Adobe After Effects

Book Review: Adobe After Effects 7.0: Classroom in a Book (videowiki)

Mitch Allen — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 18:59:00 +0000

Book Review: Adobe After Effects 7.0: Classroom in a Book (videowiki): "Let's face it. Trying to learn After Effects on your own can be overwhelming. Where do you begin? Well a good place to start is Adobe After Effects 7.0: Classroom in a Book. "

Digit - Features - The X factor

Mitch Allen — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 21:17:49 +0000

Digit - Features - The X factor: "'We start with the design flats', - reveals Lin, -'then move onto some motion tests with Adobe After Effects. Then, we try to translate that into a workable, reactive Adobe Flash piece and showcase it to the client. '"

Madonna: Behind the video (mercurynews.com)

Mitch Allen — Wed, 07 Jun 2006 11:10:00 +0000

Madonna: Behind the video (mercurynews.com): Multimedia now an expected element of pop performances: "... Harvey's operation includes a nine-person crew, 22 hard drives, six digital video cameras and two miles of video cable. He manages and manipulates images and video using Adobe Production Studio ($1,699), a suite of software including Adobe's After Effects, Premiere Pro and Photoshop programs."

See also:

http://www.adobe.com/motion/cher.html

http://www.shortandspikey.com

New Offerings from Artbeats (filmimaging.com)

Mitch Allen — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 09:05:00 +0000

New Offerings from Artbeats(filmimaging.com): "Artbeats, a provider of royalty-free stock footage, has announced the availability of Asian Cities, Crowds, Streets of New York, City Rush 2, Nightsky, Glass Illusions and Chromatica at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention."

See: http://www.artbeats.com

Class on Demand and Boris FX Release Boris Continuum Training DVD (animationartist.com)

Mitch Allen — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:12:13 +0000

Class on Demand and Boris FX Release Boris Continuum Training DVD (animationartist.com): "Class on Demand and Boris FX further advanced its commitment to customer education by today releasing a new Boris Continuum Complete training DVD for Adobe users. Continuum Complete (BCC) is a comprehensive suite of native plug-in filters and transitions designed to streamline workflow for Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, Apple Motion, Autodesk Combustion and Boris Red systems."

Digit news - Resize matters for Digital Anarchy

Mitch Allen — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:07:52 +0000

Digit news - Resize matters for Digital Anarchy: "Digital Anarchy has released ReSizer 2.0, a plug-in for After Effects, Final Cut Pro, Premiere Pro that offers high-quality upscaling of SD footage into HD. The plug-in also enables editors and compositors to zoom in on areas of footage with less loss of quality than using built-in tools, according to the company. "

WalkerFX 2.2 Now Available (vfxworld.com)

Mitch Allen — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 10:25:00 +0000

WalkerFX 2.2 Now Available (vfxworld.com): "WalkerFX announced the immediate availability of WalkerFX 2.2, a major point release in the company's advanced, production-proven, suite of visual effects and motion graphics plug-ins for Adobe After Effects."

Layers Magazine: Greenscreen Techniques

Mitch Allen — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:51:09 +0000

Layers Magazine: Greenscreen Techniques: "In this tutorial, I will show you how to key out a greenscreen using the basic tools in After Effects 6.5 Standard. ... One thing I want to stress before I even open After Effects is to set up your shot properly! This will save you a HUGE amount of time in post. Here are a couple of tips."

After Effects Scripting 101

Mitch Allen — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 09:37:00 +0000

by Mitch Allen

Note that this article was written using Adobe After Effects Professional 6.5 as a guide.

If you are comfortable with scripting languages, especially JavaScript, you will feel right at home developing scripts for Adobe After Effects (AE). AE uses an internal JavaScript interpreter adapted for use inside of it's environment. You can use JavaScript to do everything from creating new compositions to generating animated effects.

Jump Right In

Fire up an ASCII text editor, like Notepad, and copy the following code into it:

if( ! app.project ) app.newProject();

var myComp = app.project.items.addComp( "Hello Comp1", 320, 240, 1, 10, 30 );

var myText = myComp.layers.addText( "Hello World!" );

myText.position.setValue( [ 50, 50 ] );

Save that code into a file called aehello.jsx. Because this is a special brand of JavaScript, only meant to be run in AE, the standard is to give it a special extension (*.jsx).

If you happen to use a JavaScript editor, see if you can extend it to treat *.jsx files like *.js files. It will help you in your code development.

Run the Script

Start Adobe After Effects, if it isn't started.
Save and Close all projects.
From the File menu, select Run Script / Choose File ...
Navigate to where you saved aehello.jsx.
Select the file and click Open.

