Get to know the After Effects interface

Overview of the interface

Notice: There are a bunch of panels that make up the interface of After Effects.

But the three I want you to focus on are the Project panel, the Composition panel and the Timeline.

Also, I want you to note, that when I click on the different panels I get a blue highlight, letting me know that that panel is active.

The Project panel is the panel that you'll use to import and organize all the assets you'll be using in your After Effects project.

When you create groups of layers you'll actually be creating a thing called a composition.

And the composition is represented here in the Composition panel and the compositions' layers will be represented down here in the Timeline.

Now one more thing about the interface: The interface is organized according to a group of workspaces.

Workspaces

So if I go up under the Window menu I can go to Workspace.

And notice the names of the workspaces are named after different things or tasks you might be trying to complete with your After Effects projects.

For example, if I'm working on a title open that has a bunch of text I might want to use the Text workspace.

Now the type of workspace we're going to be working in is just the Standard workspace.

So rather than going up under the Window menu and going to Workspaces I could access Standard right here through the shortcuts in the upper right corner of the interface.

I could also click on this double arrow and you'll see the rest of the list appear here.

So let's go ahead and click on Standard to set our workspace.

Import assets

Now I want to start by importing assets into my project.

So I'll do that by going to my Project panel and double-clicking to open the import dialog box.

Once there I can navigate to my Desktop and in the Desktop, you'll notice I have a folder I've already created called Project and in there I have two video files I'd like to add.

So I go ahead and select both of those.

And when I click Open they'll be added into my Project panel.

If I need to see the names I can hover right between each of the different columns here and click and drag to make the Name column a little larger.

Now I'm going to deselect both of these layers just by clicking in that gray area down here and I'll click once on the Surf.mp4.

And you'll notice: This gives me all the parameters or settings of that specific asset.

So this is a 1920 x 1080 HD asset, it's about 5 seconds long at 29.97 frames per second.

It even tells me the compression scheme used for the video file or the codec, which is H.264.

This will work beautifully.

Create a comp

Now in order to create something out of After Effects we need to add it to a composition.

To create a composition we can do that one of two ways.

The first way is to go up under Composition and choose New Composition... .

This will open the Compositions Settings dialogue and here under the Preset pull-down I can click and you'll notice I have a whole bunch of different presets with different video resolutions and film resolutions you could use to create your compositions.

I'm going to click off this pull-down and click Cancel because I want to create a composition that matches my video settings of this Surf.mp4 clip perfectly.

To do that I'll click on the clip and drag it down to the new Comp button right here in the bottom of the Project panel.

When I let go: Notice my Surf Comp has been created, its settings match the video clip perfectly and I can see the video clip here in the Composition panel and I have that Surf layer as one layer in my Timeline.

Playhead

Now in order to understand exactly what you're seeing in the Composition panel you need to pay attention to this blue line here.

This is the Current Time Indicator and I'm going to click on it and drag it up and down the Timeline and you'll notice the Composition panel updates.

The Current Time Indicator shows you exactly what frame you're looking at in the Composition panel.

When I let go of the Current Time Indicator - notice I'm sitting on frame 1 second 14 frames.

I can see that here in the lower left corner of the Composition panel or in the upper left corner of my Timeline.

In fact, you can click on either one of these areas and enter a number to move your Current Time Indicator to a specific frame.

For example, I'm going to go ahead and click and move my current time indicator to one second by typing 100 and pressing Return.

Adjust layer settings

Now anytime you have a layer in an After Effects project that layer has settings you can access.

So if you click on this Triangle in the Timeline notice I can access these Transform settings.

So if I open up the Transform settings I can make adjustments to the Anchor Point, Position, Scale, Rotation and Opacity.

Now I'm sure you might be familiar with the terms Position, Scale, Rotation and Opacity - but you might not know what the Anchor Point is.

So to better understand that I'm going to go to the Rotation setting.

And notice these different blue numbers here.

These are the different parameters that we can adjust.

And if I hover over the right most Rotation setting and click and drag notice that layer is going to rotate around this thing here which is the Anchor Point.

So if I want to move the Anchor Point I can click and drag and the Anchor Point will move along the X axis of that layer.

So I'll just Command + Z to undo that and Command + Z to undo my Rotation.

If you're unsure what a parameter does: Just hover over the parameter and click and drag.

Notice: The position along the X will move along the X; if I click and drag on the Y it moves along the Y.

Scale is a little different because it has a lock.

If I click and drag on the Scale it's going to scale up or down and it's locked off with the Y parameters.

So any adjustments I make here it will make an adjustment there, unless I unlock that parameter.

Then I can go ahead and make an adjustment and it will distort the layer accordingly.

So let me go ahead and press Command + C to undo all of those settings.

So now I've got my layer here in the middle of my Composition and this looks pretty good.

But if I want to make more adjustments other than Transform adjustments - say I want to apply some color correction settings -

Add effects

well, I need to actually add an effect to that layer.

So I'll make sure my Surf layer is selected and I can go up under Effects.

And here notice I could Blur the layer, I could add Color Correction, I could add Distortion.

You get the idea.

If I go to Color Correction you can see I have a whole list of effects that I could apply.

Now if I know the name of the effect rather than going to this pull-down menu I could just go over here to the Effect & Presets panel and click in the search field.

So I'm going to click in the search field and type Lumetri - and sure enough there's my effect.

To apply it, I can click on the effect and drag it directly onto the layer in the Composition panel or right here to the layer in the Timeline.

When I let go, the effect has been applied.

And notice: Now I have Effect settings that I can adjust here in the Timeline.

But notice: If I open up the Effect settings and I open my Lumetri Color settings vertically it tends to come at a premium here in the Timeline.

