After Effects 6.5 instance Tutorials-Basics Primer

Tutorial

1.2 Basic Primer

This part of the content makes you look absolutely boring, but this part is really necessary, no matter learning any software will experience such a process, from the simple and boring without the fun of the basic operation began, until you know the software every detail, you find the importance of basic knowledge. For after effects this seemingly simple practical but esoteric software, it is more necessary for you to start learning from the basic boring content. All right, let's get started!

1.2.1 Foundation Settings

First, the basic parameter setup

Start your After Effects software, open the "edit/preferences/general" menu option, pop-up as shown in Figure 1 dialog box, we can set the basic parameters of the software here.

Figure 1

The number following the levels of undo represents the number of steps that allow the restore operation, and the size of the value directly affects the memory consumption, the greater the number of memory consumption, the smaller the number will consume less memory.

Show Tool The Tips option indicates whether the button is displayed when the mouse hovers over the button.

If you choose to tabbed windows options, the same Windows will be merged into a single window in a tab-like manner, which allows us to switch windows.

After you check the close Multipe view simultaneously option, when you display with multiple views, if you hold down the ALT key to turn off one of the windows, the other windows will be closed at the same time.

The switches affect Neste comps option synchronizes the setting of the nesting layer with the composition setting that invokes the nesting layer.

If you choose the default Spatial interpolation to linear option, the stiff line motion path is used by default for softer Bezier curves as the motion path.

If you select the Preserve Constant Vertex Count when Editing masks option, you can ensure that the number of vertices is maintained when you edit the mask.

Synchronize time of the all Related the items option to keep the timeline of the nesting layer and its calling layer synchronized in different compositing windows.

Expression Pick Whip writes Compact Chinese, the expression is written using an accurate English expression.
Create split Layers Above Original Layer whether to create a new separation layer on the original layer.
Enable JavaScript debugger whether to allow JavaScript error checker
Use System Color Picker If you are using the Systems palette
Create new Layer at best quality whether to use the highest quality when creating a new layer.

Click the "Next" button to enter the previews preview setting, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2

Adaptive resolution limit indicates the use of dynamic resolution
Enable OpenGL Indicates if OpenGL acceleration is used
Audio Preview set parameters such as length and sample rate for audio preview

Click the "Next" button to enter the display settings, as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3

All keyframes can display the keyframe state of the motion path on the screen, which makes it easier to control the motion form as a whole.
Disable thumbnails in Project window suppresses the display of thumbnails of footage in the Project project Windows.
Auto-zoom When resolution changes if selected it can automatically change the size of the composite window depending on the resolution of the composite window, and it is best not to select it if your computer monitor has a lower resolution.

Click the Next button to enter the Import Input Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Length of composition, when the picture footage of a single frame is transferred into the Composition synthesis window, the current synthesized length of time is used as the length of the picture material in the composition. The following options indicate the length of time that you can customize the most picture footage for the length of time.
The number in the Sequence footage represents the frame rate of the number of frames per second as the frame rate of the imported picture sequence.
Interpret unlabeled Alpha as contains multiple options, and if the alpha channel in the material is not known to after Effects, the alpha channel will be processed according to the settings here. In general, select the Guess option.

Click the "Next" button to enter the Output Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5

Overflow volumes has 5 menus for our choice, where we can use the logical partitions of 5 hard drives as Overflow volumes. If you do not set these overflow volumes, rendering will fail if the space for the destination drive is exhausted. Here, try to set up a larger partition for the remaining space as a overflow volume, but note that it is best not to specify the partition where the operating system is located or the CDROM as the overflow volume.

Use default file name and folder to represent output with the composition name.

Click the Next button to enter the grids & Guides grid and guide settings, as shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6

You can set the color, size, and so on for grids and guides in grid and guides. The use of these auxiliary means can be very convenient for our operation.
Safe margins setting for secure border range. During the actual playback of the video, if the screen is outside the thread range, the excess will be removed.

Click the "Next" button to enter the label colors color setting, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7

Here set the color of the various labels, if there is no special needs, the default value can be used.

Click the "Next" button to enter the label Defaults label default Settings window, as shown in Figure 8.

Figure 8

The setting here is to make it easier for us to differentiate and classify the elements of the interface, using the default values.

Click the "Next" button to enter the memory & cache memory and Caching Settings window, as shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9

The default value of Maximum Memory usage is 120%, which refers to the maximum amount of memory that is allowed to be used after effects, which does not exceed 200% of the actual physical memory.

Maximum RAM Cache size is used for image cache memory sizes, the default value is 60% of the memory size, set to 80% more appropriate, maximum not more than 90%.

Click the Next button to enter the video preview preview settings, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 10

If you have a monitor, you can directly on the monitor on the composite screen preview, otherwise choose Desktop only option.