You should now see a new project with a comp named "Hello Comp1." The name of course came from the call in the script above:

var myComp = app.project.items.addComp( "Hello Comp1", 320, 240, 1, 10, 30 );

Open Hello Comp1 and you should see the text "Hello World!" This again came from the text in the script above:

var myText = myComp.layers.addText( "Hello World!" );

In the timeline window, expand the Transform options for the text object. Note that the Position values are 50.0, 50.0. You set the position through the script, using this line:

myText.position.setValue( [ 50, 50 ] );

If you run the script again, while the project is open, you will end up with multiple comps of the same name. Feel free to adjust the values of the name, text and position, resaving the file and loading it again.

Scripting Reference

You won't find a good reference to the scripting language in the AE 6.5 online help. You will need to pull the scripting guide from your Adobe After Effects CD. It's in *.pdf format. I'd suggest copying it to your desktop.

The scripting reference in AE 6.5 is extremely vague. But it does list all of the available methods and properties of the AE specific objects. One of the reasons I decided to start writing tutorials on the subject is due to the lack of information. These articles will help me as well as you! I don't have AE 7.0 yet. So I don't know if things have improved.

It's Not a Browser

Remember: AE is not a Web browser. You can't just copy and paste code that works in Internet Explorer and expect it to work in AE. Your coding should focus on manipulating the special objects in the AE environment.

Other Resources

See the side bar for more resources. A great place to start is Dan Ebberts MotionScript.com.

JSX Editors

I use both Eclipse and Macromedia's Dreamweaver for JavaScript development. If all else fails, I use Microsoft Visual Studio. My preferred editor for JavaScript and *.jsx development is Eclipse combined with the Web Tools Platform (http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/). It includes a basic JavaScript editor. It's free and it was easy to extend it to apply color coding to *.jsx files as well. AE 7.0 is supposed to have a built in *.jsx editor. But I haven't upgraded yet.

What's Next

The sample code I posted here was deliberately simple, so as not to confuse the newbie. I did try to make it fool-proof by adding a check in the first line that will automatically open a project if one isn't found. But in the real world, I'd never release code that didn't include exception handling. All future examples will be "industrial strength" and include it. So we need to get that out of the way. I'll cover that next.

VIDEO TUTORIAL: Adobe Dynamic Link (emedialive.com)

Mitch Allen — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 11:04:33 +0000

VIDEO TUTORIAL: Adobe Dynamic Link (emedialive.com): "Postproduction software is all about suites these days, and Adobe has taken suite integration—seamless interplay between applications--to a new level with Adobe Production Studio, thanks to one key new feature: Dynamic Link. ... In this video tutorial, Adobe Certified Instructor Luisa Winters shows how you can use it to best advantage, moving fluidly between Premiere Pro and After Effects."

Computer Graphics World - Adobe ships Magnet Media shipping DVD-based training

Mitch Allen — Tue, 28 Mar 2006 10:22:51 +0000

Computer Graphics World - Adobe ships Magnet Media shipping DVD-based training: "Magnet Media Digital Media Training Series (DMTS) has released Inside Adobe Production Studio Standard Edition, a set of interactive self-paced training DVDs for Adobe's new post-production solution ..."

particleIllusion After Effects Tutorial Part 1 (wondertouch.com)

Mitch Allen — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 10:42:57 +0000

particleIllusion After Effects Tutorial Part 1 (wondertouch.com): "While particleIllusion is not integrated with After Effects, the 2 programs can function well together, if you know what to do. There are several ways to both output and use pillusion footage in After Effects. This tutorial will cover several of the methods, as well as importing position data from After Effects. This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of both pIllusion and After Effects, and that you can manuver around both programs' user interface. It would greatly help if you've done the first 2 basic particleIllusion tutorials, but it isn't necessary if you already know your way around pIllusion, and are just trying to figure out how to use it with After Effects. "

I haven't used this myself. But it looked worth noting. For more information, see http://www.wondertouch.com

Review: Adobe After Effects 7.0 (iofilm.co.uk)

Mitch Allen — Sat, 18 Mar 2006 09:54:00 +0000

Review: Adobe After Effects 7.0 (iofilm.co.uk): "Any review of Adobe's special effects behemoth can only really scratch the surface of its capabilities. It's no surprise that AE has the fattest manual in the pack, there's so much to it. For the uninitiated, After Effects is a fully-featured motion graphics, animation and image compositing toolkit. Using a combination of timelines and keyframes, and some heavy math, it can turn a dull graphic into molten lava or create metor showers out of thin air. "

Welcome

Mitch Allen — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 01:38:00 +0000

Welcome to my blog focusing on the use of Adobe After Effects.

Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (Vol. 1)

Mitch Allen — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 02:09:00 +0000

If you are new to Adobe After Effects, check out Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects (Volume 1: Essentials) by Trish & Chris Meyer. The book comes with a 30 day trial so you can see if this is the program for you.

You can think of Adobe After Effects as Flash centered around video. It's used to create things like the animated motion graphics that you see introducing football games and movies of the week. You can use it to add animated titles to video, special effects, compositing, etc. You do this by adding layers, very much in the way you edit Flash. But it is especially geared to working with video files, where Flash is not.