I've been doing a bit more paid editing work recently, so decided I really needed to make some progress with cleverness on After Effects. There are some excellent tutorials out there, but after spending 4 hours yesterday making somebody disintegrate, I'm less than happy with my results. I followed the tutorial to the letter, but small tweaks not quite as per the video seem to multiply the errors so when they say "Turn on the ... and it looks great" mine, don't. I'm also getting cross because the impact of the tiny tweaks make a huge difference when comp is inside a comp that is inside another and so on. The simple ones are fine - but in the multi-nested ones, I get lost going back and trying to repair them - and even on my quite new, well specified machine, my timeline scrubbing is nowhere near as quick as the mega machines the videos are produced on!
I guess I'm just grumpy that I'm just not good enough - yet.
These experts make the choices so obvious and work so fast that my poor old brain can't keep up.
Hi Paul.
I prefer books for this. You can turn pages at your brains pace.;)
2 I found good were:
How to use After affects 5.0 and 5.5 by Donna L Baker
Adobe After affects studio techniques 7.0 by Mark Christiansen
OK now out of date, but there are probably later versions of same and after affects hasn't changed much in it's methodology.
Often desired affects are created in seconds, but tweaking to fine tune etc can take 90% or more of the time, that's normal for a tool that lets you have so much influence on each aspect, unlike 'plug and play' drop in filters.
It's my favourite tool, but most work I do doesn't require it.
So, As Doc said to Snow White: 'Stop feeling grumpy and feel happy.' :rolleyes:
I'm also getting cross because the impact of the tiny tweaks make a huge difference when comp is inside a comp that is inside another and so on. The simple ones are fine - but in the multi-nested ones, I get lost going back and trying to repair them
Hi Paul,
In case you don't know, one thing you can do with AE when working with nested comps is to open another window on the final comp. As long as you have sufficient screen area and of course dual monitors is best, then you can see the result of your adjustments in both the precomp and the final comp, as the same time!
The comp windows can be arranged either as separate windows on different monitors or both on one monitor or joined side by side and the contents set to syncronise so as you make the adjustment to the precomp you see the end result on the final comp.
Hmm, I think I made that sound awfully complicated, but it's not really :)
In short, I would say you really need a lot of screen space when working with AE and of course I agree a fast computer is better!
That would help no end, I suspect - I'll give it a bash. Thanks for that tip. Despite naming the various comps with sensible names, I still get lost. Yesterday, I accidentally turn one layer off - but which one it was ??? I guess perhaps colour coding the tracks would also help.
I guess it's just me!
Mark Christiansen's Studio Techniques books are excellent, and I'd recommend them but only for someone who knows the After Effects basics.
I started out with Trish Meyer's "Creating Motion Graphics" books for AE. Not sure what version they've got up to now (mine are for AE 6.5), but they gave me a good start with the application.
Like Christian says Trish (& Chris?) Meyer's books are fairly easy to understand and even the examples and techniques in the books created for older versions of AE are still usable in current versions. :)