Adobe After Effects CS4 - Manual (Page 394)

388 USING AFTER EFFECTS CS4
Effects and animation presets
Last updated 12/21/2009
Save an animation preset
1 Select any combination of properties (for example, Position and Scale) and property groups (for example, Paint and
Transform). If you are selecting only effects, you can select them in the Effect Controls panel.
2 Choose Save Animation Preset from the Animation menu or from the Effects & Presets panel menu.
3 Specify a name and location for the file, and then click Save.
For the animation preset to appear in the Effects & Presets panel, it must be saved in the Presets folder.
Note: If the animation preset does not appear in the Effects & Presets panel, choose Refresh List from the Effects & Presets
panel menu.
Online resources for animation presets
You can download additional animation presets—including a set of animation presets that make use of shape layers
and per-character 3D text animation—from the
Adobe After Effects Exchange .
If you apply an animation preset from the Animation Presets > Shapes > Backgrounds category, you can see a custom
Animated Shape Control effect in the Effect Controls panel. This custom effect is a specialized expression control effect
that was created specifically for these animation presets. You can copy and paste this effect to other layers, or you can save
it as an animation preset itself so that you can apply it elsewhere.
You can also download animation presets from many After Effects community websites, such as the AE Enhancers
forum .
A gallery of animation presets included with After Effects 7 is available on the Adobe website. This set of animation
presets is similar to the set included with After Effects CS4. For a list of animation presets included with After Effects
CS4, see “
Animation preset list ” on page 397.
Chris and Trish Meyer provide an in-depth look at animation presets—including behaviors and text animation
presets—in a PDF excerpt from their book Creating Motion Graphics with After Effects on the
CyberMotion website .
Andrew Kramer provides many animation presets on his Video Copilot website .
Chris Zwar provides an animation preset on his website that creates a target cross-hair using a single shape layer, with
a wide variety of custom properties that make controlling and modifying the cross-hair animation easy and obvious.
This is an excellent example of how to use animation presets to create elements that can be used and reused by others.
Rob Schofield provides a custom effect (a multi-part, packaged animation preset) on the AETUTS+ website that
distributes and animates 3D layers. This custom effect works especially well for animations that involve a large number
of 3D layers dispersing or converging. In the video tutorial accompanying the custom effect, Rob explains the
installation of custom effects.
Effects overview and resources
After Effects includes a variety of effects, which you apply to layers to add or modify characteristics of still images,
video, and audio. For example, an effect can alter the exposure or color of an image, add new visual elements,
manipulate sound, distort images, remove grain, enhance lighting, or create a transition.
Effects are sometimes mistakenly referred to as filters. The primary difference between a filter and an effect is that a
filter permanently modifies an image or other characteristic of a layer, whereas an effect and its properties can be
changed or removed at any time. In other words, filters operate destructively, and effects operate non-destructively.
After Effects uses effects exclusively, so changes are non-destructive. A direct result of the ability to change the
properties of effects is that the properties can be changed over time, or animated.