing and animating shape paths and masks ” on page 322 “ Add, edit, and remove expressions ” on page 647 Animate a paint stroke by sketching with Write On If you choose Write On[...]

306 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 After Effects interpolates a paint stroke (center) between two different shapes created with the same brush (left and right). Overview of shape layers, paths, and vector graphics About vector graphics and raster images Vector graphics are made up of lines and curves [...]

307 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Aharon Rabinowitz’s “What are Raster and Vector Graphics?” video tutorial—part of the Multimedia 101 series on the Creative COW website—provides a general introduction to raster images and vector graphics. More Help topics “ Continuously rasterize a layer[...]

308 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Points on a path A. Four corner points B. Four smooth points C. Combination of corner and smooth points When you move a direction line for a smooth point, the curves on both sides of the point adjust simultaneously. By contrast, when you move a direction line on a co[...]

309 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating shapes and masks ” on page 312 “ Add, edit, and remove expressions ” on page 647 About shapes and shape layers Shape layers contain vector graphics objects called shapes . By default, a shape consists of a path, a stroke, and a fil[...]

310 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Groups and render order for shapes and shape attributes Though the default is for a shape to consist of a single path, a single stroke, and a single fill—arranged from top to bottom in the Timeline panel—much of the power and flexibility of shape layers arises fr[...]

311 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you add a shape attribute using the Add menu in the Tools panel or Timeline panel, the attribute is added within the group that is selected. You can drag groups and attributes to reorder them in the Timeline panel. By reordering and grouping shapes and shape att[...]

312 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create an empty shape group ❖ Choose Group (Empty) from the Add menu in the Tools panel or in the Timeline panel. Creating shapes and masks Creating masks You can create one or more masks for each layer in a composition using any of the following methods: • Draw [...]

313 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 To create a mask that you can move independently of the primary layer that it’s masking, create the mask on a separate white solid layer, and use that solid layer as a track matte for the primary layer. Then use parenting to make the solid layer a child of the prim[...]

314 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Minimum Area Specifies the smallest feature in the original image that will be traced. For example, a value of 4 removes features smaller than 2 pixels wide by 2 pixels high from the tracing result. Corner Roundness Specifies the roundness of the mask curve at vertic[...]

315 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About shapes and shape layers ” on page 309 “ About masks ” on page 375 Create a shape or mask by dragging with shape tools The shape tools are the Rectangle , Rounded Rectangle , Ellipse , Polygon , and Star tools. To activate and cycle th[...]

316 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 (Optional) If drawing a rounded rectangle or rounded square, do the following before releasing the mouse button: • To increase or decrease the corner roundness, press the Up Arrow key or the Down Arrow key, or roll the mouse wheel forward or backward. • To set [...]

317 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Keyboard shortcuts ” on page 738 Create a manual Bezier path using the Pen tool 1 With the Pen tool selected and the RotoBezier option deselected in the Tools panel, click in the Composition panel where you want to place the first vertex. 2 Cli[...]

318 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 A vertex appears, and the Pen tool pointer changes to an arrowhead. 2 Drag to modify the length and direction of both direction lines for a vertex, and then release the mouse button. Drawing the first vertex in a curved path A. Placing the Pen tool B. Starting to dra[...]

319 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To replace a mask path, select the mask in the Timeline panel, Layer panel, or Composition panel. • To replace a shape path, select the shape path (not the group) in the Composition panel or Timeline panel. 2 In the Tools panel, double-click the Rectangle , Rou[...]

320 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The new solid-color layer is created at the top of the layer stacking order. For characters that consist of compound paths—such as i and e —multiple masks are created and combined with the Subtract mask mode. Copy a path from Illustrator, Photoshop, or Fireworks [...]

321 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create a mask or shape from a motion path You can copy position keyframes, anchor point keyframes, or an effect control point’s position keyframes and paste those keyframes into a selected mask path or shape path. When you create mask paths or shape paths from moti[...]

322 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Create a shape path from a motion path 1 In the Timeline panel, click the name of the Position property or Anchor Point property from which you want to copy the motion path. (This selects all keyframes. To select only some of the keyframes of a motion path, Shift-cli[...]

323 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Rotoscoping tips • Immediately after beginning to draw a mask, press Alt+Shift+M (Windows) or Option+Shift+M (Mac OS) to turn on keyframing for that mask and set a keyframe. This way, you won’t edit a mask frame-by-frame for several minutes (or longer) and then r[...]

324 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To view mask paths in the Layer panel, choose Masks from the Layer panel View menu. • To hide a mask path while showing others, lock the mask by selecting its Lock switch in the Timeline panel, and then choose Layer > Mask > Hide Locked Masks. • To isol[...]

325 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Using the Selection tool, click within the layer bounds in the Composition panel. • To deselect all shapes on a layer but leave the shape layer selected, click within the layer bounds but outside all shape paths. Select a shape group in group selection mode •[...]

326 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select all masks on a layer, select a mask on the layer, and choose Edit > Select All or press Ctrl+A (Windows) or Command+A (Mac OS). • To deselect all masks, press Ctrl+Shift+A (Windows) or Command+Shift+A (Mac OS). • To select an adjacent mask on a l[...]

327 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: When you animate rotation using Free Transform Points, the vertices of the mask are interpolated in a straight line from keyframe to keyframe. For this reason, the results may be different from what you expect. 1 Display the layer containing the paths that you [...]

328 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 In most cases, the appropriate pen tool becomes active when you place the Pen tool pointer in a particular context. For example, the Delete Vertex tool becomes active when you place the Pen tool pointer over an existing vertex, and the Add Vertex tool becomes active [...]

329 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 To view the tension value of a vertex, look in the Info panel as you adjust the tension. Change a mask path numerically 1 Select the mask. 2 In the Timeline panel, expand the Mask properties. 3 Next to the Mask Path property, click the underlined word, and specify th[...]

330 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Set options in the Mask Interpolation panel, and then click Apply. Note: To interrupt the interpolation process, press Esc. The Info panel indicates that the process has been interrupted and reports the number of keyframes created. Keyframe Rate Specifies the numbe[...]

331 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 curved segment; otherwise, it applies the polylines algorithm. Curve applies the algorithm for mask paths that have curved segments. Polyline applies the algorithm for mask paths that have only straight segments. Note: The mask path keyframes added by Smart Mask Inte[...]

332 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you use the Pan Behind tool in the Composition panel, After Effects automatically makes two adjustments. In the Layer panel, the mask is moved in relation to its layer (top), and in the Composition panel, the layer is moved in relation to the composition (botto [...]

333 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Off The mask will not have motion blur. More Help topics “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Shape attributes, paint operations, and path operations for shape layers Adding attributes to shape layers After a shape layer has been created, you can add attributes—paths, p[...]

334 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 New shapes are created with fill and stroke properties depicted by the swatch buttons next to the underlined Fill and Stroke text controls in the Tools panel. You can also modify the fill colors, stroke colors, fill type, and stroke type for selected shapes using the[...]

335 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 By default, when you create a shape path by drawing with the Pen tool, the control points for the gradient are placed in the center of the layer. You can adjust these points after you finish drawing. You can modify the Start Point, End Point, Highlight Angle, and Hig[...]

336 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Projecting Cap The stroke extends beyond the end of the path for a number of pixels equal to the stroke width in pixels. The end is squared off. Line Join options for strokes The Line Join property for a stroke determines the appearance of the stroke where the path s[...]

337 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 Alter shapes with path operations Path operations are similar to effects. These live operations act nondestructively on a shape’s path to create a modified path that other shape operations (such as fills and strokes) can apply to. The original path is not modified.[...]

338 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 transformations are auto-animated, meaning that they change over time without the need to set any keyframes or add expressions. The Wiggle Transform operation is especially useful following a Repeater operation, because it allows you to randomize the transformations [...]

339 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Merge Paths path operation has the following options, each of which performs different calculations to determine the output path: Merge Merges all input paths into a single compound path. This option is the default used for shapes created from text characters mad[...]

340 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Drawing, painting, and paths La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Offset property value is used to offset the transformations by a specific number of copies. For example, if the Copies value is 10 and the Offset value is 3, then the original shape is transformed by 3 times the amount specified in the Transform property group, a[...]

341 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 11: Text Creating and editing text layers About text layers You can add text to a composition using text layers. Text layers are useful for many purposes, including animated titles, lower thirds, credit rolls, and dynamic typography. For a video tutorial on animating text, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.c[...]

342 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Best practices for creating text and vector graphics for video Text that looks good on your computer screen as you are creating it can sometimes look bad when viewed in a final output movie. These differences can arise from the device used to view the movie or from the compression scheme us[...]

343 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Michael Cardeiro provides a script on the After Effects Scripts website that makes multiple versions of your compositions using information from a spreadsheet or database. The script goes through your spreadsheet line by line, making a new version of your composition with text layers in the[...]

344 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Enter paragraph text When you enter paragraph text, the lines of text wrap to fit the dimensions of the bounding box. You can enter multiple paragraphs and apply paragraph formatting. You can resize the bounding box at any time, which causes the text to reflow within the adjusted rectangle.[...]

345 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select a range of text, click, move the pointer, and then Shift-click. • To select a word, double-click it. To select a line, triple-click it. To select a paragraph, quadruple-click it. To select all text in a layer, quintuple-click anywhere in the text. • To use the arrow keys t[...]

346 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change the direction of text Horizontal text flows from left to right; multiple lines of horizontal text lie from top to bottom. Vertical text flows from top to bottom; multiple lines of text lie from right to left. A. Horizontal point text B. Horizontal point text converted to vertical C. [...]

347 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Formatting characters and the Character panel Use the Character panel to format characters. If text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect only the selected text. If no text is selected, changes you make in the Character panel affect the selected text layers and the tex[...]

348 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Choose a font family • Click in the Font Family menu box, and begin typing the name. Continue typing until the desired font family name appears. • To choose the previous or next font family in the menu, place the pointer over the Font Family menu box and use your mouse scroll wheel; or [...]

349 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Alan Shisko provides an article and video tutorial about kerning on his Motion Graphics 'n Such blog . • To use the built-in kerning information for a font, choose Metrics from the Kerning menu in the Character panel. • To adjust kerning manually, click between two characters with [...]

350 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Change text fill or stroke color The text you enter gets its color from the Fill Color and Stroke Color controls in the upper-right corner of the Character panel. Select text to change its color after the text has already been entered. • To set fill or stroke color using the color picker,[...]

351 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Text scale and baseline shift Horizontal scale and vertical scale specify the proportion between the height and width of the text. Unscaled characters have a value of 100%. You can adjust scale to compress or expand selected characters in both width and height. Baseline shift controls the d[...]

352 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Specify how leading is measured 1 Select the paragraphs you want to adjust. 2 Choose Top-To-Top Leading or Bottom-To-Bottom Leading from the Paragraph panel menu. A check mark indicates which option is selected. Use tate-chuu-yoko Tate-chuu-yoko (also called kumimoji and renmoji ) is a bloc[...]

353 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To reset values in the Paragraph panel to the default values, choose Reset Paragraph from the Paragraph panel menu. Align and justify text You can align text to one edge of a paragraph (left, center, or right for horizontal text; top, center, or bottom for vertical text) and justify tex[...]

354 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Hanging punctuation for Roman fonts Hanging punctuation controls whether punctuation marks fall inside or outside the margins. If hanging punctuation is turned on for Roman fonts, then periods, commas, single quotation marks, double quotation marks, apostrophes, hyphens, em dashes, en dashe[...]

355 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To smooth the edges and movement of animated text, enable motion blur for the text layer. See “ Motion blur ” on page 227 for more information. For a video tutorial on animating text, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0226 . More Help topics “ About animation, keyframes, [...]

356 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animate text with text animators Animating text with animators and selectors consists of three basic steps: • Add an animator to specify which properties to animate. • Use a selector to specify how much each character is affected by the animator. • Adjust the animator properties. Note[...]

357 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animating the opacity of a text layer using the Opacity animator and the End property You can create elaborate animations using several animators and several selectors, each of which adds its influence to the text animation. More Help topics “ Examples and resources for text animation ”[...]

358 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To rename an animator group, make sure that it is the only thing selected, and then press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac OS); or right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the name and choose Rename. • To reorder an animator group, drag it to a new location in the stacking order [...]

359 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use a Wiggly selector to vary a selection within a specified amount over time. Use expression selectors to use expressions to dynamically specify how much you want characters to be affected by an animator property. • To add a selector using the Timeline panel, select an animator group in [...]

360 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left) and with VEN selected by the range selectors, Based On set to Character, Shape set to Triangle, and Scale set to 40% (right) Range selector properties Range selectors include the following properties, in addition to properties common with other selectors: Start and End The b[...]

361 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Random Seed Calculates the randomized order of a range selector when the Randomize Order option is set to On. When Random Seed is zero, the seed is based on its animator group. If you want to duplicate an animator group and retain the same randomized order as in the original animator group,[...]

362 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Fill color changes randomly using an expression animator. Text anchor point properties Text animators animate character position, rotation, and size-related properties relative to an anchor point. You can use the text property, Anchor Point Grouping, to specify whether the anchor point used[...]

363 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To center the anchor point in a string of capital letters, try a Grouping Alignment value of 0%, -50%. To center the anchor point in a string of lowercase letters, or if you’re using both lowercase and uppercase letters, try 0%, -25%. Per-character 3D text properties You can move, scale, [...]

364 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Creating masks ” on page 312 “ Mask modes ” on page 377 Position text along a mask path 1 Create a text layer and enter text. 2 With the text layer selected, use the Pen tool or a mask tool to draw a mask in the Composition panel. 3 In the Timeline panel, expand t[...]

365 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Richard Harrington provides a detailed, step-by-step video tutorial on the Peachpit website that covers the basics of animating text using text animators and selectors. Colin Braley provides a tutorial and example project on his website that show how to use an expression on the Source Text [...]

366 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 13 Set the Y Rotation value for the layer to -45, rotating the entire layer so that you can more easily see the 3D motion of the characters. 1 4 Preview the composition. Example: Offset characters This example illustrates how you can easily animate random characters so that they gradually f[...]

367 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Animate characters with the Wiggly selector This example demonstrates how easy it is to animate the position of individual characters. It also shows how the Wiggly selector can create a dramatic change to the animation simply by adding it to the layer. Animating the color and posit[...]

368 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Animate text tracking This example shows you how easy it is to isolate characters when tracking a line of text. Using the Tracking and Line Anchor animator properties, you can easily move all but one or a few characters. Animating the tracking values for the characters 3579 (left a[...]

369 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example: Use selectors to animate specific words This example shows how to use selectors to limit an animation to a specific word. Animating the skew values in the characters in the word Speeding 1 Create a new composition. 2 Create a new text layer with the words Speeding Saucer . 3 Choose[...]

370 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 In the Composition panel, drag the start selector to the left edge of the text (the value will be at 0). 7 Move the current-time indicator to 5 seconds and drag the start selector in the Composition panel to the right edge of the text (the value will be 5). 8 Preview the composition. Note[...]

371 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Text selectors ” on page 358 “ Set or add keyframes ” on page 214 “ Preview video and audio ” on page 195 Example: Animate text position with expressions This example uses the textIndex and textTotal attributes with the wiggle expression to animate a line of text. 1 Create a n[...]

372 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Text La s t updated 12/21/2009 To see the expressions on a layer, select the layer and press EE . More Help topics “ Time display units ” on page 52 “ Time conversion methods (expression reference) ” on page 661[...]

