3 Adobe After Effects Tricks You Need To Know For Animation

1. Intro: Do you want to unlock secret features in Adobe After Effects? In this class, I'll show you three features to make animations like these and power up your motion design. Hi, everybody. My name is Isaiah Cardona, and I'm an art director and motion designer based in the heart of the US. For the past six-plus years, I have worked with Adobe After Effects to create a variety of client work ranging from simple animations to more complex videos. After Effects gives you the power to conjure up amazing motion graphics and animations, and by not learning the software, you're losing out on a massive advantage that can help you out on your motion projects. The ability to bring your vision to life to its fullest form is very satisfying feeling but After Effects is a large and complex program with a million different effects, panels, and presets, and it's hard to know what they all do without someone showing you. Throughout my career, there have been moments when I would spend hours trying to do something in After Effects without realizing there was a secret feature that could automate the process and speed up my workflow. As a Skillshare teacher with several motion design classes under my belt, I wanted to create a class on After Effects to share some of my favorite hidden features and stories about how they have drastically improved my work including Preserve Underlying Transparency, Motion Sketch, Content-Aware Fill, plus a bonus feature to help you export animated GIFs. Each feature elevated in the area of my work including speeding up my workflow and magically fixing problems sorts and footage, and improving the quality of animation. Once you've gotten used to using these features in your work, you can move on to learning how to use them for even more complex and customize animations. This class is for motion designers who are comfortable with the basics of After Effects and are looking to level up their workflow and craft. Whether you've never heard of these features or have only used a few, by the end of this class, you'll have all the knowledge of how and when to use them, and when you're ready to unlock these powerful After Effects tricks. Then let's get started. 2. Welcome: [MUSIC] What to expect in this class. For each lesson, I will walk you through a hidden feature and tell you what it does, how I use it, and why it's super useful. This class is structured for intermediate to advanced after-effects users as it builds upon the basic knowledge of after-effects to help you improve your workflow and skills in the program. If you would like to follow along with me I have included in the resources section the working files I use to demonstrate each feature. Your class project is to use one or more of the features we will cover in a project of your choice, because there are so many different uses for each feature, this project is really open-ended. If you realize that a project that you previously animated could have one of these features to make something easier or work better then you can go back and reanimate it or maybe my examples have sparks, new ideas of new projects you could animate no matter what you create, just include a note to say what features you used in that project and if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the discussion section of the class and then the next lesson we will dive into our first hidden feature, which is Content-Aware Fill. 3. Content-Aware Fill: In this lesson, I will walk you through the first hidden feature, Content-Aware Fill. What does it do? If you're a Photoshop pro then this feature will be very familiar to you. Content-Aware Fill has saved the day so many times by removing an object from footage and filling in the empty space with surrounding pixels, just like magic, it's gone. Why is it useful? Throughout my professional experience, I run into situations where my team discovered after a shoot that we needed to remove an object from a scene, or maybe we just needed some plain space to put text or logo in. Now we have to solve that problem and post. Good thing is that Content-Aware Fill has been the perfect solution to this. How to use it. I'm going to walk you through my thought process for how I go about editing a scene using Content-Aware Fill. The first step in the process is to create a mask around the object you want to remove. I try to examine not only the object I want to remove, but also consider the background and how I can have a more seamless content fill. For example, if there's a complex pattern behind the object, I might select a larger area that includes the full pattern. Also remove it since it will be too complex to have a seamless result. Another thing that's helpful to consider is how much your object moves. In my example, the object is completely stationary, but if it was a moving object, I might expand my area selection to cover the total area that the object will be in or I might adjust my mask as I scrub through the timeline, so the program is only filling in content for the object and has less area it has to try and fix. Definitely remember, take time upfront to watch your clip first and see what's the best mask selection for your needs. To create a mask, I'm going to make sure my video layer is selected. Then I'm going to click on the Pen Tool and trace around my object, and now my scene went black. No worries, all you need to do is go down to the mask and click "Subtract", which will invert the effect so the mask subtracts the selection from the rest of the clip. Pro-tip, if the object moves during the video, you will need to adjust the mask at different points in the footage so it stays aligned with the object. Once I'm satisfied with my mask, I'm going to activate the Content-Aware Fill panel. To find it go to Window up above, and then down to Content-Aware Fill, then all you have to do is click "Generate Fill Layer". As you can see here, it generate a brand new layer on top made up of a sequence of images of the field and area. Now I'm going to walk you through a common issue you may run into and how you can solve it. Let's say you hit the "Generate Fill layer", but you get an error message. What do you do? Well, the first thing I would do is check how your mask is being applied to layer. In order for Content Fill layer to work, you have to have a hole in your scene. When you create a mask, it will automatically be in the add mode, which means only the selection is shown, which is the opposite of what we want. By switching the subject, you will get a hole which you can always confirm by looking at the Fill Target screen of the panel. Here you can see it has a transparent hole. Now you're all set. To recap, this feature can be used in so many different applications. Remember, review the footage first and draw your mask selection according to the complexity of the object and the rest of the scene, and remember that if your object is moving throughout, you will need to adjust the points of the mask throughout to match the position of the object. Now it's your turn to practice this exercise using the class resources or your own clips, and post in the discussion section if you have any questions or need help. In the next lesson, I will walk you through a secret trick for clipping animations. 4. Preserve Underlying Transparency: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will walk you through the hidden feature, preserve underlying transparency. It took me several years before I actually learned what all the settings in the timeline panel did. I think preserve underlying transparency was the very last feature I learned about, and it has definitely become one of my favorite features. What does it do? It only shows the layer on visible pixels. A great way to think about this feature is like the clipping path in Photoshop. For such a long time I wanted a way to be able to essentially clip multiple layers to one layer like Photoshop, and preserve underlying transparency does that. Let's look at an example. In this example, I have two layers, a circle, and a white text, and they're both on a transparent background. In the past when I would want to have the circle only show up in the text. I would have to duplicate the text layer, and use alpha matte in the track matte panel, and as you can see it does the job but it has a couple of downsides, such as you can only track one layer, and you have to duplicate the bottom layer. Preserving underlying transparency solves both of these problems. To activate the feature, go to the timeline panel and click the box in the T column, and now that layer is only visible when I move it over the text. One thing to keep in mind with this feature, is that the activated layer will be visible for all non-transparent objects. For instance, if I had a solid background, as you can see here, then I would always see the circle as there are no transparent areas below it. Now I'm going to show you a more advanced example now, and this will be in the class resources if you want to follow along with me. In this project, I have a colorful wave animation setup, and I want to have it just appear within the text that says paper planes. All I have to do is once again go the timeline panel, and then check each box in the T column to activate the preserve underlying transparency for these layers, and as you can see now, they're clipped to the text. How do I use this in real practice? I like to use this feature a lot for adding animated textures to words or shapes in a composition. As you can see here, I added texture to those text as well. Key takeaway, preserving underlying transparency is a hidden feature that you should be using. Before I knew about this feature, I would spend way more time using workarounds. Using underlying transparency has really sped up my workflow, and giving me more flexibility since I set it up to multiple layers. Now it's your turn to practice this exercise using the class resources or your own files. As always, feel free to post any questions in the discussion section, and I'll be happy to help you out. In the next lesson, I will walk you through motion sketch, which will help you effortlessly create organic movement in animation. 5. Motion Sketch: [MUSIC] In this lesson, I will discuss motion sketch, which is one of my favorite time-saving features when it comes to animating objects around the screen. What does it do? Motion sketch records movement and translates that into key frames. This feature is great for when you want to capture the movement of an object in a very organic way, which I have found has helped me elevate the quality of movement. How does it work? To activate it, go to Window, then down to motion sketch, and then that will open up a panel. Let's walk through the settings in this panel. First you have the option to adjust the speed at which your movement is captured. This is one of the reasons why I love this feature. In the past, I would have to plot out the position keyframes along the timeline. But with motion sketch, after effects will track the speed at which you move around and plot it for you. With this setting, you can even speed up or slow down the speed of the final animation. I find this extremely helpful as I move the mouse pretty slowly till this can speed up the pace, so it's not as slow. To speed up the animation, all you need to do is increase the number, and then by decreasing the number, you can slow down the animation. You will also be able to manually reposition the key frames as well. The next setting we have is smoothing. You can control the smoothness of the movement by raising or lowering the value here. The higher the value, the more After Effects will smooth out the overall movement which affects the number of keyframes used. I tend to crank mine up to around 70 as I'm pretty shaky as I move my cursor around the frame, and the higher value helps make the final path very smooth. You also have options to show the wireframe of the object you're moving in the background while you capture the movement. I'm going to demonstrate what it looks like with both off. Here you just see the cursor and dots indicating the different keyframes of the movement on a black background. Now when you check wireframe, you will see a frame around the object, which I have found helpful for when I needed to take into consideration the shape or size of the object I'm moving. This is especially helpful when my object is smaller than the comp. But what do you do when you need to navigate your object around other objects in your composition? That's where checking the background comes in handy. As it makes everything visible, so now I can navigate my plane around the words. To give you insight into my process, for a project like this, I'm going to always check both the wireframe and background as I want my object, which is the paper plane, to navigate around the text as it moves around the screen. If I didn't have those aspects shown, I would end up doing a live unneeded guesswork. But what do you do when you need your object to readjust this plane animation? That animation would look bad if the plane only point in one direction and it was backwards throughout the entire movement. Pro Tip, you can use auto orient to have your object real line itself automatically throughout the entire animation. To do that, you will go to Layer, then down to Transform, then down to Auto-orientation. Then in the pop-up, click on Orient along path and then click Okay. Now the plane is adjusting as orientation, which is awesome, but it's flying backwards. To solve that, I'm going to tap the R key to bring up rotation, and I'm going to adjust the rotation till the path is facing the correct direction. Typically when I'm working on an animation like this, I will turn on orient along path and readjust the rotation of an object before I even use motion sketch to speed up my workflow and allow me to see the objects moving the right way from the beginning. How has this improved my work? This feature has definitely saved me a lot of time. Before discovering motion sketch, I would create every keyframe by hand and rotate objects along the path, which is very time-intensive. This definitely has sped up my workflow. Now it's your turn to tackle this exercise using the class resources or your own files, and feel free to post to the discussion section if you need any help. In the next lesson, I will be showing you a bonus feature that will allow you to export your project from After Effects as an animated gap. 6. Bonus: Exporting Animated Gifs: In this lesson, I will walk you through exporting a project as an animate GIF. First, why is this a useful feature? Animate GIFs are a popular format used on the Web. We see them everywhere, from on social media platforms to in our chat, and text messages. Live users don't know, you can generate a GIF using After Effects Media Encoder settings. How to do this? Just like exploiting a video. You will go up to the top file, then down to Export, then click add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue. Currently my settings are set to render an MP4 video file. To change the setting, I'm going to go to the format column and click the down arrow, and I will go to animate GIF and click it. As you can see, the file format has now changed to GIF. To make adjustments to the GIF, click animated GIF to get the Export settings. A downside to this method for creating GIFs is that the Export settings are geared more towards videos and not GIFs, so you don't have a lot of those helpful settings that are available in other applications like Photoshop. When to use this? For me, I use this feature when I just want to create a quick GIF to show the client, that I don't need to worry about optimizing the size of the GIF. To recap, I just walk you through exporting animated GIFs using After Effects and talk through some pros and cons of using this feature. Now, it's your turn to export an animated GIF of your project and upload it to the student project gallery. Then the final lesson, we will wrap up this class. 7. Final Thoughts: [MUSIC] Congratulations on completing this class. You now have four new tricks in your After Effects Toolkit, including fixing footage mistakes with content-aware fill, clipping animations to shapes or tax using preserved underlying transparency, creating smooth animation using Motion Sketch, and exploring comps as Animated GIFs. I hope that these new features have helped inspire you to seek out new creative opportunities and more complex projects to use your new skills. To continue expanding your skills, I recommend that you take a moment to upload your project to the class gallery, and sharing with the Skillshare community is a great way to help inspire each other. If you enjoy taking this class, then consider following me on Skillshare and check out some of my other classes on motion design and animation. Thanks again for taking this class, and I hope to see you in a future one soon. Bye for now. [MUSIC]