Tuesday, 6 December 2011

After Effects - Software Induction Two... How to Import and Some Effects

How to import from photoshop to After Effects...




Open new page in photoshop and when setting up the document then you can do the following


once the settings are set to those of above, then i am ready to start creating

then you get this layout


the guides here are for the safe zone and will give you a certain area of placement where you can position your work inside to make sure you don't get anything chopped off which you don't need. 

Try keep everything inside the centre section when it comes to text cause anything which is outside of this area can become distorted



This is how you would see it when you open it in After Effects, to confirm this button you can then find that button in the bottom left area of my screen shot. This then gives you a clear indication on what you'll be able to see and what you can't


to import its really simple. basically the same way as In Design. this gives you the way that you can then select the file that you want to import and then it should come up with these options...


This is another box basically to confirm your first choice. 

Now you have got your image / text into After Effects to then add it to your work so you are able to mess around with it... 


once dragged from the left panel to the frame of which you work in, you then have the power to use all the other ways of playing around with the text / image and making them work for me 


When working with layers and you want something to go into After effects where you can work which each layer individually, you need to then go to import file on After Effects and then before you import you need to click as composition, IF YOU DONT DO THIS then you will just get the solid set of type and it wont be playable with. 




You then need to just double click on the left panel where its got the colourful image next to it and not the folder itself. it will then open in In Design and it wont require anything else, Each layer will then be modifiable in this mode. 


This here is when you can then edit each layer individually and make it play so that it appears to have smashed the word in this example. 



How to import from Illustrator to After Effects...



This is basically the same method as above but there are some changes when it comes down to it, these are posted below... 


When importing in from In Design you can clearly see that you need to make sure that the image is large enough otherwise you will have a very pixelated outcome due to After Effects working with pixels and not being able to hold the vectored lines. 


These are some settings which can make or break the work that you are working on, these range from the adjustment layer which is created for containing and effecting which can change the levels or something such as that on a document, To the blur effect. 


To add the motion blur which i have done, you can see that i needed to make sure you click the section above and also in the bottom left hand side panel. this then allows you to see it, however if you are checking something else on your work, but you don't want your mac to slow down whilst doing this then you can turn off the motion blur by clicking the button which is on the bar above. 


When using vector artwork make sure to click the sunshine looking button. This will then allow you to continually vector the the image so no matter how large you scale it towards, you will still be able to work with it and this will keep things crisp and clear. 



When Saving...


Once you have saved the file to the folder dedicated to After Effects, you need to make sure that you gather all the work together to make sure that it all sits in the same area so that you don't have any missing files (similar in a way to In Design) 

To make sure that you have all the images that you have used in that work, you can then click "Collect Files" this then collects all the images that you have used and saves them all into the folder of what you have created with. 


This above is what it would look like in the end, and then when you go to open this next time, i wont have any problems with working on this more. 

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