Adobe After Effects CS5: how to find your way around the city
Finding your way around town in After Effects CS5 can be a bit daunting, but so was finding your way around town. Start with the main roads, take a little side trip every once in a while. Use your GPS. Every day is easier.
One of the confusing things for me about the layout is that, to your benefit, it’s configurable. You can choose which dashboards and toolset you want to see. You can choose where they are located. You can size them all, you can ‘undock’ them and place them to the side where the panel is still available but out of your main line of sight.
Do I say confused and ‘in your favor’? When looking at demos and tutorials online, the layout will not always look the same. There are several preset layouts designed to suit a predefined task like animation or motion tracking. This can be a bit confusing. As you begin to use all of the panels, and more importantly, as your day’s work is better suited to a particular design, this flexibility will help you with the tools and views you need close at hand.
In this overview, I’ll use the standard workspace, which I always start with and use most often. If you look at the dropdown menu options at the top of your workspace with ‘File’ on the far left, the ‘Window’ menu near the bottom on the far right presents your workspace options; is the first option under the window. Just looking at the different designs, what they offer, and how they differ is a learning exercise.
In the standard workspace, you’ll see your project panel at the top left that shares a space with the effects control panel. I like this. The project panel is your project, the star of the show, and all your kid-friendly resources. Here you put imported videos and images, here you create folders to manage your resources. It’s common to use one build inside another, you’ll see all the builds that belong to your project here.
Below your project panel is your timeline panel. This is where you ‘do the work’. This is where you create and place your layer that is the substance of your movie. There is a smart search system between the layer objects and the project panel to help you keep track.
Above your timeline, to the right of your project panel is your composition panel. This is where you can see your project in its development. In this panel, you can see the preview of your project’s movie showing, you can choose to view parts or zoom in and out for more details. If you ‘double-click’ a video in your project panel, a ‘footage’ window will open in the compositing window allowing you to preview this asset.
On the right hand side, you’ll see an info panel that displays color and coordinate information about your composition. As you move the mouse over the terrain, you will see the ‘x,y’ coordinate information displayed. Just below are the preview controls that you’ll be using a lot. Like a set of movie preview controls, you’ll see buttons to play, go back and forward, skip to the beginning or end.
Below the preview panel is the ‘Effects and Presets’ panel, namesake of After Effects. Here you can see all effects including preset effects with some details and animations pre-designed for you. The effects are presented in category folders to help you browse and select. Usually sharing this panel or placing it right below it is the ‘Character’ panel that you will use to create and style all of your text.
There are many tools and many “tool modifiers” in After Effects, but starting with a composition, adding some assets, and then creating an animation is much easier than you might think. Before long, you’ll find your way around town easily, and no doubt come across some scenic spots to discover that you’ll share with your After Effects community.