Click the Next button to enter the user Interface colors color setting, as shown in Figure 11. Here you can set the user interface settings when they are used.

Figure 11

OK, finally click the "OK" button to close the dialog box, complete the basic parameters of the set, in the following sections we will learn the rendering settings and output template settings.

1.2.2 Template settings

Template, as an important part of after effects, we can not ignore. Let's take a quick look at the basics of templates today.

First look at the rendering template settings, open the "Edit/templates/render Settings" menu, pop-up rendering Settings window, as shown in Figure 12.

Figure 12

In the upper part of the window, you can specify a rendering setting as the default setting for an output type, while in settings you can configure the specific content of a rendering setting defaults.

Click the Edit button to edit the details of the render settings, as shown in Figure 13. Here we take the "Best settings" setting as an example of a simple description.

Figure 13

Quality to set the quality of the rendering material, a total of best, Draft, wireframe three options to choose from.
Resolution to set the resolution used when rendering, a total of full, Half, third, quarter and custom five options to choose from, the resolution is reduced in turn.
Proxy use sets the current agent usage, and if use no proxies is used to indicate that the proxy will not be applied when rendering.
Effects sets the filter usage.
Disk cache settings.
The frame blending sets the frames fusion, on the for Checked layers indicates that the layer that opened the frame blending switch is processed when rendering.
Field render sets the field rendering, which is used when rendering interlaced video files.
The Motion Blur is a motion blur setting, on the for Checked layers indicates that the layer on which the Motion Blur switch is turned on is motion blur when rendered.
Frame rate is the setting of the frames rate.
Time span sets the scope of rendering times. Work area just indicates that the composition content within the scope of the workspace is rendered only; length of comp renders the contents of all comp time lengths.
Use storage overflow allow overflow volumes to be used when rendering to prevent rendering failures due to the full destination disk space.
These content looks boring, suggest beginners do not have too much to understand in-depth content, the movie default set to the best settings bar, will save a lot of unnecessary trouble.

Let's take a look at the output template settings. Open the Edit/templates/output Module menu and eject the Output Template Setup window, as shown in Figure 14.

Figure 14

This window is similar to the rendering Settings window and is divided into two parts. The defaults section above sets the output format, where eight different output formats are preset, as shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15

We do not recommend using the following template for the default movie defaults of the software: Alpha only, lossless, and lossless with alpha, as these templates use the no compression uncompressed AVI file format input. For this uncompressed file, the file size is too large, and a minute file will take up more than 1GB of your hard disk space. We can use other ways to output video files, in the future tutorial will be introduced.

Adjust the output template in the settings. By clicking on a single triangle after the settings name, you can select a different template and click the Edit button to edit it, and here we edit the lossless template, as shown in Figure 16.

Figure 16

Format in the format of the output file, you can format the picture or set the video format, we select the videos for Windows.
The EMBED option allows us to insert some information about the project in the output results.
The Post-render action option allows the render result to be processed after rendering is complete.

Check the video output option, and then click the Format Options button to eject the videos Compression Compression Settings dialog box, as shown in Figure 17.

Figure 17

Click Compressor menu, you can choose the video compression format, we choose DivX Pro 5.0.2 Codec. There are too many codes for AVI format in the world, but there are only about 10 kinds of commonly used. Click the Configure button to set the properties of the video compression encoding, as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18

1.2.3 Understand the Software interface

To use a good after effects software, you need to understand its interface, as shown in Figure 19 is the software interface.

Figure 19

Main Menu: This includes all the menu commands in After Effects, click the command to appear in the Drop-down menu.

Project window: This window displays all files imported into the After effects, created composite files, layers, and so on. You can also view information such as the type, size, length of time, file path, and so on for each file.

Text editing window: The text editing window is a newly added window starting with the 6.0 version, where you can set properties such as font, size, color, word spacing, line spacing, word height, and word width. You can also set paragraph properties.

Time Layout window: In this window you can edit the file for time, animation, effects, dimensions, mask, and so on. This window is the most important window in after effects.

Composite Image window: Here is a window that observes the effect of an image edit.

Toolbars: This includes the tools that we often use. Mainly divided into common tools, drawing tools and shaft mode three parts.

InfoBar and music editing window: In the InfoBar, you can view the color of the composite graphics window and the coordinates of the mouse, and the Music editing window can monitor and edit the sound.

Time Control and Effects window: This is also a new window from version 6.0, which includes all the effects from the effects menu in the main menu.
Drawing editing window: This window makes it easy to set properties such as drawing color, transparency, and also to edit brush dimensions and shapes.
In addition, there are other windows in after Effects 6.5, such as arranging and moving simulation windows, smoothing/rocking edit windows, etc., which are not covered in detail here.

To this end, we have after Effects 6.5 basic settings and interface to understand, the following will start the effect of making a trip!