Hello and welcome to the second video in this Beginner's Guide to Adobe After Effects.
In this tutorial we're going to kick things off from the very start.
In this video we are going to take a look at the Adobe After Effects interface now
Now the first version of After Effects was released in 1995. With all the
innovations and new features that have been introduced over the years, up until
now the interface itself has not changed all that much. For those of you that are
completely new to After Effects in this video I'm going to show you around and
introduce you to some of the key things you need to be aware of when starting out.
So let's get into it!
Now I'm currently using Adobe After Effects CC 2018 for mac.
If you're using an earlier version, or you're on Windows
some things may be a little different in parts but in principle it should be the same.
So if you have After Effects open and wish to follow along you will need
to first come up to window, scroll down to workspace and then select all panels,
this is to make sure we all have the same setup. Next we must again go to
window, workspace and then scroll down and select reset all panels. This will
then set the interface to the all panels default layout and you should have
something that looks like this. What you should have is the default settings
where you can see all the key panels. Now don't worry if your setup is not exactly
the same as mine on versions of After Effects before 2017 the panels on the
far right here may just come all the way down the side of the screen instead of
on top of this panel here. For now don't worry too much about this just follow
along and you should be fine. I'll be talking through all of this shortly.
So this is Adobe CC and with CS6 and CC we have this dark interface. If you're using
an earlier version you may be looking at the light interface. Now if for whatever
reason you wish to toggle the interface color you can come to After Effects on
the top toolbar for Mac, for PC this is in Edit, scroll down to preferences and select
appearance. Upon click the preference menu will appear and if we look down
here on brightness, it's here you can toggle the lightness and darkness by
clicking and dragging the switch. I like it dark so I'm going to select the
darkest option and click OK. So to begin I'm going to open up a
document. This document is going to help me demonstrate various functionality of
the program, which we are going to be covering a little later on in this video.
So be sure to open this and follow along. this document can be found in the
introduction folder in the project folder. Now you can download this project
folder for a small fee the download link with instructions are in the description.
The download folder comes with lots of exercise documents we will be using on
this course, that have been carefully developed to aid your learning
experience. The folder also comes with document resources such as videos,
graphics and images you can use to build your first video presentation from
scratch later on in this course. To get the full learning experience I recommend
you get the project folder, download link with instructions is in the description.
So with the project folder open click into the S-1 introductions folder into
the first folder interface introduction and open the folder of the version you
are using and open the interface introduction file and you should have
something that looks like this. Now just a quick thing to mention here this
document contains a particular font. When you open this file you may get an error
message saying you don't have the font installed. To follow along with this
tutorial you are also going to need to install the font first. Now this is not
included in the project folder as I cannot supply it with the download.
Now the font we are using here is lemon milk and can be downloaded for free online.
If you come into the project folder into the project assets folder, click into the
typeface folder you will see a text document here and if you open this up it
will tell you exactly where to get the font from online. Simply click on the
link in the text document and it will take you to the site where you can
download it. Once downloaded be sure to install it. Close down After Effects then
reopen the file and you should be able to follow along just fine.
So once you have downloaded the font and installed it let's continue. Ok so let's take a
closer look at the interface. Now all of this may look a little complex right now
but don't worry it's fairly straightforward. At this point it will
help to break the interface down into five key sections: 1 the composition
panel here in the center, 2 the timeline panel at the bottom. 3 the project panel
over here on the left side of the screen. 4 the tools panel on the top of the
screen and 5 a variety of work panels here on the right. So the first thing I
want to draw your attention to is the timeline panel. This is the long panel
that runs along the bottom of the screen here. This is one of the main panels in
After Effects and it's this panel where we manage our project elements over time.
So the first thing to point out here is the timeline across the top of the panel.