373 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 12: Transparency, opacity, and compositing Compositing overview and resources More Help topics “ Rotoscoping introduction and resources ” on page 322 “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 “ About masks ” on page 375 “ Track mattes and traveling mattes ” on page 380 “ Drawing, paint[...]

374 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Richard Harrington provides a set of video tutorials on the Photoshop for Video website in which he demonstrates how to prepare an image in Photoshop for animation in After Effects using the Puppet tools. He shows how to use several of the Photoshop selecti[...]

375 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Some programs can store multiple alpha channels in one image, but After Effects only interprets the fourth channel as an alpha channel. Note: The term alpha channel technically refers to the fourth (A) channel in an RGBA image file, regardless of whether th[...]

376 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 The position of a mask in the stacking order in the Timeline panel affects how it interacts with other masks. You can drag a mask to different positions within the Masks property group in the Timeline panel. The Mask Opacity property for a mask determines t[...]

377 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 In the Timeline panel, expand the layer and mask properties for the mask. 3 Select the mask or keyframes. 4 Copy the mask or keyframes, and paste the mask or keyframes to the layer to which you want to apply the mask. Delete masks • To delete one mask, [...]

378 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compound masks that result when different modes are applied to the circle mask. The masks in this illustration have different M ask Opacity values. A. Original masks B. None C. Add D. Subtract E. Intersect F. Lighten G. Darken H. Difference None The mask ha[...]

379 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Difference The mask is added to the masks above it in the stacking order. In areas where the mask does not overlap the masks above it, the mask operates as it would alone on the layer. In areas where the mask overlaps the masks above it, the influence of th[...]

380 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 You can also extend or contract the mask edges using the Mask Expansion property to control where the mask feathering appears. (See “ Expand or contract the edges of a mask ” on page 379.) Mask feathering takes place only within the dimensions of the la[...]

381 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Traveling matte A. Track matte layer: a solid with a rectangular mask, set to Luma Matte. The mask is animated to travel across the screen. B. Fill layer: a solid with a pattern effect. C. Result: the pattern is seen in the shape of the track matte. This is[...]

382 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 If you choose an option other than No Track Matte, After Effects converts the next layer above into a track matte, turns off the video of the track matte layer, and adds a track matte icon next to the name of the track matte layer in the Timeline panel. Not[...]

383 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Keying More Help topics “ Keying effects ” on page 505 “ Matte effects ” on page 516 Keying introduction and resources Note: When a background is not of a consistent and distinctive color, you can’t remove the background with keying effects. Under[...]

384 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mark Christiansen provides tips and techniques for using Keylight in an excerpt from his book After Effects Studio Techniques: Visual Effects and Compositing on the Peachpit Press website. In an excerpt from the “Color Keying in After Effects” chapter o[...]

385 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 • For evenly lit footage, adjust keying controls on only one frame. Choose the most intricate frame of the scene, one involving fine detail such as hair and transparent or semitransparent objects, such as smoke or glass. If the lighting is constant, the s[...]

386 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Transparency, opacity, and compositing La s t updated 12/21/2009 Example of using a hold-out matte A. Original bluescreen image. The background for the number is also blue. B. After keying, the background for the number is also transparent. C. Hold-out matte containing the part of the image you want to remain opaque D. W[...]

387 La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chapter 13: Effects and animation presets Effects and animation presets overview Animation presets overview and resources For a video tutorial on applying and working with effects and animation presets, go to the Adobe website at www.adobe.com/go/vid0228 . With animation presets , you can save and reuse specific config[...]

388 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Save an animation preset 1 Select any combination of properties (for example, Position and Scale) and property groups (for example, Paint and Transform). If you are selecting only effects, you can select them in the Effect Controls panel. 2 Choose Save Animation Pre[...]

389 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Path operations on shape layers, such as Zig Zag and Pucker & Bloat—which you apply through the shape layer’s Add menu—are called effects in Adobe Illustrator, but they function differently from other effects in After Effects. You browse and apply ef[...]

390 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color depth Many effects support processing of image color and alpha channel data at a depth of 16 or 32 bits per channel (bpc). Using an 8-bpc effect in a 16-bpc or 32-bpc project can result in a loss of color detail. If an effect supports only 8 bpc, and your proj[...]

391 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Compound effects and control layers Several effects rely on a control layer (or layer map ) as input. These compound effects use the pixel values of the control layer to determine how to affect the pixels of the layer that the effect is applied to (the destination l[...]

392 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Chris and Trish Meyer provide an article on the ProVideo Coalition website that explains how to use a simple set of expressions to orient a layer with a Comp Camera effect so that it integrates with other 3D layers in a composition. More Help topics “ Cameras, lig[...]

393 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 animation preset You can scroll through the list of effects and animation presets, or you can search for effects and animation presets by typing any part of the name in the search box at the top of the panel. The options that you choose in the Effects & Presets [...]

394 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Applying an effect or animation preset to a layer selects the layer. By default, when you apply an effect to a layer, the effect is active for the duration of the layer. However, you can make an effect start and stop at specific times or make the effect more o[...]

395 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Effect switch in the Effect Controls panel and Effect switch in the Timeline panel A. The Effect switch in the Effect Controls panel turns a specific effect on or off. B. The Effect switch for an effect in the Timeline panel also turns a specific effect on or off. C[...]

396 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 View an effect control point • To view an effect control point in the Layer panel, choose the effect name from the View menu at the bottom of the Layer panel. • To view an effect control point in the Composition panel, select the effect name in the Timeline pane[...]

397 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Animation preset list This section provides a list of animation presets included with the full version of After Effects CS4. Note: Animation presets marked with an asterisk (*) are included in the package of additional animation presets provided by Adobe on the Adob[...]

398 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fade In Over Layer Below • Fade In+Out - frames • Fade In+Out - msec • Fade Out Over Layer Below • Opacity Flash - layer markers • Opacity Flash - random • Rotate Over Time • Scale Bounce - layer markers • Scale Bounce - random • Wiggle - gelat[...]

399 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Left Third - scoop mask NTSC • Left Third - scoop mask PAL • Lower Third - scoop mask NTSC • Lower Third - scoop mask PAL • Lower Third Holdout - darken • Lower Third Holdout - saturate • Mood Lighting - amorphous • Mood Lighting - digital • Mood[...]

400 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Shapes Backgrounds • Box Swarm • Kaleidoscopic • Nerve Net - Circular • Nerve Net - Linear • Nerve Net - Penta Backgrounds 2* • Autumn Leaves* • Blue Hibiscus* • Butterfly Resolve* • Fabric of Space* • Floral Explosion* • Jellyfish Web* • Sha[...]

401 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Mandathorns* • Neon Flower* • Protection* • Pulsing Snake* • Radar Stopwatch* • Spiral Magic* • Swoop* • Tunnel Drain* • Woven Celtic* • Woven Springs* Lower Thirds* • LT_blue double slant+anim* • LT_blue double-still* • LT_dashed undersc[...]

402 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Alien Face • Box - dashed lines • Bullseye • Circular - half round • Circular - tri dash • Crosshair - brackets • Crosshair - round • Crosshair - square • Fan Blades • Flower Power • Gear • Holy Light • Indian Sun • Mandala • RayStar-[...]

403 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • RingingPhone-US Synthetics • Blue Bars • Cells • Digital • Ethereal • Gold Ambiance • Lightning - Horizontal • Lightning - Vertical • Mosaic • Orange Streaks • Smoke - Drifting • Starburst Spin Text 3D Text • 3D Basic Position Z Cascade ?[...]

404 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • 3D Rotate around Circle • 3D Rotate in by Character • 3D Rotate out by Word • 3D Scramble in Position Z • 3D Spiral Down & Unfold • 3D Spiral Rotate In by Line • 3D Spiral Rotate Out by Line • 3D Swing Around on Path • 3D Tumble Words Forward[...]

