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Hey, what's up, guys? , This is Kris Truing for Crisco Productions, , and welcome to this tutorial which will cover , the basics of After Effects , I know it's not the most exciting tutorial , that you'vie ever seen, , but in order to get to the fun stuff, , we need to get the basics out of the way , Now, I know that this interface looks pretty intimidating, , but once you get the basic mechanism of it , and you know where everything is, , everything else builds upon that basic knowledge , In other words, this tutorial will try to include , all the basic needs to get you started into one video , All right, enough talking about the tutorial , Let's actually jump into it , So the first thing that we see in this interface , is that it's divided into panels , You have your Project panel over here, , which also shares the Effects Controls panel , The Project panel is where all your media, , which can be footage, audio, images, , anything like that will be stored here , Anything that you use will be imported in the Project panel , Right next to it, there's a Composition panel , This is pretty much your monitor , This is where everything , that you do in your timeline will appear , Before we start exploring the rest of these panels, , let's actually import some footage , so that we can get a better understanding , of what everything does with an actual example , So to import your footage, , you can either double click into this Project panel area, , and this will open up this Import File window, , or you can import files through File, Import, , File, or Multiple Files , So you see they'll pretty much give you the same thing , Or, if you have a folder open already , with the footage that you need, , you can simply just drag it over onto this box , or into the Project panel area , Okay, so we now have some footage imported, , and you can see that there is some basic information here , It gives you the resolution, the frame rate, , the amount of colors, and the type of compression , that this video has , So, moving on from here, , what you wanna do is create a new composition , There are a couple of ways of doing this , You can either drag the footage onto this little icon here, , which will create a composition , based on the settings of the footage , So it'll have the same frame rate, the same resolution , Now, another way to do this , is to go under Composition, New Composition , You can notice that the shortcut for that is Command + N , For PC users, I'm pretty sure it's Control + N , Okay, so now that we have a composition created, , let's look at other ways to import files onto your timeline , So what I have here is a simple picture , that I'm gonna import , So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna create for this example , a small logo overlay in the lower third of this video , So there are two different ways to bring this image , into our timeline and see it in our Composition panel , One way is to actually select it , and drag it over the composition panel , And you can see that this little box appears, , and what that is is pretty much the size of the image , So we can see that up here it's W by W, , and that's actually what's showing , into our Composition panel , And you can pretty much drag it anywhere you would like, , and as soon as you let go, it'll place it in that position , Now, the other way is a little bit different, , because instead of working on where you wanna place it, , it works on when you wanna place it , So you can see that this black line forms , soon as we drag it over to the Timeline panel, , and that is because you're telling it first , if it should be on top of the clip or under the clip , If you place it under the clip, you're not gonna see it , because our footage is actually covering it up , But if we bring it up by selecting it, , bringing it on top of the clip, , you can actually see that it appears over our footage , Now, another important thing of this technique is that, , let's say I'm dragging it over, , you not only get to choose in what order it is placed, , but you also get to choose when in time it is placed , So once again, if you drag it over the Composition panel, , you're choosing where your item is placed, , but if you drag it over the Timeline panel, , you choose when it is placed , Now, if you notice, , whenever you drag an element onto the Timeline panel, , this secondary timeline indicator knob appears, , and that's pretty much telling you , where the beginning of that layer will be placed in time , Okay, so again, it's very basic stuff, , but we're actually getting somewhere , We're starting to get more comfortable with After Effects , However, if you have a short attention span like me, , I think it's probably time for a break , So here's some slow motion stock footage for your enjoyment , mixed in with some dub step , Enjoy , (dub step music) , All right , I feel much better , So, let's get back to work , So once again, what we were trying to do in this example , is to create a lower thirds looking logo overlay , Instead of having the logo appear over here, , I'm just gonna drag it back to the beginning , so that we immediately see it , And the next thing we gotta do is pretty much scale it down , and position it down in the bottom , So there's a couple ways to do this, , like most things in After Effects , One is to shrink it or resize it or stretch it , with these little points on the edges