This represents the length of time of this composition. Below this we can see
the layers that make up the particular composition. Each one representing a
particular element in the video presentation. In the timeline panel
layers are displayed as bars from left to right that indicate their presence
along the timeline in a particular order and in a particular hierarchy. Now if I
click and drag on the scroll bar over on the far right up-and-down, we can see
that there are quite a few layers making up this composition stacked up on top of
each other. Now if you look above the timeline panel you can see the visual
layout of the elements in the composition panel. Now if you click on
the layer bar in the timeline panel you will see the visual elements selected in
the composition panel above with a bounding box around it. These are the
layer controls. Now if for whatever reason you cannot see the bounding box
come up to view and make sure 'show layer controls' is ticked this
panel here is where layouts are edited visually which we will be looking into
later. So back into the timeline panel over on the left side of the panel, we
can see the names of the layers with icons that indicate which type of media
they are and to the left and right of these are a bunch of switches and modes
that can be applied to the layers. So at the bottom of the panel just under the
layer bars you will see a zoom indicator. We can use this to zoom in and out of
the layers on the timeline and use this to fine-tune applied effects. Notice as
you zoom in the bar on the right gets smaller this is used to click and drag
through the timeline when zoomed in and I'll just zoom back out. So lastly to the
left of this in the far left corner and just next to the zoom toggle are some
buttons a can toggle the view of some switches and modes that can be applied
to the layers above and if I click these we can see them appearing next to the
layer names. For now I'll just toggle these off. Now there is lots more to
learn about this timeline panel which I will be going into in more detail in the
next video but for now let's move on. So the next panel I want to draw your
attention to is the composition panel. This is the big panel in the center of
the interface and this gives us a visual preview of the project we are working on.
Now if you carefully move your mouse cursor over an object you will see a box
appear around it. Now if you click on the element in the composition you will see
the bounding box appear around it allowing us to transform the object or
move the element around. notice as you click the various elements in the
preview you will see the layer appear highlighted in the timeline panel and
its position in the layer hierarchy. Now it may help to think of this preview
area like the canvas area in Photoshop. It's here where we manage the
composition of the visual elements over time as we see them on-screen. Now if we
look carefully at the bottom of the composition panel we can see a number of
buttons and switches regarding the preview panel above. Now we will be going
over these in a bit more detail as we use them later on in the course but the
key tools to know about initially are the magnification, grid and guide options,
preview time and the resolution display. Now the magnification ratio allows us to
zoom in and out of the visual composition to a variety of percentages
within the composition panel to get closer to some of the elements and to
fine-tune animations. If I click 100% the canvas area will zoom in 100%. If I click
the fit option this will fit the composition screen nicely to the panel.
To the right of this we have the grid and guide options. By clicking this you
will be able to activate a series of grids and guides such as the title
action safe area, proportional grid and activate the grid guides and rulers.
Once active you will have to click these again to turn them off. To the right of
this we have the preview time, this is an indication where the time indicator is
located on the timeline. Next, to the right of this we have the resolution
factor. Right now this is set to full so if I click this and hit quarter you will
see the composition in the preview panel become pixelated this is quarter the
resolution than full. Here we can also choose 1/2 where we can see it becomes
less pixelated. this tool is used to downscale the resolution of the visual
elements in the canvas area. When creating projects we will regularly use
this feature as we live preview projects. This is for performance and workflow
streamline purposes. Sometimes it can be clunky and slow previewing video and
animations. If we set the resolution to low it previews faster. Now I'll be
demonstrating how this works in the next video, for now I'll pop this back to full.
Now on occasions you may find yourself accidentally double clicking on a layer
in your timeline, for example I'll drag the time indicator to around two seconds
on my timeline and in the composition panel we can see a background blue color
Now if we scroll down to the bottom of the timeline panel
we can see a deep blue solid layer. Now if we come and double-click on this
layer upon double-click the solid layer will appear in another tab at the top of
the composition panel. Now this is a way to isolate a layer to inspect it. Now in
this instance as you scroll across the timeline you will not be able to see any
of your layers in the composition panel above. Now as a beginner you may wonder
where your composition has gone. Now don't worry if you look carefully in the
composition tab at the top you will see your comp is still present but on a
separate tab on the left. If you ever find you have accidentally double click
a layer and you can no longer see your comp,
remember you can simply close down the tab in the composition panel at the top
or click back on your main comp on the left to come back to your main comp.