405 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fly In From Bottom • Fly In With A Twist • Pop Buzz Words • Raining Characters In • Random Fade Up • Random Shuffle In • Random Word Shuffle In • Slow Fade On • Smooth Move In • Spin In By Character • Spin In By Word • Straight In By Charac[...]

406 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Evaporate • Foggy • Jiggy • Transporter Curves and Spins • Bloom Flower • Clockwise Entry • Counter Rotate • Dust Devil • Lasso Tumble • Lasso • Musical Chairs • Newton • Pinwheel • Radial Flare • Retrograde • Rotate • Somersault [...]

407 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Flicker Color - scale • Flicker Color • Flicker Green • Inflammation • Pulse Blue • Pulse Orange • Pulsing Strokes • Rotate Hue • Sliding Color Flicker • Stroke Ease Down • Wiggly Stroke Width By Line • Wiggly Stroke Width Graphical • Bar[...]

408 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Overlay • Pulse Exposure • Shadows • Silhouettes • Sonar Ping • Spin Flash • Word Flash Mechanical • Algorithm Loop • Algorithm • Automation • Bad Reception • Doppler • Electro Magnet • Helicopter • Insert Text • Kinematic • Mecha[...]

409 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Elbow Room • Explosion • Hop, Skip, And A Jump • Pendulum • Punching Bag • Question • Rattle • Roll Bounce • Sequential Jump • Six-Shooter • Slide Bounce • Slip In Out • Smokey • Squeeze • Superhero • Swing Up • Twisty Ribbons •[...]

410 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Multi-Line Flip • Outgoing - Incoming • Pneumatic • Production • Stack Right Left • Weekdays • Word Processor • Zippy Organic • Autumn • Boiling • Boomerang • Bounce Diagonal • Chewing Gum • Climber • Dip-Bounce • Double-Helix • D[...]

411 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Slice And Dice • Sprouts • Tag Team • Wheatfield • Wind Current • Wobble Paths • 360 Loop • Antelope • Ants • Back Stage • Balance • Balloon Man • Balloon • Bouncing • Bubble Pop • Bump And Slide On • Centipede • Circuit Board ?[...]

412 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Serpent • Slippery Slope • Spiral Long • Spiral • Springy • Squirmy • Stairwell • Symmetry • Tchotchke • Walk Of Stars • Zig-Zag Rotation • Drip Down • Flip Up • Full Rotation • Loopy Loop • Random Rotation • Rotate Chars • Rota[...]

413 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Increase Tracking • Magnify • Spasm • Stretchy Transform • Separate XYZ Position See “ Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually ” on page 146. Transitions Transitions - Dissolves • Block Dissolve - digital • Block Dissol[...]

414 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Fly to Inset • Slide - drop • Slide - straight • Slide - swoop • Slide - variable • Stretch & Blur • Stretch & Slide • Stretch - diagonal bottom • Stretch - diagonal top • Stretch - horizontal • Stretch - vertical • Stretch Over - h[...]

415 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Iris - square • Iris - star unfold • Iris - star • Iris - sunburst unfold • Iris - sunburst • Linear Wipe • Paint On - NTSC • Paint On - PAL • Radial Wipe - bottom • Radial Wipe - top • Venetian Blinds • Wedge Wipe Effect galleries 3D Chann[...]

416 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blur & Sharpen effects gallery The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Radial[...]

417 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Channel effects gallery The following effect is a third-party effect that is not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about this effect, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Composite effect No e[...]

418 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color Correction effects gallery No effect applied “ Auto Color and Auto Contrast effects ” on page 453 “ Auto Levels effect ” on page 454 “ Brightness & Contrast effect ” on page 454 “ Broadcast Colors effect ” on page 454 “ Change Color effec[...]

419 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Color Offset effect • CC Toner effect D[...]

420 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ Bezier Warp effect ” on page 470 “ Bulge effect ” on page 471 “ Corner Pin effect ” on page 471 “ Displacement Map effect ” on page 472 “ Liquify effect ” on page 473 “ Magnify effect ” on page 475 “ Mesh Warp effect ” on page 476 “ M[...]

421 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Bend It effect • CC Bender effect • C[...]

422 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 “ 4-Color Gradient effect ” on page 486 “ Advanced Lightning effect ” on page 487 “ Audio Spectrum effect ” on page 488 “ Audio Waveform effect ” on page 489 “ Beam effect ” on page 490 “ Cell Pattern effect ” on page 491 “ Checkerboard eff[...]

423 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Glue Gun effect • CC Light Burst 2.5 ef[...]

424 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Noise & Grain effects gallery Paint effects gallery No effect applied “ Add Grain effect ” on page 525 “ Dust & Scratches effect ” on page 527 “ Fractal Noise effect ” on page 527 “ Match Grain effect ” on page 530 “ Median effect ” on pa[...]

425 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Perspective effects gallery The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Cylinder effe[...]

426 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • CC Bubbles effect • CC Drizzle effect • CC Hair effect • CC Mr. Mercury effect • CC Particle Systems II effect • CC Particle World effect • CC Pixel Polly effect • CC Rain effect • CC Scatterize effect • CC Snow effect • CC Star Burst effect [...]

427 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Burn Film effect • CC Glass effect • [...]

428 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The following effects are third-party effects that are not available with the trial version of Adobe After Effects software. For information about these effects, see “ Effects overview and resources ” on page 388: • CC Force Motion Blur effect • CC Time Blen[...]

429 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • CC Grid Wipe effect • CC Image Wipe effect • CC Jaws effect • CC Light Wipe effect • CC Radial ScaleWipe effect • CC Scale Wipe effect • CC Twister effect Utility effects gallery Obsolete effects listing Effects in the Obsolete category are retained [...]

430 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 3D Channel effects About 3D Channel effects The 3D Channel effects work on 2D layers—specifically, 2D layers with 3D information in auxiliary channels. The sources of these 2D layers are image sequences that represent 3D scenes that have been rendered out of a 3D [...]

431 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The ProEXR package from the fnord software website also includes the ProEXR Comp Creator plug-in. This plug-in can create a layer from each of the channels of an OpenEXR file. For example, the layers can represent the output from a set of render passes from a 3D app[...]

432 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This channel can be used to check your UV maps or as input for the Displacement Map effect. The RE:Vision Effects RE:Map plug-in suite can be used to map alternative textures onto objects. For information, see the RE:Vision Effects website . • Surface Normals This[...]

433 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 To determine the depth of an object, click it in the Composition panel or Layer panel using the Selection tool while the effect is selected. Feather The amount of feather along the edges of the matte. Invert Select to matte out everything with a depth greater than t[...]

434 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About 3D Channel effects ” on page 430 “ Preparing and importing 3D image files ” on page 98 “ 3D layers ” on page 179 Fog 3D effect The Fog 3D effect simulates fog by behaving as though a scattering medium is in the air that makes obj[...]

435 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ About 3D Channel effects ” on page 430 “ Preparing and importing 3D image files ” on page 98 “ 3D layers ” on page 179 ID Matte effect Many 3D programs tag each element in a scene with a unique Object ID. The ID Matte effect uses this [...]

436 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Audio effects Backwards effect The Backwards effect reverses the audio of a layer by playing the audio from the last frame to the first frame. The frames remain in their original order in the Timeline panel. Select Swap Channels to swap left and right channels. Harr[...]

437 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Voices The number of voices in the processed (wet) audio. Modulation Rate The rate in Hz at which the modulation cycles. Modulation Depth The amount of modulation. Voice Phase Change The modulation phase difference in degrees between each subsequent voice. Divide 36[...]

