After Effects: The Basics

Introduction

I want to provide an introduction to After Effects, before writing about more advanced topics, for reference of the fundimental how-tos. So without further ado, here is a beginners guide to After Effects.

This article will cover:

• How to navigate the After Effects interface
• How to create a composition
• How to create different kinds of layers
• How to create keyframe driven animation
• How to create expression driven animation
• How to render your finished video

First off, what is After Effects, and what is it used for? After Effects is motion graphics software, capable of producing industry standard animation and visual effects. It is great in combination with vector based software, such as Illustrator, for bringing artwork to life with movement, or for creating templatable on-screen graphics to be used later in Premiere as .mogrt files. However it is not made for editing. If you need to edit your video, it is best to export your After Effects creations into more appropriate software (such as Premiere, or DaVinci Resolve).

Navigating the AE Interface

When opening After Effects for the first time, you will likely be greeted with a screen which looks something like this:

Let’s walk through each of these panels, and what they are used for.

Project Panel
The project panel is where all the elements of your project can be found. You can import supported file types, make folders to keep things organised, and find all created compositions here.

Timeline
This is where your active composition timeline will be displayed. You will see all the elements which make up this composition and have access to their properties to effect and animate, as well as the composition framerate, and its duration.

Effects & Presets
By clicking on the title, you will reveal the Effects & Presets panel. As the name suggests, you can search through all possible effects and presets here.

Properties Panel
The properties panel is a fairly new addition, but very useful. Here, it will show you all the properties of a selected layer from within your active composition.

Viewer
Here you will actually see your active composition.

Creating A Composition

Now that you’ve opened your software, it is time to create your first composition. A composition is where you will add and create all of your elements to make your finished video (similar to a “sequence” in Premiere).

You can either click the “new composition” button in the middle of the viewer if this is your first composition, or you can go to “composition/new composition.” It will bring up a window like this:

First, name your composition. Next, input the size you would like it to be. HD landscape videos are 1920×1080 pixels, while portrait is the opposite: 1080×1920 pixels. Next, input the frame rate you need. In the UK, most projects will require 25fps. However elsewhere you may find that you need a frame rate of 29.97, 30, 50, or 60. The higher the frame rate, the more images there will be per second of your composition, but this does not affect the overall duration of your composition. Lastly, input the duration of your composition. This is how long you want your video to be. If you’d like, you can also set your composition colour (although this is not a true solid, but instead is the alpha channel of your composition. Colouring it is purely for visibility purposes). Once all these details have been filed out, select “ok.” You will find your composition is now open in your timeline, and has been added to your project panel.

Now that you have a composition, you can start adding things to it. Here are some of the following types of layers you will likely want to use when building your compositions.

Creating Assets in AE

Solid Layers
A solid layer is what it sounds like. It is a block of a solid colour, ideal for backgrounds, certain effects, and matte layers. To create a solid, with your timeline selected, go to “layer/new/solid…” and you will see this box:

Here you can name your solid and set its size. Press the “make comp size” button to make sure the solid is your composition size. Select your desired colour, and then click “ok”. The solid layer will then appear in your timeline (you may also notice a new “solids” folder appear in your project panel too).

Shape Layers
Shape layers allow you to make vector shapes in your composition. These are different from solids as they are not rasterized, and have parameters which are animate-able, and allow for creative expressions.

You can create a shape layer in a number of ways. To create an empty shape layer, click “Layer/New/Shape Layer.” Or, you can click and hold the rectangle button on the toolbar to select a shape you would like to draw.

Or by selecting the pen tool next to it, to create a custom shape.

Begin drawing your shape in the composition with nothing else selected to create your shape in your composition (otherwise these tools will create a mask on your selected layer). You can edit fill, stroke, and a myriad of other parameters in the properties panel.

Text Layers
Select “Layer/New/Text” to create a new text layer, or, select the text tool. Clicking once inside your composition will create a standard text layer, while a click and drag will create a text box.

Like shape layers, text layers also have extra parameters which can be used to animate them in unique ways. You can add these by clicking the “+add animator” button in the properties panel.

These are a more advanced method of animation, so I’ll go into depth about this another time, but I encourage having a play around with the options here to see what you can create.

Null Objects
A Null Object is an empty layer in your composition. It can be used to link other layers together, or for organisational purposes. To create a null object, you can navigate to “Layer/New/Null Object.”

Adjustment Layer
The last type of layer I’ll go through in this walkthrough is an adjustment layer. This is a layer where you can apply effects, which will apply to all visible layers beneath it. This is useful when you want to tweak the grade of your finished composition, or apply uniform effects to more than one layer. To create an adjustment layer, navigate to “Layer/New/Adjustment Layer.”

Importing Files
As well as creating assets inside of After Effects, you can also import images and other file types by dragging them from your folders into the project panel, or by right clicking on your project panel and selecting “Import/File…”

Keyframe Animation

Now that we have run through the different types of assets you can use to create your content, we can discuss how to create movement and animation. You can do this in After Effects in a few different ways. The simplest way is through keyframes.

Using keyframe animation, we can tell After Effects what values we want parameters to be at certain points in time. After Effects will then animate between these two points. Let’s look at the Opacity parameter as an example.

Moving your cursor to the start of your composition, create a text layer and select it, so that its properties are visible in the properties panel. Locate “Opacity,” and change the value from 100 to 0. Then, hit the stopwatch button next to it. You will see it turn into a blue diamond. This signifies that you have created a keyframe. In your timeline, you will also see this parameter drop down from your layer with its new keyframe (and the text will no longer be visible, as its opacity is set to 0).

From there, move your cursor to the 1 second point of your timeline. You will see that the diamond shape is no longer blue in your properties panel. This is because we don’t currently have a keyframe set to this time. Change the value “0” to “100.” This will create a new keyframe and set the value of your layer’s opacity to 100 (and your text will reappear!).

Congratulations, you have created your first animation! Drag the cursor back and forth between these two keyframes. You will notice After Effects will animate between these two values, making the text fade up from 0 over the duration of 1 second.

The default way After Effects chooses to animate between 2 different keyframes is using linear interpolation. Put simply, this means After Effects moves evenly between the two keyframes, keeping a consistent speed. This can sometimes look a little stilted. In order to change that, we can tell After Effects to ease between the keyframes instead. This means that After Effects will instead slowly animate in and out, ramping up in the middle. This creates a more pleasing, more natural looking movement.

To ease your keyframes, drag-click to highlight your keyframes in your timeline. From there, right click on either of your keyframes and select “Keyframe Assistant/Easy Ease” or press F9 on your keyboard. You will see the keyframes change shape, from a diamond to an hourglass. Now if you watch your animation back, you will see that the animation is a lot smoother.

Try using keyframes on another layer’s parameter. Let’s use a shape layer’s scale as an example.

Create a shape layer, drag it under your text layer on the timeline, and make sure it is highlighted so it shows in your properties panel. Make sure your scale parameters are unlinked, so you can manipulate the x and y values independently (the symbol for unlinked is a broken chain).

Move your cursor to the start of your timeline. Click the stopwatch to create your first keyframe, and set the x value of scale to 0. Then, move your cursor to the 1 second mark, and set it to 100. This will create 2 keyframes, animating the scale from 0 to 100%. Select both of those keyframes and set the interpolation to easy ease, so the motion is more natural. Play back your animation.

Keep building up your animation in this way, animating different parameters for different durations, until you are happy with the result.

Expressions

Another way you can animate elements in your composition is with expressions. Expressions run off javascript, and allow us to speak to After Effects in code instead of keyframes (or, a combination of both). You can find the documentation for After Effects expression functions here.

Remove the keyframes from your shape layer’s scale by selecting them and pressing delete. We will create the same scale animation, this time using expressions instead of keyframes.

Once the keyframes are deleted, navigate to the scale stopwatch (either in your properties panel or in your timeline), and click it once while holding down the alt/option key. You will see the text turn red, and a new box will appear in your timeline where you are able to write your expressions.

Since this is a more advanced way of using After Effects, I will only briefly explain the expression. I will come back in another article to explain in more detail.

Since we want to create an animation which eases from 1 value to another, we will use the ease() function:

ease (time, 0, 1, 0, 100);

The ease function requires 5 arguments in order to work. The first argument is what parameter the function is remapping (for our example, this is “time.”). The next 2 arguments are the in-point and out-point; when the animation starts and ends. The last 2 arguments are the start and end values. So, when we use this ease function, we are telling After Effects, “remap the scale value of this layer over time, in between 0 and 1 seconds, from the value 0 to 100.”

However, the scale parameter is two values, an x and a y. So we will need to tell After Effects where we want to apply this ease function by creating an array, like so:

x = ease (time, 0, 1, 0, 100);
[x, value[1]]

“Value[1]” refers to the current y-coordinate value. If you play back your animation, you will see a new animation created for your scale parameter without using keyframes. Exciting!

Rendering your animation

Once you are happy with your animation, you can render it to create your video. To do this, go to “Composition/Add to render queue,” or press CTRL/Apple + M. You will see your render queue:

Choose the output file type for your video. The default, “H.264 – Match Render Settings – 15 Mbps” will produce a MP4 file, and is a good choice for any video destined for the web. By clicking the dropdown next this, you can take a look at the other saved presets After Effects offers:

Choose the right file type for you. If you aren’t sure what file you need, consider where the video needs to play, and check the specifications. You should find the answer you need. If none of the presets fit that specification, you can create your own template by selecting the “Make Template…” option at the bottom.

Once you have set up your video settings, you can set your output location; where you want your video to save. Then, hit “render” to save your video.

And that’s it! I hope this basic introduction to After Effects has been helpful. Go forward and play around with the interface until you are familiar with all the tools outlined in this article.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions.