Compositing overview, Online resources for compositing – Adobe After Effects User Manual
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Compositing and transparency overview and resources
Compositing overview
Online resources for compositing
Compositing fire, explosions, muzzle flashes
Compositing fog, smoke, and clouds
Compositing overview
To create a composite from multiple images, you can make parts of one or more of the images transparent so that other images can show
through. You can make portions of a layer transparent using any of several features in After Effects, including the following:
Roto Brush tool in CS6(See Roto Brush and Refine Matte.)
Roto Brush and Refine Edge tools in CC ( See
)
masks (See About masks and Rotoscoping introduction and resources.)
mattes (See Track mattes and traveling mattes.)
painting on the alpha channel (See Paint with the Brush tool.)
the Preserve Underlying Transparency layer option (See Preserve underlying transparency during compositing.)
keying effects (See Keying.)
To make an entire layer uniformly transparent or semi-transparent, modify its Opacity property.
Layers can also be composited together without modifying the transparency of the layers themselves. For example, you can use blending modes
or some of the Channel effects to blend image data from multiple layers into a composite. (See Blending modes and layer styles and Channel
effects.)
After Effects also includes the mocha shape for After Effects (mocha shape AE) plug-in, which converts paths from mocha-AE into mattes in After
Effects. (See Resources for Imagineer mocha shape for After Effects.)
Adobe Photoshop is an excellent application for performing many compositing tasks, including defining areas of transparency using its selection
and painting tools. You can use Adobe Photoshop together with After Effects for optimum efficiency and best results when doing compositing work.
Online resources for compositing
Aharon Rabinowitz provides an introduction to compositing, “What is Compositing?”—part of the
the Creative COW
website.
Mark Christiansen provides a detailed overview of compositing—covering masks, mattes, blending modes, and alpha channels—in a chapter from
his After Effects Studio Techniques book posted on the
Chris and Trish Meyer provide a tutorial on the
that demonstrates how to create a light wrap, so that a foreground element blends
in more convincingly with a background.
Rich Young collects tutorials and resources for creating light wraps on the
.
Rich Young collects
various methods of creating vignettes.
Rich Young collects resources for sky replacement on the
Chris Zwar provides tips on color keying and compositing on
.
Jeff Foster provides free sample chapters from his book The Green Screen Handbook: Real World Production Techniques. The sample chapters
cover basic compositing, color keying, garbage mattes, hold-out mattes, and how to avoid common problems with greenscreen shots. For more
information, see the
.
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