438 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Modulator effect The Modulator effect adds both vibrato and tremolo to audio by modulating (varying) the frequency and amplitude. Modulation Type The type of waveform to use. Sine produces smoother modulation. Triangle produces more abrupt modulation. Modulation Rat[...]

439 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Brightness Specifies the amount of detail preserved from the original audio. High brightness simulates a room with live (highly reflective) acoustics. Dry Out, Wet Out The amounts of the original (dry) sound and delayed (wet) sound in the final output. Values of 50%[...]

440 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blur & Sharpen effects About Blur & Sharpen effects In general, blur effects sample the area around a pixel and assign to the pixel a new value that is the average of the sampled values. Increased blurriness is the result of increasing the size of the sample[...]

441 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When Colorize is selected, the Bilateral Blur effect operates on each color channel individually. The result is a color image. More Help topics “ About Blur & Sharpen effects ” on page 440 Box Blur effect Box Blur is similar to Fast Blur and Gaussian Blur, b[...]

442 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), blur layer (lower-left), and result (lower-right) Maximum Blur The maximum amount, in pixels, that any part of the affected layer can be blurred. Stretch Map To Fit Stretches the control layer to the dimensions of the layer to which it is appl[...]

443 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Fast Blur effect When layer quality is set to Best, Fast Blur is a close approximation of Gaussian Blur, but Fast Blur blurs large areas more quickly. Stu Maschwitz compares the Box Blur, Fast Blur, and Gaussian Blur effects in a post on his ProLost blog . This effe[...]

444 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), Depth Map layer (lower-left), and result (lower-right) Depth Map Layer The control layer from which the depth map is taken. Depth Map Channel The channel of the control layer to use as the depth map. Pixels with low values correspond to low de[...]

445 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) Type Spin blurs in arcs around the Center point, as if the camera were rotating; Amount specifies degrees of rotation. Zoom blurs radially outward from the center point; Amount specifies the length of the blur. More H[...]

446 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Radius How far the filter searches for dissimilar pixels to blur. Threshold How different the values of pixels should be before they are eliminated. Mode What parts of th[...]

447 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Channel effects Additional resources about Channel effects Satya Meka provides the Separate RGB effect plug-in on the After Effects Scripts website . This effect—which was written with Pixel Bender—offsets, scales, and rotates each color channel of an image sepa[...]

448 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-bpc color. Blend With Layer The layer to blend with (the secondary or control layer). Note: To use a layer as a control layer for the Blend effect but not show the layer in the rest of the composition, deselect the control Video s[...]

449 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Preserve Transparency Ensures that the alpha channel of the original layer isn’t modified. More Help topics “ Blending modes and layer styles ” on page 171 Channel Combiner effect The Channel Combiner effect extracts, displays, and adjusts channel values for a[...]

450 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Overflow Behavior How the effect remaps values that fall outside the grayscale range of 0-255. • Clip Values above 255 are mapped to 255. Values below 0 are mapped to 0. • Wrap Values above 255 and below 0 are wrapped back around into the 0-255 range. For exampl[...]

451 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect can be used to enlarge or reduce a matte. For example, a white solid area surrounded by black shrinks one pixel on each side using Minimum and a radius of 1. The quality setting of the layer doesn’t affect Minimax. This effect works with 8-bpc and 16-b[...]

452 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Set Matte effect The Set Matte effect replaces the alpha channel (matte) of a layer with a channel from another layer above it for the creation of traveling matte results. The Set Matte effect is intended only to provide compatibility with projects created in earlie[...]

453 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Solid Composite effect The Solid Composite effect offers a quick way to create a composite of a new color solid behind the original source layer. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Source Opacity The opacity of the source layer. Color The color [...]

454 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Blend With Original The transparency of the effect. The result of the effect is blended with the original image, with the effect result composited on top. The higher you set this value, the less the effect affects the layer. For example, if you set this value to 100[...]

455 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use the Key Out Unsafe and Key Out Safe settings for How To Make Color Safe to determine which portions of the image the Broadcast Colors effect affects at the current settings. Note: A more reliable way to keep colors within the broadcast-safe range for your output[...]

456 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color correction and adjustment ” on page 279 Change To Color effect The Change To Color effect (formerly Change Color HLS effect) changes a color you select in an image to another color using hue, lightness, and saturation (HLS) values, leavi[...]

457 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Color correction and adjustment ” on page 279 Channel Mixer effect The Channel Mixer effect modifies a color channel using a mix of the current color channels. Use this effect to make creative color adjustments not easily done with the other c[...]

458 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Color Link effect The Color Link effect colorizes one layer with the average pixel values of another layer. This effect is useful for quickly finding a color that matches the color of a background layer. This effect works with 8-bpc color. John Dickinson provides a [...]

459 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 White Point Place this point on a bright area to stabilize. Sample Size Radius, in pixels, of sampled areas. More Help topics “ Color correction and adjustment ” on page 279 Colorama effect The Colorama effect is a versatile and powerful effect for converting an[...]

460 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Output Cycle controls Use Preset Palette Presets for the Output Cycle. The top palettes are designed for quick color correction and adjustment tasks. The bottom choices offer a variety of built-in color palettes for creative results. Output Cycle Customize the outpu[...]

461 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Matching Tolerance How far a color can be from Matching Color and still be affected by the Colorama effect. When Matching Tolerance is 0, the Colorama effect only affects the exact color selected for Matching Color. When Matching Tolerance is 1, all colors are match[...]

462 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 2 If the image has more than one color channel, choose the channel you want to adjust from the Channel menu. RGB alters all channels using a single curve. 3 Use the Bezier tool and the Pencil tool to modify or draw a curve. (To activate a tool, click the Bezier butt[...]

463 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Offset Darkens or brightens the shadows and midtones with minimal change to the highlights. Gamma Correction The amount of gamma correction to use for adding an additional power-curve adjustment to the image. Higher values make the image lighter; lower values make t[...]

464 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Colorize Hue, Colorize Saturation, Colorize Lightness Specify the hue, saturation, and lightness of the color range chosen from the Channel Control menu. After Effects displays only the sliders for the Channel Control menu choice. More Help topics “ Color correcti[...]

465 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Edge Softness The softness of the color boundaries. High values smooth the transition from color to gray. Match Colors Determines whether RGB values or HSB values are compared. Choose Using RGB to perform more strict matching that usually decolors more of the image.[...]

466 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Input Black and Output Black Pixels in the input image with a luminance value equal to the Input Black value are given the Output Black value as their new luminance value. The Input Black value is represented by the upper left triangle below the histogram. The Outpu[...]

467 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • To select a custom color for the filter color, click the color swatch for the Color control to select a color using the Adobe Color Picker, or click the eyedropper and click a color anywhere on the computer screen. • To set the amount of color applied to the i[...]

468 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Apply Phase Map To Alpha Applies the specified map and phase to the alpha channel of the layer. If the specified map doesn’t include an alpha channel, After Effects uses the default map (linear distribution of brightness) for the alpha channel. More Help topics ?[...]

469 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 lightening only the darkest areas of an image. Specifying a value that is too large for a given image may introduce halos around strong dark to light edges. The default settings attempt to reduce these artifacts. These halos may occur if the Shadow or Highlight Amou[...]

470 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Tritone effect The Tritone effect alters the color information of a layer by mapping bright, dark, and midtone pixels to colors that you select. The Tritone effect is like the Tint effect, except with midtone control. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc[...]

471 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The positions of the vertices and tangents determine the size and shape of a curved segment. Dragging these points reshapes the curves that form the edge, thus distorting the image. For example, you can use Bezier Warp to reshape one image to fit another, as in wrap[...]

472 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original image (upper-left), corner moved (lower-left), and final image (lower-right) The AE Enhancers forum describes and links to an animation preset from Donat van Bellinghen for scaling a set of Corner Pin effect points. The CC Power Pin effect—one of the Cyco[...]

