Intro to Adobe After Effects Animation, Part 3

Hi, welcome back to educator.com. This next lesson is animation, part three.0000

We are basically going to animate text, titles, you name it.0005

So, before get into that I want to show you something I learned late in the game with After Effects.0009

They have animation presets that are made for text specifically.0016

Before I show you them in After Effects. Another way you can view these.0024

There are so many presets to pick from. It is almost like you get browses of options.0027

So, what I usually do is I will open up Bridge. I will view this in Bridge.0032

And what you can do is. You can navigate inside of After Effects to its preset menu and you can view them in Bridge.0040

It is actually kind of nice. So, let us do that real quick.0049

Applications, CS5 and right here where it says presets we are going to look at text. Then animate.0052

All these are presets. So there are a whole lot of folders in here to pick from.0068

I usually start with animate in.0073

So, as you can see there is all these different presets.0077

So, for instance, if I click one of these I can see what that preset does.0080

So, in this case, this is called Center spiral, Character shuffle and it really just goes on and on.0086

So, when you select the preset.0096

I will go jump into After Effects right now.0099

I will show you how to apply these to each text layer.0101

But, once you have these applied you can still play with them and adjust them to your composition.0103

So, let us do that. Let us quit this.0111

So, let us pick a basic setting here.0116

So, here is our Six gun Sally again and do a quick RAM preview.0119

OK, so the word sweet just kind of appears there.0129

So, let us have the word sweet just kind of slide in here.0135

So, what we do is if we do not have this window open you could just go up here to your window, file menu, scroll down.0139

And make sure that your effects and presets are chosen there.0146

So, they show up here and here they appear and here is animation presets.0153

You want to click presets again and down here we have text and here is animate in.0161

That is what we just viewed in Bridge. So, let us try a few of these out.0170

Here is how you apply these. In fact, why do not we lock the other layers?0174

It is very easy to drag these effects on other layers by accident.0180

So, let us lock everything else but sweet and let us try one.0184

So, the way to do it, several ways of course.0187

Let us try something kind of wacky that is here to looks like here.0192

Let us go with a Center spiral. You can drag it right on top of the word.0198

So, it has already been applied.0204

So, if you do a quick RAM preview that just kind of flies in. It is rendering right now.0205

Play it back. You know, that it is OK.0212

Some of these are kind of nice for a good start.0215

If you do not like that hit Command-Z and just kind of try a few.0219

It is one thing to view them in Bridge and when you have them in your comp.0224

It kind of tells you what fits best with your compositions. So, let us try a random.0226

Now, see I applied that and it going to kind of animate in.0232

So if you want to see what is going on here we can open up our layer and look what is done here.0238

It is added in animator what they call an expression.0244

And it has not really affected our transformation properties at all.0248

It is sort of its own self-contained preset.0253

And in here we can see all that information are contained into these 2 key frames.0256

So, we can either speed it up we can slow it down.0262

That is kind of nice. So, these are really fun.0269

You know you can really take advantage of the presets especially when you have a deadline.0273

Even if you just want to like throw out some ideas.0278

And, sometimes is good to add a preset and then try to emulate that yourself.0283

Well, it is just basic key frames.0287

So, yeah. That is all fun.0289

So, the next thing is let us just animate some text.0294

This is one of the best program for animating text.0298

So, if we look at our original composition here.0302

Here is our pre-rendered movie. Six gun Sally, revenge is so sweet.0310

OK, so, let us just play that.0319

We have the word sweet just sliming in and we call it stamping on to the frame. Let us do that.0321

We have this. OK, let us get rid of this modes menu for now.0340

Hide this and as you can see. Play this back again.0349

Revenge pops in the top. So, if you think of text like characters.0362

They are almost like characters or cartoon characters, so to speak.0369

They are actually have a life of their own.0374

And the way they enter a frame, the way they exit a frame.0377

Everything matters here and we can key frame all that information.0380

So, let us open up our layer. Title sweet and you can see here all these key frames.0384

Hit Command-N and you can see it enters from. We are using opacity.0398

If I go frame by frame here it just kind of stamps in and gives it a little bit of a shake.0406

The first layer revenge just drops in from the top.0417

So, it is very basic but it is effective.0431

So, let us do this. Let us delete the key frames and sweet for instance.0439

I will kind of show you what we did from scratch here.0454

Revenge, Close this.0457

Alright! So, now you can see we have it sort of timed out.0466

Again, After Effects is kind of like an editing program but at the same time you can see how these layers will come in.0471

Now, these are premade as far as I already typed these in. I formatted them.0481

So, let us get this moving. Alright, so let us start with revenge.0487

Revenge needs to drop in from the top probably around here or so.0492

Let us space out our timeline a little bit.0500

And let us work backwards meaning let us set a key frames position.0505

Actually we are not going to even use scales.0510

Let us just leave position turned on.0511

And let us drop in our title revenge.0514

You can kind of nudge them with your arrow keys.0519

And beginning of the comp we are going to have it drop in from the top.0525

So, let us move our render queue area. Let us hit the letter N.0532

We are always going to be playing back things so we get it just right.0539

And there you go. That it is a little fast.0545

Actually it seems a little late.0548

Let us move this in sooner.0550

Now, things seem kind of flat or it just kind of drops in a basic.0555

We can always do and ease in key frame and by doing that. I almost use this all the time.0561

You want to select that key frame. That is the landing point of revenge.0567

And you hold down control and scroll down here to key frame assistance and use easy ease in.0571

And watch what happens to the word revenge.0580

It just kind of has a little bit of a glide at the end.0582

In fact, let me show you this by itself.0586

Now, if I were to space this out.0590

That is a nice little handy key frame. Let us bring that back over here.0595

OK, so we have revenge has never been so sweet.0604

By the way, if you open this up here you already have a drop shadow applied to that. I am going to delete that.0608

When in doubt I use a drop shadow. It kind of makes the text pop.0619

So, let us add a drop shadow to that. How do we do that?0623

We are going to go to click the layer.0627

We want to go to effects and it is usually down here in perspective how to drop shadow.0632

And over here is our effects control menu here.0640

And what it did is it added the effect here on the layer itself.0647

You can make your adjustments here are you can make them up here.0651

I usually, kind of, play with the direction here.0654

And I will bring up the opacity a bit. You cannot really see it.0658

So, let us get some distance on there and a little bit of softness. There you go.0664

You can actually copy and paste effects to other layers too.0676

So you do not have to reset that every time. It is very convenient.0679

So, here we go. Let us play it back again. Get familiar with it.0684

Alright, we have our fire right at the bottom there which we can definitely get into in a second.0692

OK, so let us get to sweet.0700

So, there is different ways for a title to enter and exit a frame, like I said.0706

In this case, revenge has never been so sweet. The word sweet should kind of seal the deal.0712

That is what we are saying.0719

So, what we are going to do is right now this has no opacity. So let us bring our opacity up.0722

In fact, let me just reset the layer here.0733

Right now, that was in its original size when I originally typed in into our text tool here.0737

So, let us scale that back up. Let us get dramatic.0746

Let us go 650. You can type that in or just drag it.0754

You can kind of fill it out. You do not always have the type and the values.0762

You kind of drag your, you can scale them up way by hand.0764

OK, so just leave it there for the second here.0769

We are going to eventually drop the opacity to have a kind of fade in to the scene.0773

So, right now let us set some key frames, position, and scale.0779

And let us move up the timeline a bit here.0786

And let us scale down to. Let us see here what feels right.0791

Let us have it so it just fits in the title safe area here. Here we go.0800

Now, if you hold down the Command while you are scaling or using any of the values it kind of slows it down a bit.0812

Because if I do not hold any keys at all.0818

If I just drag this it just goes really fast. It just scales it, almost too fast.0821

But if you are trying to finesse a little bit just hold down command. It slows down the values rate.0826

OK, so it looks pretty good. Let us play it back.0835

Revenge has never been so sweet. OK, looks good.0843

It could be a little more dramatic.0850

So, what we are going to do here is we are going to do a little more key framing.0851

Stomps in. Let us go ahead and turn on our opacity key frame.0860

Let us turn this to zero. Let us go up about 4 or 5 frames.0865

Put it back to 100 and hit enter and you can kind of see it just kind of fades in.0874

And again you could tweak all this later want.0882

Now, if you want this to have more of a stamp in.0885

What we do is we are going to copy these key frames at the point of impact but sweet.0888

And you are going to hit Command-C, page up a few, copy paste, page up a few, copy paste.0893

So, this is with its original size here.0901

So, from there we can kind of scale it down more to give it that smash effect.0904

We just kind of scale it in. Move it up a bit.0911

Very similar to the squash and stretch effect we did and bam.0917

There is kind of a shake. Play it back some.0922

What you can do is scale this up a little bit, a little more dramatic.0929

This is kind of capa, if that is even a word.0937

Let us try this. You can just move your key frames now.0942

I like to play with the key frames and retime things a bit.0946

Give you this a little closer. Alright, not bad!0954

So, down here at the bottom.0961

This is a pre-purchased effect. It is fire as you kind of see there.0965

I have a drop shadow on there. It just gives it more drama.0981

So, there you go. OK, so to play that back. Command-0988

Revenge has never been so sweet.0997

So, as you can see all the information is in here.1006

We started here and we can page up.1011

And you just keep retiming it, resizing it and to get it just right.1017

Thank you for watching educator.com. I look forward to our next lesson.1024