Effect Controls panel

So rather than making adjustments here in my Effects area in my Timeline I'm going to make the adjustments up here in the Effect Controls panel that popped up.

So I want to open up the Creative settings.

So I'm going to use the same triangle options I used here in the Timeline.

And notice: I have a Look set of options and a drop-down menu.

So I'll click on that menu and a look is just a preset set of setting in the Lumetri Color effect that will stylize the effect to create a specific look.

So let's apply SL BIG and you'll notice now: I get a beautiful nice bright blue color pop to my effect.

I can toggle the appearance of the effect of and on by clicking the Effects button here in the upper left corner of the Effect Controls or right here in the Timeline I can also toggle effects off and on.

If you're not seeing this area: This area is called the Switches,

Switches and modes

you might need to click this button here which Toggles between Switches and Modes.

Now we'll get to modes in a second, but they are blend modes, just like the ones that you would have in a Photoshop document.

So I'll go ahead and toggle my switches and modes so I can see my switches again.

Now in order to keep adding to this project: Rather than just having one video layer I want to add a second video layer into the scene.

Add a layer

So I can do that by going back to my Project panel.

I'll just click on the word Project to bring that panel to the front of the interface and I'll click on my multi-element flare.mp4 so I can select it and then I'll just click and drag it to the top of my layer hierarchy here in the Timeline.

And when I let go notice: Now it's above my Surf layer so I can't see the Surf layer below.

So if I want to blend this in with the layer below: Rather than adjusting the Opacity settings what I want to do is Toggle my Switches and Modes

Change blend mode

and then here under my Mode I'll go ahead and click on the pull-down and I'll change its blend mode from Normal to Screen.

And that will make the black pixels transparent and then blend any of the other lighter pixels back into the scene.

Now in addition to adjusting blend modes I could adjust when this layer appears in time.

Now, since my Current Time Indicator is positioned at one second that actually is perfect because I just want to go ahead and click on this layer and drag it to the right.

And as I hold down Shift as I drag it will snap the left edge right to my Current Time Indicator.

So now this flare won't start to appear until one second.

Now what if I want to create more animation with this?

To add animation, you need to use key frames.

Add keyframes

And key frames are just recorded settings for individual parameters.

Let me show you what I mean.

With my Current Time Indicator set to frame zero I'm going to select layer two here and I'll scroll down under the Transform options and I'll change the Opacity settings from 100 to zero.

So now I can see it's totally black and so I can go ahead and record a key frame by clicking the stop watch here and that will automatically set the first frame wherever your Current Time Indicator is.

Now, since my Current Time Indicator was at frame zero, that's where the key frame got at it.

Now I want this to be about a half second fade, so I'll move my Current Time Indicator to frame 15 and then I'll change the Opacity setting back up to 100.

And notice: Since I already had the key frame on that first parameter when I moved my current time indicator down the Timeline the second I adjusted the Opacity to a different setting it automatically added another key frame directly under my Current Time Indicator.

So once you have multiple key frames in the Timeline if you go to the left side of the Timeline here you'll notice I have navigation controls for my key frames.

So if I click this left arrow I can go to the earlier key frame or if I click the right arrow I can go to the key frame a little further down the Timeline.

So here I'll click on the triangle for layer two to collapse it and now we can scrub through the scene.

And you can see: I've got my clip and I have my flare which comes into the scene and it kind of blows things out a little bit here.

So I'll go ahead and let go of the Current Time Indicator, come back to layer one and select it, then press T to open the Opacity settings.

Change opacity

Now I want you to notice: There are no key frames on this parameter currently.

So when I go ahead and scrub the Opacity parameter down to something around 50, okay, 54 percent, that setting stays at 54 percent all the way through because I haven't added any key frames.

Well, that's perfectly fine, I actually like how this looks.

So now I want to go ahead and preview this

Preview the comp

to see if this is something I want to go ahead and render.

To preview something you want to press the space bar on your keyboard and you'll notice a green line start to appear.

And those are frames loading into the cache.

And then once all the frames are loaded into the cache you should notice: After Effects starts moving much more quickly and you should be able to notice that it's playing in real time.

And if you're ever in doubt you can look in the upper right corner of the interface and the Info panel and it will tell you exactly what frame rate it's playing at and whether or not it's playing in real time.

Now I'll press the space bar to stop playback here because I like this

Render the comp

and I want to create a video file that exists outside of my After Effects project.

In order to do that I need to go through a process called rendering.

So I'll click once in my Timeline here to make sure my Surf Timeline is active and I'll go up under Composition and choose Add to Render Queue.

And this will add this composition Surf into the render queue.

And I have different render settings that I could adjust, but I want to go ahead and leave it at its best settings.

If you wanted to choose different settings you could click on the pull-down and choose other settings, but I'll leave mine set at Best Settings.

Same thing with the Output Module.

I'll have it create a video file that's Lossless, which is perfectly fine.

And then over here under Output To I need to specify where I'd like to save that file.

So I click on the words Not yet specified and I'll navigate to my Desktop and I'll leave the name set to Surf.mov.

And when I click Save now I'll have an option to render this file.

Just before I do that I want you to note: There's a button here called Queue in AME which is Adobe Media Encoder.

If you need to create a specific compression - say like a file compressed for YouTube or Vimeo - you can go ahead and queue your composition up in Adobe Media Encoder and access a whole bunch of different presets to do just that.

Now I want to render a high res output so I'll just go ahead and render directly out of After Effects by clicking the Render button.

And you notice it goes quickly.

And once we get that chime that means it's finished.

So I can navigate to my Desktop and open the video file.

And when I press play you can see I successfully rendered a new stylized quick time with that flare effect over top by utilizing a typical workflow you'd use to get started using Adobe After Effects.