473 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The displacement is determined from the color values of the displacement map. The color values range from 0 to 255. Each value is converted into a scale ranging from -1 to 1. The displacement amount is calculated by multiplying the converted value by the maximum dis[...]

474 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mask properties Freeze Area Mask Determines the area of the image in which mask opacity and feather settings affect the distortion. Areas outside the mask are distorted; areas within the mask are distorted according to Mask Opacity and Mask Feather settings. Mask Op[...]

475 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displace Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match the displacement at the starting point for the reconstruction. You can use Displace to move all or part of the preview image to a different location. Amplitwist Reconstructs unfrozen areas to match the displacement, rota[...]

476 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Soft Uses spline algorithms. If you scale the image beyond 100%, Soft reduces edge pixelation and maintains image quality. Soft works well at large magnification amounts. • Scatter Creates scatter or noise in the image as the image enlarges. Blending Mode The [...]

477 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mirror effect The Mirror effect splits the image along a line and reflects one side onto the other. Reflection Center The position of the line about which the reflection occurs. Reflection Angle The angle of the line about which the reflection occurs. An angle of 0?[...]

478 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 width and height. Unlimited resizes the layer as far as it is stretched. This option may require a large amount of memory. Add and match lens distortion with Optics Compensation To match FOV values, layers must be the same size. However, if you select Resize, you ca[...]

479 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Type of Conversion The conversion process to use: • Rect To Polar Moves pixels by using (x,y) coordinates from each pixel as (r, ) coordinates. For example, an (x,y) coordinate of (2,3) becomes a polar coordinate with a radius of 2 and a degree of 3. Horizontal li[...]

480 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Boundary Mask Specifies what part of the image is reshaped. Anything outside the boundary isn’t altered. If not specified, After Effects uses the first mask created as the Boundary mask. In the Composition and Layer panels, a blue outline defines the boundary mask[...]

481 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Position the boundary mask to specify the area of the image that will remain unaltered. Areas within the boundary mask are distorted; areas outside the mask remain unaltered. Keep the boundary mask as far as possible from the source and destination masks to avoid [...]

482 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Wave Width Specifies the distance, in pixels, between wave peaks. Higher values produce long, undulating ripples, and low values produce many small ripples. Wave Height Specifies the height of the ripple wave. Taller waves produce greater distortion. Ripple Phase Sp[...]

483 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Elasticity Specifies how closely the image follows the shape defined by the curve. Stiff distorts the least, while Super Fluid distorts the most. In general, use the stiffest setting possible that doesn’t create polygonal images. Interpolation Method Specifies a m[...]

484 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Motion blur ” on page 227 Turbulent Displace effect The Turbulent Displace effect uses fractal noise to create turbulent distortions in an image. For example, use it to create flowing water, funhouse mirrors, and waving flags. Rhys Enniks prov[...]

485 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 3 Select Cycle Evolution. 4 Set a value for Cycle that’s evenly divisible by the number of revolutions that you set for Evolution. 5 In the Timeline panel, move the current-time indicator to the time where the cycle completes. For example, if the Cycle value is 2,[...]

486 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Wave Warp effect The Wave Warp effect produces the appearance of a wave traveling across an image. You can produce a variety of different wave shapes, including square, circular, and sine waves. The Wave Warp effect is automatically animated at a constant speed acro[...]

487 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Advanced Lightning effect The Advanced Lightning effect creates simulations of electrical discharges. Unlike the Lightning effect, Advanced Lightning doesn’t self-animate. Animate the Conductivity State or other properties to animate the lightning. The Advanced Li[...]

488 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Termination Threshold Specifies the level at which a path terminates, based on resistance in the atmosphere and possible alpha collision. At lower values, the path terminates more easily when encountering resistance or alpha obstacles. At higher values, the path mor[...]

489 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use Polar Path The path starts from a single point and appears as a radial graph. Start Frequency, End Frequency The lowest and highest frequencies, in hertz, to display. Frequency Bands The number of frequency bands into which to divide displayed frequencies. Maxim[...]

490 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), and with effect applied (lower-left and right) Audio Layer The audio layer you want to display as a waveform. Start Point, End Point The position at which the waveform starts and ends, if Path is set to None. Path If set to None, the audio wav[...]

491 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. Original (left), and with a simulated beam (right) The Length control specifies the length of the beam based on a percentage of the Time specified. For example, a setting of 100% means that the visible beam len[...]

492 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Wrap Back Values above 255 or below 0 are reflected back into the 0-255 range. For example, a value of 258 (255+3) is reflected to 252 (255-3), and a value of -3 is reflected to 3. With this setting, Contrast values above 100 increase complexity and detail. Disp[...]

493 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Opacity The opacity of the colored rectangles. Blending Mode The blending mode to use to composite the checkerboard pattern on top of the original layer. These blending modes work identically to the ones in the Timeline panel, except for the default None mode, which[...]

494 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Maintain Original Alpha Maintains the alpha channel of the original layer. If you choose Including Alpha in the Average Pixel Color menu, the original alpha is stenciled over the sampled color. Blend With Original The transparency of the effect. The result of the ef[...]

495 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Mandelbrot, Julia Specify the settings for the specified set. X (Real) and Y (Imaginary) specify the pixels at the center of the image for either the Mandelbrot or Julia set. Magnification specifies the magnification of the effect. Escape Limit specifies how many ti[...]

496 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Use the arrow keys to pan the center point by 1 pixel. Press Shift as you press an arrow key to adjust the point by 10 pixels. Press Ctrl (Windows) or Command (Mac OS) as you press an arrow key to adjust the center point of the opposite set. Grid effect Use the [...]

497 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Single lens flare (lower-left) and multiple lens flares (lower-right) Paint Bucket effect The Paint Bucket effect (formerly Basic Fill effect) is a nondestructive paint effect that fills an area with a solid color. It works much like the Paint Bucket tool in Adobe P[...]

498 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Choke Contracts the area of the fill color. The Spread Radius value indicates the number of pixels the fill color shrinks from the edge of the fill area. • Stroke Confines the fill to only the border of the selected area. The Stroke Width value indicates the w[...]

499 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 pixel image, it may generate a 400x400-pixel image and then scale it down using 4x oversampling. Oversampling provides high-quality results but results in long render times. This option works only with Best quality mode. Wave Type What to base the wave shape on. Pol[...]

500 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Direction Specifies the initial direction of a wave if Velocity is greater than 0. By default, particles are emitted from the producer point in an expanding radial pattern. Velocity Specifies the speed at which the wave moves in the specified direction. Spin Control[...]

501 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 For example, the Scribble effect can simulate fills that look like marker, crosshatching, or textiles. It fills a mask with a single zigzagging line that crisscrosses the path. Some paths, because of their geometry, cannot be filled with a single line. The Scribble [...]

502 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Stroke Options Specify the curviness, spacing, and overlap of the scribbled line. • Curviness Controls the amount of curve at the end of each scribbled stroke. Specify a value between 0° and 100°. • Curviness Variation Determines the amount of variance the cur[...]

503 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Paint Style Specifies whether the stroke is applied to the original layer or to a transparent layer. More Help topics “ Fill effect ” on page 494 Vegas effect The Vegas effect generates running lights and other path-based pulse animations around an object. You c[...]

504 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Length Determines the length of the stroke of a segment in relation to its maximum possible length. For example, if Segments is set to 1, the maximum length of a stroke is one complete trip around the object outline. If Segments is set to 3, the maximum length of a [...]

505 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Other methods of animating paint strokes and text are also available. For example, you can animate text by using the type tools and text animators, and you can animate a paint stroke applied with a paint tool. Paint strokes can have a Write-on Duration setting, whic[...]

506 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Color Difference Key effect creates transparency from opposite starting points by dividing an image into two mattes, Matte Partial A and Matte Partial B. Matte Partial B bases the transparency on the specified key color, and Matte Partial A bases transparency on[...]