Remember to keep this in mind as you may find yourself lost like this at the
start. So the next panel I want to draw attention to is the project panel. This
is the panel that is typically placed on the left hand side of the interface and
this panel contains all the elements that make up our video project. When we
bring footage, images and audio files for example into our project this is where
they will be placed. Now a project may include hundreds of individual elements,
this panel allows you to carefully organize your elements into folders like
you see here. If I click and expand these we can see the contents if you click
down on the folders here you can see how the elements have been arranged and what
it contains. So the next panel I want to draw your
attention to is the tools panel. In After Effects this panel runs across the top
of the interface and contains all the tools that can be used. As you can see we
have lots of icons. To activate a tool we simply click it or press one of the many
shortcut buttons on the keyboard. We know which tool is active because it will be
highlighted in blue. In After Effects we will be using many tools. You will also
notice that as we use the tool the mouse cursor will change indicating which tool
we have activated. Now if we move to the top of our window we
can see the standard bar across the top, from file across through to view,
window and help. From here we can access various properties controls and initiate
some of the creative features in After Effects. But for now we are not going to
go too much into that. So moving over to the far right-hand side we have a set of
panels. These panels are essential in order to produce work and control many
variables in an After Effects project and are kept neatly to the right of
the screen interface and right now we see these as a stack. Now in more recent
versions of After Effects to activate them we can simply click on the name of
the panel once to open it. Now on earlier versions of After Effects you will need
to place your mouse cursor between the panels and click and drag to reveal the
contents inside. Now some of you familiar with other programs like Illustrator and
Photoshop will recognize some of these panels. Here we have the align panel for
alining objects in the composition panel and the character and paragraph panel
for editing type. Now one of the panels you'll become familiar with later in the
course is the effects and presets panel. This panel includes a lot of visual effect
and preset animations we can apply to our layer elements in the timeline panel
and I will be demonstrating this later on in the course. So right now we are
looking at all the panels in After Effects, you can change the workspace to
tweak the panels you see here for example if I come up to window and
scroll across to workspace, we can see a few options here. Here we have animation
through to text. By selecting any of these we can change the interface and
the panel's we see. If we click on standard for example we will see that
some of the panels will now disappear. By clicking on the variety of workspaces we
can customize the panels we see. Now on standard if you want to reveal some of
the panels that are not currently shown we can come up to window and here we
will see the ultimate list of panels we can use a lot of which are currently not
active. To activate one simply click on it, for examples character, upon click it
will appear in the panel stack on the right. This also works to remove panels.
So back up to window this time if we wanted to take away a panel simply click
one that is currently checked to deactivate it, if we click on character
again it will now take it away from the panel stack. Now as you activate and
deactivate panels and move them around to best suit your needs you will be able
to save your customized workspace. By coming up to window scroll across to
workspace, then scroll down to new workspace you can name your new
workspace and in this instance I'll call it GD workspace and click OK. Now if I
come to window and across to workspace I will see my new workspace from the
list. For now though I'll come back up to window over to workspace and click on
all panels. For the duration of the course I will set my workspace to all
panels as I'll be referencing some of these panels later on in the course.
So that's a brief overview of the Adobe After Effects interface. Keep in mind
that the software on-screen can be broken down into five key sections:
1 the composition panel in the center, 2 the timeline panel at the bottom, 3 the
project panel on the left, 4 the tools panel on the top and 5 the variety of
of panels on the far right. So in this video I give you a brief overview of the
interface now before we move on there are some more details you will need to
know about some of the panels, so you can be ready to create your own project.
In the next video we will be taking a closer look at the timeline panel
learning more about layers, how they work
and how they are managed over time in Adobe After Effects.
So see you in the next video!