Real-World Usage of After Effects
- What is After Effects?
- What type of media can it create?
- What kind of media can be imported into After Effects?
- The advantages of Adobe Dynamic Link and Production Premium
- What’s new in After Effects CS6?
- Components of an After Effects file
- After Effects workflow: Best practices
- Media deployment roundup
- What determines a project’s resolution?
- What determines a project’s frame rate?
- What are best practices regarding graphical and audio assets?
Setting Up an After Effects Project
- About RAM and real-time rendering
- Understanding linked media, and reloading clips
- Setting Preferences and Project Settings
- Creating a project and importing footage
- Creating a Composition and arranging layers
- Adding effects and modifying layer properties
- Animating a Composition
- Working with the Time Controls Panel
- Working with Switches and Modes in the Timeline
- Customizing the After Effects Workspace
- Deployment: Rendering a Composition
Creating Basic Animation With Effects and Presets
- Importing footage using Adobe Bridge
- Working with imported Illustrator layers
- Creating text
- Applying text animation presets
- Applying effects to layers
- Previewing effects
- Nesting and pre-composing
- Adding transparency
- Rendering a Composition
Animating Text
- Title design: Adding text layers
- Creating and formatting text
- Using text animation presets
- Animating with keyframes
- Animating using parenting
- Converting imported Photoshop text
- Animating text using a path animation preset
- Animating type tracking
- Animating text opacity
- Using a text animator group
- Converting path points to positional keyframes
- Animating a layer on a motion path
- Adding motion blur
Animating Shapes
- Adding a shape layer
- Creating and animating shapes
- Using Repeaters
- Incorporating video and audio layers
- Applying a Cartoon effect
- Adding a title bar
Skills Summation Project
- Adjusting layer anchor points
- Masking video using vector shapes
- Applying self-generating effects
- Creating an animated slide show
- Mixing audio track levels
Working with Masks
- Understanding alpha channels, masks, mattes, and keying
- Importing masks from Photoshop
- Animating masks
- Basics of keyframe interpolation with the Graph Editor
- Creating masks with the Pen tool
- Editing a mask
- Feathering the edges of a mask
- Using the Mask Feather Tool
- Applying blend modes
- Creating a vignette
- Balancing color
- Creating Animation Presets
Working in 3D
- Manipulating 2D text and objects in 3D space
- Creating and shading extruded 3D text
- Animating 3D text
- Multiple Views
- Applying lights to 3D layers
- Shading and shadowing layers
- Animating light and Materials properties
- Third-party 3D plug-ins
Color Correction and Cleanup
- Adjusting color balance
- Replacing a background
- Using the Clone Tool to remove unwanted elements
- Correcting a color range
- Warming colors with the Photo Filter effect
Rendering and Exporting
- Testing for final Renders and Exports
- Understanding video and audio compression
- Working in the Render Queue
- Creating Render templates
- Creating Output templates
- Rendering and Exporting to a variety of media types:
- High-resolution recompositing
- DVD-V
- Web video
- YouTube
- Mobile devices
- Flash XML
Our outlines are a guide to the content covered on a typical class. We may change or alter the course topics to meet the objectives of a particular class.