Adobe After Effects - Useful How To Guides

Last Update - 30th September 2020

I've been playing with Adobe After Effects recently and have found some great videos on YouTube to help me get started. The reality is I'm not going to be using AE enough to remember how to do these various things so thought it would be useful to create a list for me and potentially useful for anyone else just getting started.

• Stranger Things inspired title effect, useful to learn about key frames and how to animate basic shapes. Here's my attempt

• Quick guide on creating and using simple masks - https://youtu.be/Ymrzv7EH0qs

• Projection mapping - I'm using this to try my hand at a Halloween projection on the house, struggling with the projector at the moment though :(

• Cut text outline out of a solid, image later etc. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K_FzP5ULC4

• Covers a lot but good coverage of fixing motion to a title, I'm going to use this to try to align a background I've added to a video to the foreground where the camera is moving slightly. My attempt:

• Guide on using Roto Brush to make someone fly away (of course) - here's my first attempt

Quick steps:

• Shrink composition to set guidelines - Composition menu\Trim Composition to Work Area

• Freeze Frame - right click on layer\time\freeze frame

• Change speed of an effect/animation - Right-hand click on layer go to Time\Time Stretch

• Outline text - swap fill and stroke in the character window

• Preview composition on 2nd monitor or projector - Edit\Preferences\Video Preview - Enable Mercury Transmit and then select device from the box below.

• Add blur to motion: Go down to Toggle switches/modes and click on it until you see the multiple boxes appear next to the layer you’re animating. Search for the middle left box with the multiple circles. Toggle this on. At the top of the timeline next to the search bar, you can see the same symbol. You need to click this to enable motion blur. Credit Premium Beat