Adobe® After Effects® 7.0 provides a comprehensive set of 2D and 3D tools for compositing, animation, and effects that motion-graphics professionals, visual effects artists, web designers, and film and video professionals need. After Effects is widely used for digital post-production of film, video, DVD, and the web. You can composite layers in various ways, apply and combine sophisticated visual and audio effects, and animate both objects and effects.
Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book® is part of the official training series for Adobe graphics and publishing software. The lessons are designed so that you can learn at your own pace. If you’re new to After Effects, you’ll learn the fundamental concepts and features you’ll need to use the program. Classroom in a Book also teaches many advanced features, including tips and techniques for using the latest version of this application.
The lessons in this edition include opportunities to use new features, such as producing animations with time-saving presets and behaviors, simplifying tasks using the Adobe Bridge® visual file browser, taking advantage of expanded file-format support, applying new creative effects, editing keyframes using the new Graph Editor, using a redesigned interface with new conveniences, and more.
Before beginning to use Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book, make sure that your system is set up correctly and that you’ve installed the required software and hardware. You should have a working knowledge of your computer and operating system. You should know how to use the mouse and standard menus and commands, and also how to open, save, and close files. If you need to review these techniques, see the printed or online documentation included with your Microsoft® Windows® or Apple® Mac® OS software.
You must purchase the Adobe After Effects 7.0 software separately. For system requirements and complete instructions on installing the software, see the Adobe After Effects ReadMe.html file on the application DVD. You must also have QuickTime 6.5.2 or later installed on your system.
Install After Effects from the Adobe After Effects 7.0 application DVD onto your hard disk; you cannot run the program from the DVD. Follow the on-screen instructions.
Make sure that your serial number is accessible before installing the application; you can find the serial number on the registration card or on the back of the DVD case.
Creating movies is memory-intensive work for a desktop computer. After Effects 7.0 requires a minimum of 512 MB of RAM; 1 GB or more is recommended. The more RAM that is available to After Effects, the faster the application will work for you.
OpenGL is a set of standards for delivering high-performance 2D and 3D graphics for a wide variety of applications. Although After Effects can function without it, OpenGL accelerates various types of rendering, including rendering to the screen for previews. To get the full benefit of OpenGL in After Effects, you’ll need an OpenGL card that supports OpenGL 2.0 and has Shader support and support for NPOT (Non Power of Two) textures. The minimum requirement for using OpenGL with After Effects is a card that supports OpenGL 1.5. When you first start After Effects, it will attempt to determine if your OpenGL card meets the requirements, and it will enable or disable OpenGL as appropriate.
You can view information about your OpenGL card, as well as enable or disable OpenGL in After Effects, by choosing Edit > Preferences > Previews (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Previews (Mac OS). Select the Enable OpenGL check box to enable OpenGL; click the OpenGL Info button to learn more about your card.
Note
When you choose Edit > Preferences > Memory & Cache (Windows only), you’ll see a check box labeled Prevent DLL Address Space Fragmentation, which is toggled on by default. This gives After Effects access to more contiguous memory on systems with large amounts of RAM; however, it may be incompatible with some OpenGL drivers, which can cause After Effects to crash on launch. Should this occur, this option will become unchecked automatically to prevent further crashes when you launch After Effects.
To learn more about OpenGL support in After Effects, see After Effects Help.
To ensure that the lessons appear on your system with the correct fonts, you may need to install some font files. The lessons in this book use fonts that come on the After Effects application DVD. If you already have these fonts on your system, you do not need to install them. Otherwise, you can install the After Effects fonts by copying them to the Program Files/Common Files/Adobe/Fonts (Windows) or Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts (Mac OS) folder on your hard disk. If you install a Type 1, TrueType, OpenType, or CID font into these local Fonts folders, the font appears only in Adobe applications.
The preferences file controls the way the After Effects user interface appears on your screen. The instructions in this book assume that you see the default interface when they describe the appearance of tools, options, windows, panels, and so forth. Because of this, it’s a good idea to restore the default preferences, especially if you are new to After Effects.
Each time you quit After Effects, the palette positions and certain command settings are recorded in the preferences file. If you want to restore the palettes to their original default settings, you can delete the current After Effects preferences file. (After Effects creates a new preferences file if one doesn’t already exist the next time you start the program.)
Restoring the default preferences can be especially helpful if someone has already customized After Effects on your computer. If your copy of After Effects hasn’t been used yet, this file won’t exist, so this procedure is unnecessary.
Important: If you want to save the current settings, you can rename the preferences file instead of deleting it. When you are ready to restore those settings, change the name back and make sure that the file is located in the correct preferences folder.
Locate the After Effects preferences folder on your computer:
For Windows XP: .../Documents and Settings/<user name>/Application Data/Adobe/After Effects/7.0.
For Windows 2000: .../Documents and Settings/<user name>/Application Data/Adobe/After Effects/Prefs.
For Mac OS: .../<user name>/Library/Preferences.
Delete or rename the Adobe After Effects 7.0 Prefs file.
