Getting Started
After Effects 12.1 and 12.2 introduce a number of features and enhancements that expand the application’s capabilities and streamline your workflows and processes. This document contains notes and exercises that explain the most important changes.
These lessons are in the order followed in Adobe After Effects CC Classroom in a Book. Except the new Extra Credit exercise in Lesson 9, this update uses project files and assets provided with the original book. If you’ve modified and saved these projects in the past, you should log on to your Peachpit account at www.peachpit.com and download the project files again to make sure that what you see matches our descriptions.
The Extra Credit project in Lesson 9 uses new project files that you’ll have to download in order to follow along. You can find download instructions on the page from which you downloaded this document.
In some cases, the updates introduced changes to the user interface. Though these changes do not affect the lessons in the original book, the illustrations may not exactly match what you see on your screen. We’ve noted many of those changes throughout.
Using your previous settings
We advise you to return to default preferences when you begin each lesson in the book. However, if you have created any individualized settings, such as settings templates or workspaces, you may want to retain those when you update the software. When you launch After Effects 12.2, it automatically prompts you to migrate any settings from After Effects 12.1 or 12.0.
Changes in the behavior of new layers
In After Effects 12.1 and later, a new layer is placed directly above the currently selected layer in the Timeline panel; if no layer is selected, the layer appears at the top of the stack. In previous versions of After Effects, new layers always appeared at the top of the stack.
In several exercises, this change in behavior could change your results. In this ebook, we’ve noted where you’ll need to deselect all layers before creating new layers in order to ensure that your results match those in the book.