Part 3 - Masking and Duplicating Layers

[♪ Music ♪] [Adobe TV Presents] [Classroom] [Basic Compositing & Animation in After Effects CS5] In the previous episode, we looked at some basic animation techniques that should get you started. In this episode, we're looking at masking and some basic effects, so let's get started. Go ahead and open up the AE title sequence folder found on your desktop or wherever you've downloaded it to. Inside of this folder, you'll find the AE Lessons folder. Go ahead and select it, then go ahead and open up lesson03.aep. What you'll find is that the first 2 scenes of our animation are fully completed. The only thing that we have to add to these 2 scenes is a basic drop shadow. This is going to be our first effect. To do this, I'd like you to select the Faucet Drops tab on the Timeline panel. Then you'll notice that the Earth Pictures text is flat without a drop shadow. We're going to add a drop shadow by using an effect called Drop Shadow. First, I want to move my stage around so that I can see it a little bit better. In order to move your stage around, you can use the Hand tool. The Hand tool is found at the top of your tool bar, or it's the key command of H on your keyboard. Another way to access the Hand tool is to click and hold the space bar. As long as you're holding the space bar, the Hand tool is enabled, allowing you to move the composition within the Composition panel. This is done by clicking the space bar, holding it, then clicking with your mouse to then grab that composition and move it around within the Composition panel. Now that we've repositioned it so that the text is center or close to center in frame, what I'd like you to do is to add the Drop Shadow effect. Do this by selecting the text layer on your timeline, then moving your cursor to the Effects menu at the top of your screen. The Effects menu combines a bunch of different effects that are out there, and there are a lot. There's no time to teach you everything here, but I'll start with some basic ones. The simplest one that I think of is really a drop shadow, adding a little drop shadow behind text or other layers that might have transparency to them. We do this by going to the Perspective category. Notice that these things are categorized based on the type of effect that they are. Because drop shadows change the perspective of a given layer, it falls into the Perspective category. Then select Drop Shadow. This will enable a drop shadow on the layer and also reveal the Effect Controls panel in the same place that your Project panel was previously located. This gives you complete control over the attributes, like the shadow opacity, the distance, and the angle of the shadow. So, I think the drop shadow looks pretty good as it is. I really don't need to modify much, but I think just for the sake of showing you, I'd like you to modify the distance property found in the Effect Controls panel. Place your cursor over the distance property, click and drag to the right or left to change the distance of the drop shadow, and notice how it moves further away from the source text. Therefore, the shadow feels like it's further off the screen. Now that we've modified it, we want to revert back to our previous attribute, which I think was around 5, but if I don't know, I can always undo. Undo is a really important key command that you should know. This key command is Command Z or Control Z, if you're on a PC. Go ahead and undo your previous action by hitting Command Z, and it will restore it to the way that it was prior to that last action. Now, let's get started on the third scene by opening up the recycling movie. I may have to slide my left panel to the right a little bit so that I can access the Project panel. To do this, place your cursor in the seam between your Effect Controls panel and the Composition panel. Then click and drag to the right. This will give us more room for this left side panel and allow us to select the Project tab. Go ahead and select the Project tab. Then I'd like to create a new composition from one of the videos found in the Videos folder. You'll first need to open up the Video folder, then drag the recycle bin video onto the new composition button to create a new composition from that asset. Once you have the new composition, you'll want to move it into the Comps folder to keep everything organized. I can then close my Video folder and navigate to the recycling bin timeline. You may need to zoom in or out of the composition by using your scroll wheel to zoom in or out. I'm also going to make sure that it fits to the panel by selecting this pull down and selecting Fit. Now I've zoomed out on the composition, so I'm fitting it to the panel. This way I can view as much of the content as possible. What we're going to do with this scene is a little different from the previous scenes. You can refer to the finished video to get a sense of what it looks like. [♪ Music ♪] [A film about Energy] [directed by Tiger Kirchman] As you can see, it's been sliced up using masks, and certain segments of the video are being slid from right to left to reveal it almost like shades moving on a window. The first step is that we're going to need to add some masks to this layer to slice it up so that we create 4 segments of the layer. I'm going to use the Shape tool, so move your cursor to the tool box and select the Rectangle tool. The Rectangle tool as well as the Pen tool function to do 2 things. If you have a layer