507 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 9 Adjust transparency values for each partial matte and for the final matte by dragging one or more of the following sliders in the Matte Controls section: • Black sliders adjust the transparency levels of each matte. You can adjust the same levels using the Black[...]

508 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Drag the Edge Feather slider to specify the softness of the edge. Higher values create a softer edge but take longer to render. Color Range effect Note: Though the color keying effects built into After Effects can be useful for some purposes, you should try keying[...]

509 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Select the minus eyedropper, and then click areas in the matte thumbnail to subtract other colors or shades from the range of colors keyed out. 6 Drag the Fuzziness slider to soften the edges between transparent and opaque regions. 7 Use the sliders in the Min and[...]

510 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: If the shot doesn’t contain a full background frame, you may be able to assemble the full background by combining parts of several frames in After Effects or Photoshop. For example, you can use the Clone Stamp tool to take a sample of the background in one f[...]

511 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Use the Extract effect In the Effect Controls panel, the Extract effect displays a histogram for a channel specified in the Channel menu. The histogram displays a representation of the brightness levels in the layer, showing the relative number of pixels at each lev[...]

512 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 In addition to masking a soft-edged object from its background, Inner/Outer Key modifies the colors around the border to remove contaminating background colors. This color decontamination process determines the contribution of the background to the color in each bor[...]

513 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Linear Color Key effect uses RGB, hue, or chroma information to create transparency from a specified key color. This effect works with 8-bpc, 16-bpc, and 32-bpc color. More Help topics “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 “ Matte Choker effect[...]

514 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 Adjust matching tolerance in one of the following ways: • Select the Plus (+) or the Minus (-) eyedropper, and then click a color in the left thumbnail image. The Plus eyedropper adds the specified color to the key color range, increasing the matching tolerance [...]

515 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 White background of original (upper-left and lower-left) is removed using Luma Key and composited over underlying layer (lower- right). More Help topics “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 “ Matte Choker effect ” on page 516 “ Simple Choker e[...]

516 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original greenscreen (upper-left) leaves green glow when keyed out (lower-left). Spill Suppressor removes glow (lower-right). More Help topics “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 “ Matte Choker effect ” on page 516 “ Simple Choker effect ” [...]

517 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left) shows areas of unwanted transparency after using Color Key (lower-left) that are removed with Matte Choker (lower- right). More Help topics “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 “ Close a hole in a matte ” on page 517 Close [...]

518 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left) contains unwanted edges after keying (lower-left) that are removed with Simple Choker (lower-right). More Help topics “ Keying introduction and resources ” on page 383 Noise & Grain effects Work with Grain effects Almost every digital i[...]

519 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Three types of grain effects: matching (upper-left), adding (lower-left), and removing (lower-right) RE:Vision Effects provides the DE:Noise plug-in for removing noise and grain from images. For information, see the RE:Vision Effects website . Neat Video provides th[...]

520 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When any grain effect is first applied, the Amount value of the Blend With Original controls group is set to 0%; this value determines the percentage of blending between the original image and the processed version. At 0%, no blending occurs and the selected effect [...]

521 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 6 Adjust the Matching Softness controls to determine the width of the transition band between completely matched and completely unmatched pixels or how smoothly the affected areas blend with the original image. 7 Select Invert Match if you want to invert the matte s[...]

522 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The preview region redraws, centered in the new position. 3 To change the dimensions of the preview region, change the Width and Height values in the Effect Controls panel to the desired size, in pixels. (Larger preview regions can result in slower rendering.) 4 Sel[...]

523 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Manually reposition noise samples Automatic grain or sample selection generally gives acceptable results for the Match Grain or Remove Grain effect, but you can choose to manually position and resize each sample or change the sample number. For example, you may want[...]

524 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Working with added or matched grain The Add Grain effect creates new grain or noise in an image by building the grain from nothing or by basing the properties of the grain on presets. The Match Grain effect also creates new grain in an image but by matching the grai[...]

525 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Several factors can affect the apparent color of the grain that these effects generate, including the following: • The color value of the underlying pixel in the source image. • The Saturation value of the noise. • The Tint Color and Tint Amount values, if you[...]

526 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The distribution of the added noise over the color channels does affect the overall color of the resulting image. With a dark background, the noise tends to add to the image visually, so a red tint or more noise in the red channel gives a reddish hue to the image. W[...]

527 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Dust & Scratches effect The Dust & Scratches effect reduces noise and defects by changing dissimilar pixels within a specified radius to be more like their neighboring pixels. To achieve a balance between sharpness of the image and hiding defects, try variou[...]

528 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Because the controls for the two effects are nearly identical, you can use most instructions and tutorials created for the Fractal Noise effect to instead guide your use of the Turbulent Noise effect. (See “ Turbulent Noise effect ” on page 537.) Controls [...]

529 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 the appearance at 2 revolutions, and so on. To return the Evolution setting to its original state (for example, to create a seamless loop), use the Cycle Evolution option. You can specify how much the noise evolves over a period of time by animating Evolution. The m[...]

530 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Set a value for Cycle. The evolution completes the number of revolutions you specify for Cycle in the amount of time determined by the distance between Evolution keyframes. Determine the Cycle value by considering how much of this cycle you need to render before i[...]

531 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 More Help topics “ Working with added or matched grain ” on page 524 Match noise or grain between images 1 Make sure that the source and the destination layers are in the same composition. 2 Select the destination layer to which you want to add grain. 3 Choose E[...]

532 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 To use this control automatically, set the Compensate For Existing Noise slider to 100%. You can then view the noise samples in the destination layer by choosing Compensation Samples in the Viewing Mode menu. You can also reposition the samples in the destination im[...]

533 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) Amount Of Noise The amount of noise to add. Noise Type Use Color Noise adds random values to the red, green, and blue channels individually. Otherwise, the same random value is added to all channels for each pixel. Cl[...]

534 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Cycle Specifies the numbers of revolutions of the Noise Phase that the noise cycles through before it repeats (available only when Cycle Noise is selected). Alter the timing of the Noise Phase keyframes to adjust the speed of the Noise Phase cycles. To save time[...]

535 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Good degraining depends on good noise sampling. The results of the automatic sampling depend on the image content and noise type. You can also change the number, size, and position of the samples to get the best results for a particular image. The Temporal Fil[...]

536 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 5 Adjust any of the following in the Fine Tuning controls group to improve the balance between noise reduction and retained sharpness: Chroma Suppression Suppresses some of the chroma from the noise to clean up the image. If the noise is colorful, increasing this co[...]

537 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Sharpen an image with Unsharp Mask controls The Remove Grain effect contains Unsharp Mask controls, which increase the contrast of edges and fine details to help restore some of the sharpness that may have been lost during the grain reduction process. ❖ Do any of [...]

538 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Wrap Back Remaps triangularly, so that values above 1.0 or below 0 fall back into the range. This option reveals subtle detail when Contrast is set above 100. When used as a luma matte, the layer reveals more detailed textured areas of transparency. • Allow HD[...]

539 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Hue Renders the fractal noise as hue values instead of grayscale. The Saturation and Lightness of the original layer are maintained. If the original layer is grayscale, nothing happens. • Saturation Renders the fractal noise as saturation values instead of gra[...]

540 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 For animated strokes, the exact timing (real time) you used to draw the strokes can be played back and rendered. You can adjust the playback speed to fit the timing you want. You can also create new strokes by blending existing strokes, both in space and in time. Ve[...]

541 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eraser tool Erase areas of the layer, using Brush Type settings defined in the Effect Controls panel. The Eraser pointer appears as a circle with an X through it. If you use an installed tablet with stylus eraser support, Vector Paint automatically switches to erase[...]

