I thought i knew everything there was to know about After Effects. I was wrong. These techniques
have never been exposed, never seen sunlight, have never known what it's like to feel joy.
Until now. One .if you need to select all but a few layers you can select only the layers you don't
need and then right click choose invert layer selection to get only the layers you want two
while making a mask type the first letter of any of the mask modes to switch to that mode here i'm
making a mask on a solid which by default uses the add mask mode but if i type s now it uses the mode
subtract now if i select a point and type a while dragging it around we're back to the add mode and
this works for all the modes n for none a for add s for subtract i for intersect alpha lighten d for
darken and f for difference def front three while creating a shape with the shape tool hold spacebar
to reposition it four in the expression editor hold control or command and scroll up on the mouse
wheel to enlarge the text but be warned as soon as you click away the text will return to normal size
5. several of the transform properties can be quickly reset by double-clicking
tools the selection tool resets scale the rotation tool resets rotation and the pan
behind resets the anchor point six if you push and hold the shortcut key for a tool in this case w4
rotation when the key is released the previously used tool will be active again seven if you have a
complex rig with lots of parented layers and need to select all the children of a specific layer
just right click on the layer and choose select children from the context menu
now this is where i would normally promote my animation course master motion design but i want
to keep this video quick so there's just no time to explain how it was built from the ground up
to help take your motion to the next level with a bunch of amazing practical projects and not
nearly enough time to show the amazing student work that is coming out of these assignments
so i'm afraid you're just gonna have to imagine that i've done that but imagine it convincingly
very convincingly all right next tip eight shift plus pick whip one layer to another to parent it
and apply the parent's position scale rotation and anchor point to the child
now note this doesn't impact opacity also because the layer is now parented the position and anchor
point values will be adjusted so the child sits exactly in the same spot in the composition panel
nine to remove all the effects from one or multiple layers simply select them and execute
the shortcut controller command plus shift and e you can also use the menu option effect and remove
all but ain't nobody got time for that 10. a very useful keyboard shortcut is ctrl or command class
backtick this is also sometimes called the back quote it is the one with the tilde key so control
or command plus backtech reveals every property for the selected layers and so one of the fastest
ways to collapse all properties of all layers is to select them all with controller command plus a
and then hit controller command plus backtick there nice and tidy 11. instead of setting a
marker with asterix and then double clicking it to add a comment or change its color you can save
mountains of time by holding alter option and then hitting asterix which will add a marker and
automatically open up the dialog box saving you precious precious seconds when it really counts
12. in the expression editor select a portion of code in a single line and hit ctrl or command d to
duplicate it and if you select multiple lines the same controller command d shortcut will duplicate
the entire line 13. again in the expression editor you can indent multiple lines of code by selecting
them and hitting tab making the expression editor a much friendlier place to be 14. with
the project panel active you can quickly add a new folder with the mega shortcut controller command
plus folder option plus shift plus n 15 and last but certainly certainly certainly not least
if you need to know the duration between two key frames instead of doing math alt or option click
the two key frames in succession and the duration between them will be displayed in the info panel
i'm consistently learning new things making these videos so please leave a comment with what your
favorite after effects tip or trick is so we can all learn together and eventually discover what's
really going on inside this software and if you want to know some more really practical secrets
that after effects just isn't telling you you want to check out this next video i'll see you there