selected, it creates a mask. If you don't have any layer selected, it creates a new shape layer, something that we're not going to look at in this video, but I encourage you to check out more. Then with the Rectangle tool selected, move your cursor to the top right area of the composition. Click and drag down and to the left so that you're taking up the full area from top to bottom but only taking up about 1/4 of the composition. This will create a mask only allowing you to see this segment of the video. A mask is kind of like a cutout or a stencil, and it can function to do a lot of things in After Effects. Now that we have a mask created, what we'll need to do is switch to the Selection tool to modify the mask so that it's not a straight up and down mask. I want it on kind of an angle, which complements the composition of this video. Go ahead and switch to the Selection tool. Then highlight the top 2 points on the mask. This is done by creating what's called a selection box around the points. You click, drag, and place this box so that it includes those 2 points but not the bottom 2 points. You can see that the top 2 points are filled in with a solid square, whereas the bottom 2 points are empty with a hollow square. This basically represents a selected point versus a deselected point and allows me to modify these 2 top points by just simply grabbing the line of the mask and sliding it over to the right. Go ahead and do that so that you create an angle for the mask, which complements the angle of the recycling bin. Now that we have this mask created, we're going to need to create a couple of other masks with that same angle. I think the quickest way to do this is not to create new masks each time, but instead to duplicate from the masks that we already have. To access this mask, you'll do that on the timeline by clicking on Mask 1. Then you'll want to duplicate. The key command for duplicate is always the same, whether you're duplicating a layer or a property like a mask. It's Command D or Control D, if you're on a PC. Go ahead and hit Command D right now to duplicate this mask. Now I have 2 masks, both parked right on top of each other. The second mask I want to slide over to the left. We can do this by selecting the mask on the composition and sliding it over to the left or by using the arrow keys on my keyboard. The arrow keys will work great, but if I just use the arrow keys, they move very slowly from left or right. I'm using the left arrow key on my keyboard. I can add the Shift key as a modifier to make it move in 10 pixels at a time. Go ahead and hold Shift and use your left arrow key on your keyboard to slide this mask so that the right-hand side of the second mask lines up pretty much with the left-hand side of the first mask. That's about enough. A little bit of overlap is just fine. We're going to repeat this process for 2 more masks so that we take up the full screen area with 4 separate masks. Once again, select Mask 2, hit Command D to duplicate, then hold Shift and use your left arrow key to slide it to the left. One more time, Command D, then Shift with the arrow key to slide this layer all the way to the left. Now, we want to make sure that this top left-hand corner of the composition isn't getting cut off, so what I'm going to do is actually just deselect by clicking outside of any mask. This will deselect all the masks and allow me to reselect specific points on the mask. This time, I'm going to select the left-hand side of the fourth mask by just clicking on the line on the Composition panel. And all I want to do is slide it a couple of extra pixels so that we deal with that top left-hand corner. Once again, hold Shift and use your left arrow key on your keyboard, and just 2 clicks is about enough to get it all the way across from right to left. And now this particular layer has been sliced with masks. It's all still 1 layer, though, so we're going to need 4 copies of this layer so that each copy is treated as its own layer in the composition. This is a little bit tricky. We've done it all for 1 layer. Now we need to duplicate it 3 times. To do this, deselect the mask by clicking outside of the mask in the gray area. Then select the layer inside of your timeline. Hold Command and click the D key. This will do the same command as we did before with the mask but with the layer as a whole, duplicating the mask as well as the layer content. We're going to click this 3 times. 1, 2, 3. Now we have 4 copies of the recycling layer with all 4 masks on each copy. We want to remove the masks so that each layer only has 1 mask. Obviously, Layer 1 should have Mask 1, Layer 2 should have Mask 2, and so on and so forth. What I'm going to do is select Mask 1 through Mask 3 on the fourth layer, then just simply hit the Delete key on your keyboard. Now I've removed the first 3 masks for Layer 4, and I'm only looking at Mask 4 with Layer 4. Now with Layer 3, we want to remove everything but Mask 3. Select Layer 3 by clicking on it on your timeline. Then hit the M key. The M key on your keyboard will reveal all 4 masks, and we want to remove all the masks except for Mask 3. We do this by selecting Mask 4 and hitting the Delete key on your keyboard, then by selecting Mask 2 and Mask 1 together. If you want to make a selection with multiple items, it's as simple as holding the Shift key. Hold the Shift key and select Mask 1 as well, and then hit Delete. We've removed Mask 1, 2 and 4 for Layer 3. Now we'll repeat the steps