542 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The Color Clone affects strokes only while you draw; it has no effect on an already completed stroke. This brush setting is the only one you can’t apply after drawing. Clicking either the eyedropper or Color swatch turns off the Color Clone feature. Stylus The Rad[...]

543 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: Don’t use the Undo command on the Edit menu to undo Vector Paint actions. Eyedropper Use the eyedropper to select a color to paint with from a sampling anywhere on the desktop. Press the Escape key to cancel the eyedropper. Note: By default, the eyedropper s[...]

544 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Play back your painting with Vector Paint Use the Playback Mode pop-up menu in the Effect Controls panel to specify when and how quickly your strokes appear in a composition. When you draw strokes, Vector Paint records information for the stroke start time and the d[...]

545 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you create strokes on a layer, the stroke is tied to the location of the current-time indicator in the Timeline panel when you start drawing. Vector Paint also records the amount of time you take to draw the stroke. For example, you might start painting a strok[...]

546 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • The values for Re-timer are percentages of the original time required to draw the stroke. The default value is 100%. A higher value causes the drawing time to increase, so that a setting of 200% uses twice the time to draw the selected strokes. A lower value dra[...]

547 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Displacement Detail Determines how much the original shape of the path is altered while wiggling. Greater values increase the detail of displacement (or change in shape) in the stroke. Lower values produce less displacement, leaving the path closer to its original s[...]

548 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Composite Paint options A. In Original (default setting), before painting The imported image is visible. B. In Original, with paint stroke The paint strokes appear above the original image. C. In Original, with paint stroke and erasure stroke An erasure stroke remov[...]

549 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 the original image. Erasures remove only painting strokes; that is, they re-reveal the underlying image within the alpha channel. K. In Original Alpha Only The original image appears within its alpha channel in working view. Strokes affect the alpha channel itself. [...]

550 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), and with effect applied (right) To avoid problems with flipped views, keep in mind the following guidelines: • Use the same vertical dimensions for the composition and source images. A one-pixel difference produces the same result as moving the po[...]

551 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Balanced Red Blue LR Performs the same operation as Red Blue LR but also balances the colors to reduce shadows or ghosting effects. • Balanced Colored Red Blue Converts the layer into a 3D view using the RGB channels of the original layer. This option maintain[...]

552 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Drop Shadow effect The Drop Shadow effect adds a shadow that appears behind the layer. The alpha channel of the layer determines the shape of the shadow. When you add a drop shadow to a layer, a soft-edged outline of the alpha channel of the layer appears behind it,[...]

553 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Copy and paste position keyframes or expressions from a control point for another effect (for example, Lens Flare) to quickly create a shadow that matches the light source for another effect. Projection Distance The distance from the layer to the surface on which th[...]

554 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Ambient Light Distributes light over the layer. Increasing this value adds an even illumination to all objects and prevents shadows from being completely black. Setting Ambient Light to pure white and setting all other light controls to 0 makes the object fully lit [...]

555 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (left), gradient layer (center), and with Card Dance applied (right) Apply Card Dance to the layer to use for the front of the cards. To set the view, use the rotation or perspective controls, or match the perspective of the effect in any scene by corner-pi[...]

556 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Transformation Order The order in which the transformations (scale, rotation, and position) are performed. Position, Rotation, and Scale controls Position (X, Y, Z), Rotation (X, Y, Z), and Scale (X, Y) specify the transformation properties you want to adjust. Becau[...]

557 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Eran Stern provides a video tutorial on the Creative COW website in which he demonstrates how to use the Caustics effect with the Wave World effect. Note: The Caustics effect ignores masks and alpha channels on the layer to which it is applied. You can precompose th[...]

558 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Water controls Water Surface Specifies the layer to use as the surface of the water. Caustics uses the luminance of this layer as a height map for generating a 3D water surface. Light pixels are high, and dark pixels are low. You can use a layer created by using the[...]

559 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), with Foam applied (lower-left), and with a robot layer used as the Bubble Texture Layer (lower-right) You can also substitute any image or movie for bubbles. For example, you can create swarms of ants, flocks of birds, or crowds of people. Not[...]

560 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 upper-left corner of the screen if you don’t select Zoom Producer Point. If you select Zoom Producer Point, the point moves with the universe as it is zoomed out, and the point ends up closer to the center of the screen. Production Rate Determines the rate at whic[...]

561 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Pop Velocity Controls how popping bubbles affect each other. When a bubble pops, it affects other bubbles around it by leaving a hole that other bubbles can fill, pushing other bubbles away, or popping other bubbles. The higher the value, the more popping bubbles af[...]

562 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Bubble Velocity faces the bubble in the direction of its motion. This setting is the most useful for flocking-style animations. Environment Map Specifies the layer that is reflected in the bubbles. If you want to use this layer only for the reflection, turn off the [...]

563 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 This effect works with 8-bpc color. Particles shooting out of the spacecraft layer (upper-left), text characters used as particles shooting out of a ray gun (lower-left), and Layer Exploder used on spacecraft layer (lower-right) Start by creating a stream or plane o[...]

564 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 When you use a layer as a source for particles, Particle Playground ignores any changes you’ve made to that layer within that composition, such as changing the Position values. Instead, it uses the layer in its original state. To keep changes for a layer when you [...]

565 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 With the Grid, a new particle appears on every frame at each grid intersection. You can’t adjust this frequency, but if you want to turn off the Grid or make the Grid stop generating particles at specific times, set the Particle Radius/Font Size control to 0, or u[...]

566 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Radius Of New Particles Specifies the radius of the particles resulting from the explosion. This value must be smaller than the radius of the original layer or particle. Velocity Dispersion Specifies, in pixels per second, the maximum speed of the range within which[...]

567 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • Absolute Random Takes a frame at random from the layer, by using a time in the range from 0 to the Random Time Max you specify. Choose Absolute Random when you want each particle to represent a different single frame of a multiframe layer. For example, if you ch[...]

568 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Using Selection Text values to differently affect subsets of text You can differently affect only certain subsets of text particles by specifying Selection Text values. To open the Particle Playground options dialog box, click Options at the top of the Particle Play[...]

569 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Gravity controls Use Gravity controls to pull existing particles in a direction you specify. Particles accelerate in the direction of gravity. Apply in a vertical direction to create falling particles, such as rain or snow, or rising particles, such as champagne bub[...]

570 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Note: The simulation space is not bounded by the dimensions of the layer to which Particle Playground is applied. You may need to use a selection map that is larger than the Particle Playground layer so that the selection map affects dots that are not visible. Chara[...]

571 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 4 Specify the minimum and maximum values you want the layer map to produce for each Map To group. Min is the value to which a black pixel is mapped, and Max is the value to which a white pixel is mapped. The complete tonal distribution between Min and Max is then sc[...]

572 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 result in no adjustment, similar to flat land. Lower pixel values represent less resistance to a particle’s force, similar to a downhill grade. Higher pixel values represent more resistance to a particle’s force, similar to an uphill grade. For best results, use[...]

573 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 • You use a layer map to affect the Scale property of particles and find that the smallest particles aren’t small enough while the largest resulting particles are too large. In this case, the entire output range needs to be shifted down; lower both the Min and M[...]

574 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 The alpha channel in a control layer modifies the color values in the control layer before Particle Playground uses the control layer’s pixel values. Areas where the alpha channel value is 0 (transparent areas of a control layer) don’t affect particle values. Ar[...]

575 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Original (upper-left), and as Shatter is applied over time to reveal another layer (lower-left and right) More Help topics “ Common Lighting controls and Material controls ” on page 553 “ Precompose layers ” on page 61 “ Reverse the playback direction of a[...]

576 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4 Effects and animation presets La s t updated 12/21/2009 Render control The Render control renders the whole scene (the default), the unshattered layer, or the shattered pieces independently. For example, if you want to apply the Glow effect only to shattered pieces and not to the portions of the layer that remain intact,[...]