Start Adobe After Effects.
The lessons in Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book use specific source files, such as image files created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator®, audio files, and prepared QuickTime movies. To complete the lessons in this book, you must copy these files from the Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book DVD (inside the back cover of this book) to your hard disk.
On your hard disk, create a new folder in a convenient location and name it AE7_CIB, following the standard procedure for your operating system:
Windows: In the Explorer, select the folder or drive in which you want to create the new folder, and choose File > New > Folder. Then type the new name.
Mac OS: In the Finder, choose File > New Folder. Type the new name and drag the folder to the location you want to use.
Copy the Lessons folder (which contains folders named Lesson01, Lesson02, and so on) from the Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book DVD onto your hard disk by dragging it to your new AE7_CIB folder.
When you begin each lesson, you will navigate to the folder with that lesson number, where you will find all of the assets, sample movies, and other project files you need to complete the lesson.
If you have limited storage space on your computer, you can copy each lesson folder individually as you need it, and delete it afterward if desired. Some lessons build on preceding lessons; in those cases, a starting project file is provided for you for the second lesson or project. You do not have to save any finished project if you don’t want to, or if you have limited hard disk space.
If you use After Effects on a computer running Windows 2000, you may need to unlock the files before you use them. This is not necessary if you are using a system running Windows XP or Mac OS.
(Windows 2000 only) Unlock the files you copied:
Right-click the folder that contains the locked files, such as Lessons, and choose Properties from the contextual menu.
In the Attributes area of the File Properties dialog box, deselect (uncheck) the Read-only check box, and then click Apply.
In the Confirm Attributes Changes dialog box, select the option Apply Changes To This Folder, Subfolders, And Files.
Click OK to close the Confirm Attributes Changes dialog box, and click OK again to close the File Properties dialog box.
This final step is not necessary for Windows XP or Mac OS users.
You will create and render one or more QuickTime movies in some lessons in this book. The files in the Sample_Movie folders are low-resolution examples that you can use to see the end results of each lesson and to compare them with your own results. These files tend to be large, so you many not want to devote the storage space or time to copying all the sample movies before you begin. Instead, find the appropriate Sample_Movie folder on the book’s DVD and copy the file it contains onto your hard disk as you begin work on a lesson. (You cannot play movies from the DVD.) After you finish viewing the movie, you can delete it from your hard drive.
The files in the End_Project folders are samples of the completed project for each lesson. Use these files for reference if you want to compare your work in progress with the project files used to generate the sample movies. These end project files vary in size from relatively small to a couple of megabytes, so you can either copy them all now if you have ample storage space, or copy just the end project file for each lesson as needed, and then delete it when you finish that lesson.
Each lesson in this book provides step-by-step instructions for creating one or more specific elements of a real-world project. Some lessons build on projects created in preceding lessons; some stand alone. All of these lessons build on each other in terms of concepts and skills, so the best way to learn from this book is to proceed through the lessons in sequential order. In this book, some techniques and processes are explained and described in detail only the first few times you perform them.
Note
Many aspects of the After Effects application can be controlled by multiple techniques, such as a menu command, a button, dragging, and a keyboard shortcut. Only one or two of the methods are described in any given procedure so that you can learn different ways of working even when the task is one you’ve done before.
The organization of the lessons is also design oriented rather than feature oriented. That means, for example, that you’ll work with layers and effects on real-world design projects over several lessons, rather than in just one chapter, as in the After Effects 7.0 User Guide.
Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book is not meant to replace documentation that comes with the program. This book explains only the commands and options actually used in the lessons, so there’s much more to learn about After Effects. Classroom in a Book aims to give you confidence and skills so that you can start creating your own projects. For more comprehensive information about program features, see:
The Adobe After Effects 7.0 User Guide, which is included with the Adobe After Effects 7.0 software and contains descriptions of many features.
After Effects Help, which contains all of the information in the user guide and much, much more, and is available from within the application. You can view After Effects Help by choosing Help > After Effects Help.
The Adobe website (www.adobe.com). If you have a connection to the World Wide Web, you access the website from a web browser or by clicking More Resources in After Effects Help. The Online Resources page of After Effects Help provides links to several useful areas of the Adobe website.
Adobe Resource Center (http://studio.adobe.com), where you can find a wealth of tips, tutorials, plug-ins, actions, and other design inspiration and instructional content.
The Adobe Training and Certification Programs are designed to help Adobe customers improve and promote their product-proficiency skills. There are three levels of certification:
The Adobe Certified Expert (ACE) program is a way for expert users to upgrade their credentials. You can use Adobe certification as a catalyst for getting a raise, finding a job, or promoting your expertise.
If you are an ACE-level instructor, the Adobe Certified Instructor program takes your skills to the next level and gives you access to a wide range of Adobe resources.
Adobe Authorized Training Centers offer instructor-led courses and training on Adobe products, employing only Adobe Certified Instructors. A directory of AATCs is available at http://partners.adobe.com.
For information on the Adobe Certified programs, visit www.adobe.com/support/certification/main.html.