for Layer 2, but in this case, remove everything but Mask 2. Hit the M key, remove Masks 4 and 3, and then remove Mask 1. And one more time, with Layer 1, select the layer. Hit the M key to reveal the masks, and remove all the masks except for Layer 1. Now what I'd like to do is hide the mask attribute and reveal the position attribute for each layer. I can do this by selecting all of the layers in the composition. The key command for that is Command A or Control A, if you're on a PC. Go ahead and hit Command A now, and this selects all your layers. Then by hitting the P key, you reveal the position attribute and hide the mask attribute. Moving forward, what I'd like to see happen is see each layer move from right to left, and so we're going to see the first layer move right to left, and then the second layer move from underneath that, third layer from underneath that. It's a little bit tricky. There's a process in this part where I'd like to work from backwards, forwards, placing the second keyframe first. It's a little tricky, but I'm going to show you how to do it. Go ahead and advance your current time indicator 20 frames forward. Shift, page down, page down. And that places me 20 frames down the timeline. Go ahead and place a new position keyframe on these layers. The shortcut for this is Alt plus whatever key reveals that particular attribute. In this case, P is the key for position. If you're working on a Mac, it's Option P. If you're on a PC, it's Alt P. Go ahead and hit Option P to add a new position keyframe at 20 frames on the timeline. Notice that it does it for all 4 layers, and that's because all 4 layers are currently selected. Then let's jump to the beginning of the composition by hitting the Home key. Now that you're at the beginning of the composition, I want to slide all these layers to the right-hand side together. We can do this by holding Shift and hitting the arrow keys. This will change the position for the layer so that everything begins offscreen on the right. Go ahead and move these layers so that the first layer is on the right-hand side of the stage. Now, this doesn't mean all of the layers have to be on the right-hand side. Each layer is going to move in 1 at a time. We're just preparing the keyframes at this point. Now what I'd like to do is stagger the timing so that each layer moves in 1 by 1. The best way to do this is to work 1 layer at a time. I like to start with the first layer. What you'll want to do is deselect all the layers by clicking in the gray area below your timeline. Then turn off the eyeball switch for all 3 layers except for the first one. This switch allows you to show and hide specific layers, so now I'm only showing the very first layer. If I use my current time indicator to scrub forward, you'll see that this first layer slides onscreen, from right to left. Now what I want to do is once this layer arrives at its destination, I want the second layer to begin its movement. And that's done by just simply grabbing the keyframes, highlighting them by creating a little selection box around the 2 keyframes, and then simply grabbing the first keyframe of the set and sliding it over to the right. Now that you've staggered the timing for the second layer, go ahead and turn the second layer on and scrub the timeline using your current time indicator. We'll repeat this step for the third and fourth layer so that each layer animates on individually. This is done by highlighting the keyframes for Layer 3, then grabbing the first keyframe and sliding it so that the first keyframe for Layer 3 lines up with the last keyframe for Layer 2. We'll do the same step for Layer 4 since we know this is going to look about right. We can grab those keyframes, slide them over, and line up Keyframe 1 for Layer 4 with Keyframe 2 for Layer 3. Now, if you want to be really precise about this, which I suggest you do, you might want to consider holding the Shift key while sliding these keyframes around the timeline. This forces what's called snapping. Snapping means that they snap together, and everything occurs at the same frame. I'm going to go ahead and do that. Slide the layer, and holding Shift, and you'll feel the layer snap so that that keyframe lines up specifically with the keyframe above. Now I'd like you to turn on Layers 3 and 4 so that we see all 4 layers on the composition. Go ahead and click the eyeball now. Now that all 4 layers are enabled, we want to trim each layer so that layers 2, 3, and 4 don't begin until their movement occurs. This is done by trimming the beginning of each layer, and you can see that each layer has these little blocks. Well, if I put my cursor on the edge of that block, notice that my Selection tool changes from the standard arrow to a double arrow. This allows me to click on that double arrow and then slide it left or right, therefore, trimming the content so that we don't see the layer until this block begins. Once again, if I hold the Shift key, it should snap to specific moments. Now I'd like you to repeat this step for Layer 2. Place your cursor over the edge of that layer. When you see the double arrows, click, then drag to the right. Hold Shift so that it snaps to the keyframes and then lines up that layer so that it begins at the moment where the movement occurs. For Layer 4, we're going to select the layer, then park on the first keyframe. You can do this by hitting the K key on your keyboard. Hit it enough times until you're parked on the first