Overview

Students will learn all the tools and skills to master this powerful program, Adobe After Effects.

Adobe After Effects is a powerful software program used for creating special effects for video and motion graphics.

Target Audience: Graphic and Video professionals who need an essential understanding of video editing, motion editing and compositing. Experienced users will also benefit from many hands-on projects and tricks learnt on the class. No prior experience of After Effects is required. Training available on both Mac and Pc.

Detailed Course Outline:

Introduction: Real-World Usage of After Effects

What is After Effects?
Cloud complete versus standalone plans
What type of media can it create?
What kind of media can be imported into After Effects?
Components of an After Effects file
After Effects workflow: Best practices
Media deployment file fomat roundup
What determines a project’s resolution?
What determines a project’s frame rate?
What are best practices regarding graphical and audio assets?
What technical specifications must be met?

Hands-On Unit 1: Setting Up an After Effects Project

About RAM and real-time rendering
Understanding linked media, and reloading clips
Setting Preferences and Project Settings
Creating a project and importing footage
Creating a Composition and arranging layers
Adding effects and modifying layer properties
Animating a Composition
Working with the Time Controls Panel
Working with Switches and Modes in the Timeline
Creating rendering presets, and rendering a Composition
Customizing the After Effects Workspace

Hands-On Unit 2: Basic Animation With Effects and Presets

Working with imported Illustrator layers
Creating text
Applying text animation presets
Applying effects to layers
Previewing effects
Nesting and pre-composing
Adding transparency

Hands-On Unit 3: Animating Text

Title design: Adding text layers
Creating and formatting text
Using text animation presets
Animating with keyframes
Keyframe interpolation basics
Animating using parenting
Converting imported Photoshop text
Animating text using a path animation preset
Animating type tracking
Animating text opacity
Using a text animator group
Converting path points to positional keyframes
Auto-orienting a layer along a motion path
Adding motion blur
Rendering a Composition

Hands-On Unit 4: Animating Shapes

Differences between shape and mask layers
Adding a shape layer
Creating and animating shapes
Using Repeaters
Incorporating video and audio layers
Applying a Cartoon effect
Adding a title bar
Rendering a Composition using the AME

Hands-On Unit 5: Skills Summation Project

Adjusting layer anchor points
Masking video using vector shapes
Applying self-generating effects
Creating an animated slide show
Mixing audio track levels

Hands-On Unit 6: Working with Masks

Understanding alpha channels, masks, mattes, and keying
Importing masks from Photoshop
Animating masks
Exploring keyframe interpolation with the Graph Editor
Creating Animation Presets
Creating and editing masks in After Effects
Feathering the edges of a mask
Using the Mask Feather Tool
Applying blend modes
Creating a vignette
Color correction basics

Hands-On Unit 7: Working in 3D

Manipulating 2D text and objects in 3D space
Creating and shading extruded 3D text
Animating 3D text
Multiple scene Views
Applying lights to 3D layers
Shading and shadowing layers
Animating light and Materials properties
Third-party 3D plug-ins

Hands-On Unit 8: Color Correction and Cleanup Adjusting color balance

Replacing a background
Using the Clone Tool to remove unwanted elements
Correcting a color range
Warming colors with the Photo Filter effect

Hands-On Unit 9: Rendering and Exporting

Testing for final Renders and Exports
Understanding video and audio compression
Rendering in After Effects’ Render Queue
Rendering in the Adobe Media Encoder
Creating Render templates
Rendering and Exporting to a variety of media types:

High-resolution recompositing
DVD-V
Web video
YouTube
Mobile devices
Web video

Note: Our outlines are a guide to the content covered on a typical class. We may change or alter the course topics to meet the objectives of a particular class.

What's Included: