Adobe After Effects - Manual (Page 16)

Workflows
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General workflow in After Effects
Basic workflow tutorial: Create a simple movie
General workflow in After Effects
Overview of general workflow in After Effects
Whether you use Adobe After Effects to animate a simple title, create complex motion graphics, or composite realistic visual effects, you generally
follow the same basic workflow, though you may repeat or skip some steps. For example, you may repeat the cycle of modifying layer properties,
animating, and previewing until everything looks right. You may skip the step of importing footage if you intend to create graphical elements entirely
in After Effects.
1. Import and organize footage
After you create a project, import your footage into the project in the Project panel. After Effects automatically interprets many common media
formats, but you can also specify how you want After Effects to interpret attributes such as frame rate and pixel aspect ratio. You can view each
item in a Footage panel and set its start and end times to fit your composition. For more information, see Importing and interpreting footage items.
2. Create, arrange, and composite layers in a composition
Create one or more compositions. Any footage item can be the source for one or more layers in a composition. You can arrange the layers
spatially in the Composition panel or arrange them in time using the Timeline panel. You can stack layers in two dimensions or arrange them in
three dimensions. You can use masks, blending modes, and keying tools to composite (combine), the images of multiple layers. You can even use
shape layers, text layers, and paint tools to create your own visual elements. For more information, see Composition basics, Creating layers,
Transparency, opacity, and compositing, Overview of shape layers, paths, and vector graphics, and Creating and editing text layers.
3. Modify and animate layer properties
You can modify any property of a layer, such as size, position, and opacity. You can make any combination of layer properties change over time,
using keyframes and expressions. Use motion tracking to stabilize motion or to animate one layer so that it follows the motion in another layer. For
more information, see Animation basics, Expression basics, and Tracking and stabilizing motion (CS5).
4. Add effects and modify effect properties
You can add any combination of effects to alter the appearance or sound of a layer, and even generate visual elements from scratch. You can
apply any of the hundreds of effects, animation presets, and layer styles. You can even create and save your own animation presets. You can
animate effect properties, too, which are simply layer properties within an effect property group. For more information, see Effects and animation
presets overview.
5. Preview
Previewing compositions on your computer monitor or an external video monitor is fast and convenient, even for complex projects. You can
change the speed and quality of previews by specifying their resolution and frame rate, and by limiting the area and duration of the composition
that you preview. You can use color management features to preview how your movie will look on another output device. For more information,
see Previewing and Color management.
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