keyframe for the fourth layer. Instead of clicking and dragging with the mouse to trim this layer, we're going to use the keyboard shortcut, which is Option left bracket on a Mac or Alt left bracket on a PC. Go ahead and hold Option and hit left bracket, and it will trim this layer so that it begins at that moment in time. Let's go ahead and preview it and see what it looks like. You can do this by hitting the zero key on your alphanumeric keypad. So, I like the animation, but I want to make it feel a little bit more natural. To do this, you might want to add Easy Ease Out and Easy Ease In keyframes to the beginning and end of each layer. I've shown you how to do this, but I'm going to just repeat this step 1 more time. You can click on the keyframe, right click, and tell it to be an Easy Ease Out keyframe for the first keyframe, then the ending keyframe can be turned into an Easy Ease In keyframe. You can go ahead and repeat this step for the following 3 layers. And as you can see, I'm holding the Shift key on my keyboard to select multiple keyframes at once. Let's check it out. Looks nice and smooth. I like it. I'm going to stop it with the space bar and then begin animating the text. Text on this particular composition should move in from above the screen, similar to the way that it happened in the previous scene, but instead of moving from the bottom, it's going to move from above. The quickest way to import some text in this case is not to create it from scratch, but to duplicate it from another composition. I'd like you to click on the light bulb tab on your timeline area, and click on the text layer and hit Command C or Control C, if you're on a PC, to copy the text. Then click on the recycle bin tab and hit Command V to paste the text layer into this current composition. What you'll notice is that it rises up from the bottom instead of moving down from the top. To modify this, we'll do as we've done in the past where we remove the keyframes and add new ones. The key command to reveal all the animating properties is the U key. Go ahead and select the U key now. This reveals position, which is the attribute we'd like to modify. But before we modify it, I think the best thing is just to remove all the keyframes for that particular attribute. So, I'm going to click the stopwatch to remove those keyframes. I'd like to modify the text so that it reads "directed by" and then to add a name. I'm going to use my text tool and double click on the text layer so that I highlight the whole top line, all of the yellow text, and write the words "directed by." Then I can go to the next line by using the down key and add a name. I'm going to use the name Tiger, and then next line, Kirchman, K-I-R-C-H-M-A-N. And I like the way that this text is formatted, but I think that it needs to be condensed a little bit with leading and moved over a little bit. Go ahead and click the layer to select the whole layer block. Then slide the leading value down so that you get less space between each line. I also want to slide the words "Tiger" and "Kirchman" over to the left a little bit, so I can actually use just some empty spaces to do that job. I'm going to use the Text tool to place my cursor after the R and add 2 spaces. I'm going to do the same thing for the word Kirchman. And that way it's kind of aligned right but a little bit centered too. It's just a stylization choice. Now switch to your Selection tool and move your text layer to the right-hand side so that it's in the right-hand third of the composition. At the beginning of the composition, go ahead and place a position keyframe on the text layer by clicking the stopwatch. Then place the text above the composition so that it begins at the top. Go ahead and place the text layer at the top of the composition outside of the frame. Let's advance forward 10 or 15 frames. Shift, page down. I think 10 is a good start. We'll take a look at that, and place another keyframe. Then simply grab the text layer and slide it down. We hold the Shift key to lock it on the Y axis so that it doesn't move left and right. It's going to do the same thing that happened in the first scene where it moved down quickly and then drifted slowly. Then let's add a third keyframe. I'm going to send it maybe 2 seconds down the timeline. Shift, page down. I'll move down a couple of times until I'm at about 2 seconds and 2 frames approximately. And then, once again, move this text layer a little bit lower. I'm holding the Shift key so that it stays on the Y axis. I'm going to use my current time indicator to scrub through this to see what it looks like, and I like the way that the text movement looks. But what I really want to do is have it begin a little bit later in the timeline. To do this, you can simply grab the layer on the timeline area, click it, and drag to the right so that it begins later in the timeline. Having this line up with the second recycle layer ensures that the first part of the animation has already occurred before this text animation begins. Let's scrub through it to see what it looks like. I think it looks pretty good. It might need to be delayed a little bit. But these kinds of changes you can always modify. Now at this point, you can continue to modify things like keyframe interpolation and add motion blur to make it more realistic and feel organic, as I showed you in the previous episode. In the next episode, we're going to look at parenting. [♪ Music ♪] [Adobe TV Productions] [tv.adobe.com]