Movie
technology never ceases to amaze us when we view
what professional effect artists can produce to
spice up a story and capture the attention of the
viewer. Most of the things we see in the latest
movies are produced by the industry standard
software application Adobe After Effects CS3, it
truly contains a powerhouse of features and shows
great versatility.
However there is a great learning curve involved if you have never used the application before, and I would say out of all the applications included, this is the most challenging. But like me if you have acquired Adobe Production Premium CS3 and you are a first time user of Adobe After Effects CS3 which is included in the suite, it really pays to buy out the opportune time to learn and make use of the training tutorials available within this package thus providing the springboard to understanding the basic operations of this application. Even professional users with a few years experience are constantly learning new features and methods to enhance their skills with it. So to get too grips with this application will give you a valuable tool to do amazing things with animation and video.
Let us now consider the new features that make Adobe After Effects CS3 worth the while to learn and master.
NEW Features !
Puppet Tool
This quite frankly was amazing, The ability to take a normal 2d image, shape or layer and influence it to move any way you want it, for example if you import an image of a person, and then by adding pins to specific area’s of the body you can animate these, by dragging the pins at the knees hand and head an interesting effect can be achieved. Where ever you choose to place the pins you can dictate some kind of customised motion.
Shape Layers
Again an excellent feature that allows you to draw vector shapes or graphics without necessarily the need of a graphics application like Adobe illustrator CS3. Here we have included a pen tool for this very purpose. However if you want, you can take advantage of the preset shapes available which include polygons, stars and rounded rectangles, interestingly you can take a star for instance and add more sides and points, you can also key frame any of the properties of that shape to.
Shape Layers comprise many powerful capabilities:
Preset tools create rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and stars. Just as in Illustrator, these shapes can be adjusted as they are drawn (using the same keyboard shortcuts) to modify the rounding of the corners or the number of sides or points, respectively. You can also draw your own shapes with the Pen tool.
Type can be converted to a Shape Layer, allowing you to animate and warp its shape. Not only the shapes themselves, but all of their component parts, including strokes, fills, dashes and gradients, as well as various types of warps and repeating patterns, can be adjusted and animated.
A Shape Layer can contain a compound shape, a group with any number of component shapes. All settings and animations for the Shape Layer are applied to the compound shape.
The paths of a compound shape can be merged to create new shapes.
Photoshop Integration
Adobe After Effects CS3 takes powerful features from Photoshop CS3 :
LAYER STYLES / VIDEO LAYERS / VANISHING POINT
This means extended functionality bringing extended benefits to your creativity.
Layer Styles
Now in After Effects CS3 you can apply some interesting effects that have long been a part of Photoshop, when it comes to adding texture, shading, etc. These include :
DROP SHADOWS & INNER SHADOWS / INNER AND OUTER GLOW / BEVEL & EMBOSS, SATIN AND STROKE / COLOUR AND GRADIENT OVERLAY.
You can also import PSD files which include video layers created in Photoshop CS3 Extended, and perform animation tasks in After Effects.
3D Scene data that you create with the Vanishing Point feature in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended can then be exported as a file which can be imported into After Effects for 3D compositing. Vanishing Point lets you specify arbitrary planes of perspective in a 2D image, including angled planes. Once you’ve established the 3D planes in your Photoshop image, you can use that data as 3D layers in After Effects.
Flash integration
After Effects CS3 offers new support for Flash designers. In After Effects, you can create and export cue points in Flash video files, enhancing the interactive potential of the animations
you create. Not only that, but any stream of keyframes in the After Effects timeline can be used to generate cue points; for example, you can export motion tracking keyframe data into Flash.
Flash video files can be batch rendered and even created simultaneously with other types of output thanks to the ability to export multiple formats in one render pass. These files can
also contain alpha channels, so that keying or other transparency data that you generate in After Effects can be put to full use in Flash. After Effects also allows you to enable continuous rasterization of vector shapes and to preserve alpha channels from Flash, just as you would with Photoshop and Illustrator files—
a huge boon to animators who also work in Flash.
Per-Character 3D Text Animation
Choreography of text is the art of creating visual interest by how you make the words and letters move. In After Effects CS3 Professional, individual characters of text can be individually positioned and animated in 3D space while still maintaining the ability to edit. Animating individual characters in 3D greatly enhances the types of text animations you can create in After Effects. Characters can zoom one by one toward the camera. They can flutter and flip in 3D space like individual leaves on a tree. And no matter what antics they perform they interact fully with each other, casting shadows and receiving light.
The Overall Feel !
As a new user this application has all the right tools for the job, and the interface itself can be customised any way you like. It has plenty of preset animations and 3d text animations to get you started. I particularly liked the puppet tool, I found that by following along with some of the Lynda.com tutorials this gave me a better understanding of the animation process in this feature. I still feel I have a lot to learn about it, but I do enjoy using and exploring this application, even though I feel much more at home with Premiere Pro, Encore, SoundBooth and Photoshop CS3. But After Effects CS3 is all you will ever need for video animation in most projects. I think its wonderful how some features that are in the companion applications in this suite Adobe has seen fit to include in After Effects CS3, so you do not have to unnecessarily move from one application to another.
Production Premium CS3 is truly a treasure chest of opportunity ! The more you dig below the surface, the more value you discover enriching your workflow and output to bring the ultimate success to your projects. Adobe After Effects CS3 is just a part of it, but nevertheless a valued and influential asset to the movie making and animation industry.
