Intro to Adobe After Effects Using Layers

Hi, welcome back to educator.com. This next lesson is on layers.0000

If you think of layers like actors or props in a movie it makes it easier to understand how this all works.0008

So let us go to our Layer menu down here.0018

A Layer menu has all kinds of goodies in it basically.0023

So, over here to the left. Here we have our eyeballs where we can turn on and off.0028

If you turn off this layer it would go to a more complicated composition.0038

So, we have our Revenge has never been so sweet comp.0045

If we turn these layers off you can see that they start to disappear like in Photoshop.0050

So, everything is sort of laid out and assembled in our layer window.0057

We have our background here, our wood wall and we have a vignette. We have fire.0061

Revenge has never been so sweet over text. You will have an adjustment layer here.0071

So, each layer has its own set of what we call Properties or Parameters or Values.0078

And if you open one of these up for instance we have, this happens to be a text layer.0090

And each layer sort of tells you what is going on.0098

If you open this one up here you have your text.0100

This one has an effect applied to it, which is a drop shadow.0102

If you look at the word Sweet it turns a drop shadow on and off.0107

And on every layer we have these properties here, or values, or parameters.0113

We are always going to have anchor point, position, scale, rotation and opacity.0120

Later when we get into key framing you will see how important this is.0126

Here, to the right we have key frames which we will get into later.0130

But, each layer you will open them up with a triangle and here are the values.0132

If you keep moving to the right here. We have the different modes.0139

Similar to Photoshop we have our multiplied, dissolve. Add lighting, all those goodies.0146

Over to the right over here we have all of our switches.0152

We can stretch. We can turn layers into 3D layers motion blur.0158

Now, if you do not see some of these columns in your After Effects that is because they are probably hidden.0162

And to bring those up. You basically hold down the control and we can our columns here.0170

For instance, I am going to bring up the parent window. Bring that up over here.0177

I can get rid of things by going hide this.0182

So, is a lot happening in here.0187

We also have the timeline or the timeline indicator.0192

So, if you think of this window over here as your editor, more or less. This is like a timeline.0197

So, let me shrink down our timeline a little bit here. I can hit Command- plus or minus.0205

In fact, let us shim over to the main comp here.0211

So, here are all of our layers and our timeline side over here.0214

This is our time indicator. Wherever this time indicator is placed that is the layer we are going to see in our comp window.0218

So, you kind of see how it is all kind of working together, kind of like a circular motion here.0226

So, let me do a quick RAM preview.0232

I am going to hit zero here as the quick key or I can go to our preview window and hit this button here.0236

So, let this RAM preview go.0243

So, the green line is just an indicator that is rendering for us.0244

And it is going to give you preview when it hits the end mark here.0252

Let her render, let her render, Six Gun Sally. So I will hit play.0257

Now, this is set on a loop up here. So, this is going to loop again when it finishes.0267

So, you can see this is our timeline, it kind of, indicator scrubs across each layer and that is what we see.0275

So, for instance, some of these just cut right to them, some of them have dissolves.0283

There are a lot of tricks you can do here.0295

When we are working we can hit shift1. You can set up markers in here, shift2, shift3.0297

These come in handy when you are working and you need to get to certain point in your timeline.0310

So, this is your timeline indicator window. This it is more like an editing program, more or less.0317

OK, well thank you for watching. I will see you soon on educator.com.0330