However there is a great learning curve involved if you have never used the application before, and I would say out of all the applications included, this is the most challenging. But like me if you have acquired Adobe Production Premium CS3 and you are a first time user of Adobe After Effects CS3 which is included in the suite, it really pays to buy out the opportune time to learn and make use of the training tutorials available within this package thus providing the springboard to understanding the basic operations of this application. Even professional users with a few years experience are constantly learning new features and methods to enhance their skills with it. So to get too grips with this application will give you a valuable tool to do amazing things with animation and video.
Let us now consider the new features that make Adobe After Effects CS3 worth the while to learn and master.
NEW Features !
Puppet Tool
This quite frankly was amazing, The ability to take a normal 2d image, shape or layer and influence it to move any way you want it, for example if you import an image of a person, and then by adding pins to specific area’s of the body you can animate these, by dragging the pins at the knees hand and head an interesting effect can be achieved. Where ever you choose to place the pins you can dictate some kind of customised motion.
Shape Layers
Again an excellent feature that allows you to draw vector shapes or graphics without necessarily the need of a graphics application like Adobe illustrator CS3. Here we have included a pen tool for this very purpose. However if you want, you can take advantage of the preset shapes available which include polygons, stars and rounded rectangles, interestingly you can take a star for instance and add more sides and points, you can also key frame any of the properties of that shape to.
Shape Layers comprise many powerful capabilities:
Preset tools create rectangles, rounded rectangles, ellipses, polygons, and stars. Just as in Illustrator, these shapes can be adjusted as they are drawn (using the same keyboard shortcuts) to modify the rounding of the corners or the number of sides or points, respectively. You can also draw your own shapes with the Pen tool.
Type can be converted to a Shape Layer, allowing you to animate and warp its shape. Not only the shapes themselves, but all of their component parts, including strokes, fills, dashes and gradients, as well as various types of warps and repeating patterns, can be adjusted and animated.
A Shape Layer can contain a compound shape, a group with any number of component shapes. All settings and animations for the Shape Layer are applied to the compound shape.
The paths of a compound shape can be merged to create new shapes.
Photoshop Integration
Adobe After Effects CS3 takes powerful features from Photoshop CS3 :
LAYER STYLES / VIDEO LAYERS / VANISHING POINT
This means extended functionality bringing extended benefits to your creativity.
Layer Styles
Now in After Effects CS3 you can apply some interesting effects that have long been a part of Photoshop, when it comes to adding texture, shading, etc. These include :
DROP SHADOWS & INNER SHADOWS / INNER AND OUTER GLOW / BEVEL & EMBOSS, SATIN AND STROKE / COLOUR AND GRADIENT OVERLAY.
You can also import PSD files which include video layers created in Photoshop CS3 Extended, and perform animation tasks in After Effects.
3D Scene data that you create with the Vanishing Point feature in Adobe Photoshop CS3 Extended can then be exported as a file which can be imported into After Effects for 3D compositing. Vanishing Point lets you specify arbitrary planes of perspective in a 2D image, including angled planes. Once you’ve established the 3D planes in your Photoshop image, you can use that data as 3D layers in After Effects.
Flash integration
After Effects CS3 offers new support for Flash designers. In After Effects, you can create and export cue points in Flash video files, enhancing the interactive potential of the animations
you create. Not only that, but any stream of keyframes in the After Effects timeline can be used to generate cue points; for example, you can export motion tracking keyframe data into Flash.
Flash video files can be batch rendered and even created simultaneously with other types of output thanks to the ability to export multiple formats in one render pass. These files can
also contain alpha channels, so that keying or other transparency data that you generate in After Effects can be put to full use in Flash. After Effects also allows you to enable continuous rasterization of vector shapes and to preserve alpha channels from Flash, just as you would with Photoshop and Illustrator files—
a huge boon to animators who also work in Flash.
Per-Character 3D Text Animation
Choreography of text is the art of creating visual interest by how you make the words and letters move. In After Effects CS3 Professional, individual characters of text can be individually positioned and animated in 3D space while still maintaining the ability to edit. Animating individual characters in 3D greatly enhances the types of text animations you can create in After Effects. Characters can zoom one by one toward the camera. They can flutter and flip in 3D space like individual leaves on a tree. And no matter what antics they perform they interact fully with each other, casting shadows and receiving light.
The Overall Feel !
As a new user this application has all the right tools for the job, and the interface itself can be customised any way you like. It has plenty of preset animations and 3d text animations to get you started. I particularly liked the puppet tool, I found that by following along with some of the Lynda.com tutorials this gave me a better understanding of the animation process in this feature. I still feel I have a lot to learn about it, but I do enjoy using and exploring this application, even though I feel much more at home with Premiere Pro, Encore, SoundBooth and Photoshop CS3. But After Effects CS3 is all you will ever need for video animation in most projects. I think its wonderful how some features that are in the companion applications in this suite Adobe has seen fit to include in After Effects CS3, so you do not have to unnecessarily move from one application to another.
Production Premium CS3 is truly a treasure chest of opportunity ! The more you dig below the surface, the more value you discover enriching your workflow and output to bring the ultimate success to your projects. Adobe After Effects CS3 is just a part of it, but nevertheless a valued and influential asset to the movie making and animation industry.