of the picture , Or you can click one of those points and hold Shift, , and that will uniformly scale the element , Another way to scale layers is to select them , and hit S on your keyboard , That will bring up the scale property of that layer , So over here, you can see that we can click , and just drag it in and out , Or, if you want, you can select it , and type in the value that you would like , All right, so let's scale it down to what we want, , so I'd say that's pretty good , And we wanna position it down here , So all you gotta do is just click the layer , and drag it over , Now let's say you have , many layers and elements in your composition , and you can't really click them , Well, just how we brought up the scale over here, , you can select it and hit P, , and that will bring up the position of the layer , And then you have the X and Y coordinates , and you can drag , and position the layer , where you want it to be , Now, while we're here, , let me just mention a few other things , You now know that with hitting S, you bring up scale, , hitting P, you bring up position , Well, here's a couple other ones , If you hit R, it brings up rotation, , and you can actually rotate your layers , If you hit T, it'll bring up the opacity , And opacity is pretty much how transparent your layer is , So if you bring that down, , you can see that we start seeing more of what's behind it , Another cool keyboard shortcut is , instead of seeing them individually, , if you hold Shift, you can actually bring more than one up , Okay, so before we move on , to animating some of these properties, , let's actually see a couple other keyboard shortcuts , that can help you import things quicker , and work with your timeline a little bit faster , So let's say you wanna import something , down in the middle of your composition , There's actually a keyboard shortcut for that , You select a layer that you wanna import, , and you hit Command, or PC, Control, , and the question mark key on your keyboard , So if you hit that, you'll see that , it will import the layer in the middle of your composition , above everything else , So that's a quick little trick , to import files into your timeline , Speaking of which, , let's actually go a little bit more in depth , with navigating in the timeline , Now, you see that we have this current timeline indicator, , and this is pretty much what you use to , scroll through your footage , And you can see that if we click anywhere in this top part, , the timeline indicator will jump to where your mouse is over , in that point in time , So a few keyboard shortcuts , If you wanna go to the very beginning, , instead of just dragging it to the beginning, , you can hit the Home key on your keyboard, , and you can go to the end of your timeline with the End key, , not N, End key, E-N-D , You can also navigate frame by frame , by hitting Page Up and Page Down, , or you can actually jump W frames at a time , by holding Shift while you're holding , either Page Up or Page Down , Just to wrap up the basics of the timeline, , let's also look at this area right here , You can notice that these icons over here look like eyes, , and that's because if you click on 'em, , it actually shuts that layer off, , so it makes it not visible , And you can turn it back on whenever you want , This is a pretty useful feature , when you're working with multiple stuff , or if you're trying something out, , you don't really wanna delete it, , you can just shut it off momentarily and then bring it back , Another thing that you can do is also solo a layer , So let's say I wanna focus on this and really work on it , or color correct it or do whatever I want, , I can really focus on this single element by soloing it , You can also solo multiple elements , Obviously, we're gonna go back to what we had , because these are the only two layers in our timeline, , so by soloing both of 'em, , it's pretty much like not soloing anything , But again, going back to , organization being key in After Effects, , this is actually a really helpful feature , One last thing that I wanna point out, , you saw that we can jump forward into time , by clicking on the seconds bar over here , Another way to do this to be actually more specific, , you can click this time code, , these time code numbers over here, , by the way, these represent , frame, seconds, minutes, and hours, , so you can actually click on this, and you can jump forward , to whatever specific time you would like , All right, so that's pretty much all we're gonna cover , as far as the timeline in this tutorial , I think we're ready to move on to animation, , which sounds like a big chapter in this tutorial, , but it's really, really simple , It's actually gonna blow your mind , how simple animating things are in After Effects , There are three simple steps , that can be applied to pretty much anything , that you wanna animate in After Effects , Whether it's the position, scale, or rotation of the layer , or any effect properties attached to the layer, , it's really, really simple , So as an example, we're just gonna create , a simple position animation for this layer, , just going from this part of the screen , to this part of the screen, something really simple, , and I'm just gonna apply those three steps , So I'm gonna hit P on my keyboard, , and that will bring up my position , And you notice that , there's a little stopwatch looking icon by the position , If we select that, it's gonna create this golden diamond , This is called a key frame in After Effects, , and it's pretty much saying that it memorized , the position data of this layer at this point in time , Now, if move down in time, , let's say, I don't know, eight seconds, , we can edit this value to bring it , all the way to the left, , and by the way, to speed things up, you can hold Shift, , and that'll affect the value change much more rapidly , So we can just drop it over here , And that's it , You now have an animation , If we scroll through it, , we can see that the layer is moving from right to left , And again, all we had to do was three simple steps , You create your beginning key frame , with the beginning value that you want, , you move forward in time, , and then you just simply make the changes that you like, , and it will record it on the key frame automatically , Now, you can notice that , this one is gray and this one is golden, , and the reason why is because we have this key frame selected , and not this one , So if I click on this, you can see that , now this is golden because we have selected it, , and this turned gray , Now, this is useful because you can , actually drag these key frames out in time, , and you can see that it's actually affecting our animation , What that does is , pretty much it's stretching the amount of time , that it takes for this layer , to get from this position to this ending position , So all we're doing is just stretching out the animation , You can also make the animation quicker , or happen at a later point in time in the timeline , You can also select both key frames , by clicking and dragging and making a selection, , and you can move both key frames down the road or earlier on, , so it gives you a lot of control , And again, we just did three simple steps , to create this animation , And you can also switch their positions, , so now it's going from right to left , So you can play around with this, , and you're gonna soon start to realize , that everything in After Effects, or almost everything, , has a stopwatch to it , So you can literally use that technique , to animate pretty much anything in After Effects , And later on when we get into the effects, , you're gonna notice that if I, let's say, , drop in a random effect onto this layer, , you're gonna see that those same stopwatches appear , on some of these effect properties, , meaning that you can animate these , using the same simple principles that we just saw here , So, sweet , We just learned how to animate in less than three minutes , Told you it was gonna be mind blowing , So let's move on to a little bit more exciting stuff, , which is the effects , You can see that I actually already , dropped just a random effect in, , so let me just select that and delete that for now , so we can start over and take a look at how to do this , To apply an effect, again, , there's a couple of ways to do that , You can go up here in the Effects tab, , and you see that you have , all of these categories of effects , Personally, I pretty much never use this, , 'cause there's a much easier way , to find the effect that you're looking for , If you go over here in this tab, , in the Effects and Preset tab, , I know we did't talk much about this side of After Effects, , but we're about to get into it right now, , you can see that there's a search bar up here , So I can type in that same effect , I don't even need to complete the name on the effect , It's already showing you all the effects , that contain the words that you're typing in , Personally, I just find this easier , because you don't have to memorize , which category the effect is in , You can just type it in the search bar , And this goes for any kind of effect , So let's just add a quick blur, , so again, I can type in, "Blur," and you see that , any effect that contains the word blur in it shows up , So I'm just gonna apply a simple box blur, , and what I'm doing right now is I'm selecting it , and dragging it on top , You can see that over here I'm over my clip, , and when I move my mouse over the image, , it actually selects the image , So this is a way of dropping , the effects into your Composition panel, , but to be more precise, , you can actually go in your Timeline panel , and drop it onto the layer that you want , So nothing has changed yet, , and that's because our blur radius is set to zero , This is just a specific example , I'm not gonna go too much into each single effect, , because there's over W of 'em , already built into After Effects , And notice we have those stopwatches over here , so we can animate all of these properties , And I can just push this property up, , and now you see that we have blurred our layer , Let me go to full resolution real quick , so you can see a little bit better , By the way, this is just , a quick little thing to speed up your render time , I recommend you working at half or a third of the resolution , so that you can work quicker, , and then when you're ready to render, , just bring it back to the full resolution , That's just a side thing , But anyways, you see that we now have effected our layer , with this blur effect , If we wanna shut off this effect momentarily, , just like how we would shut off this layer, , we can actually see that there is this little FX icon , by the name of the effect , If we hit that, it'll shut off the effect , And if we have more than one effect, , so let's say I wanna add , a little glow effect to this layer, , I can drag it in the Composition panel on the layer, , and the Timeline panel on they layer, , or I can even drag it , under the previous effect or over the previous effect , in the Effects Controls panel , So now you see that there's a little bit of glow going on , You can see the before and after by clicking , I'm not gonna change any of these properties , because it's not about the individual effects , It's just how to apply them to layers , So now you have two effects applied on that layer , So to see the before and after without any effect, , instead of hitting each effect icon to disable them, , you can actually , hit this similar icon in the Timeline panel, , and that will automatically shut off , both of these effects or any of the effects , that you have applied to that layer , All right, so to wrap things up as far as the effects, , we now know that we can look up effects , under certain categories on the Effects tab, , or just simply type 'em in , in the Effects and Presets tab over here , And again, to see all the categories back again, , you can just exit out what you searched , and they will all automatically come back up , Before we move on, let me just show you , another way to apply an effect , If we select a layer and we look up the effect that we want, , you can simply, with the layer selected, double click it, , and it will apply that effect to the layer you'vie selected , All right, so my time to torture you guys is almost up , Let me just include a couple other things, , such as creating text layers and solids and masks , Let me try to do that in less than two minutes , so I don't have to hold you up , A simple way to create text , is hitting this text icon over here , and clicking your composition, , and that creates a text layer, , and you can type in anything that you would like , To change the color, you can double click it to select it, , and you can change the color over here , to whatever you would like , You can change the font here, the size, , and you can just play around with these settings , and see what they do, but this is just the basic idea , on how to create a text layer , And if you wanna animate a text, just like with any layer, , you can bring up the position, the scale, the rotation, , and you can key frame those values , to create animations that you like , Now, next up is creating a solid , A solid is pretty much a layer of color , So let me just import a solid by right clicking , into the Timeline panel over here, going under New , You can see that I can generate text this way, as well , But I'm gonna click Solid , I can pick the color of my solid over here , I'm gonna pick a black solid , Hit OK , And you can change the width and height of the solid, , or you can just simply say Make Comp Size , And hit OK , So now as you can see, , we have a completely black solid , What I'm gonna do here is apply a circular mask , to create a vignette effect , So I'm gonna go over here to this shape , Right now it's a rectangle, but we want a circle, , so I'm just gonna select that , And you can just drag it out this way, , and that creates a mask, , or if you want a precise shape, , you can hold Shift and that'll create a perfect circle , Or just to make a quick vignette, , you can just double click the shape , in order to just generate this type of shape , with the points touching the end of the composition , So right now, the problem is that , if we wanna create a vignette, , the black needs to be on the outside and not on the inside , So a simple way to do this is, , if you go under this mask property, , you see that it's set to Add , If you click that, there's a list that appears, , and you can play around with these to see what they do, , but right now, all we need is Subtract , And now you see that we have blackness , on the outside of the shape and not on the inside , This dozen't really look like a vignette , If we DE-select it, we just see that , it's pretty much just a hole in a black solid , So to create a vignette effect, , I will select the layer and hit F on my keyboard , That will bring up the Mask Feather property , And I can punch that up, , and you can see that it's kinda blurring out the edges , It's feathering them , And you can push this as crazy as you want , You can also animate it like anything else , If you wanna apply a custom mask , instead of having to do a shape, , as is used in some cases to radarscope, , you can right next to it select the pen tool, , and now you can just pretty much create , any shape that you want , All right, so let's get rid of that , Simply select the mask and hit Delete, , and that'll just delete that , So another cool thing that we can do , is animate the shape of this mask, , just like with any mask shape and with the pen tool , So what I'm gonna do is , I'm gonna select a layer where the mask is applied, , hit M, M on the keyboard, so M twice , And that'll bring up all the properties for that mask , You can see that we have a property name, Mask Path , If you stopwatch that and move forward in time, , you can actually change the shape , Notice we have a key frame now , You can change the shape of the mask , to whatever you would like, , and now you have another key frame generated here , So from here all the way to here, , the mask, you can see it actually shrinks , All right, that's it , We're done , I'm glad you could make it all the way to the end , I'm glad you survived , I know there's a lot of stuff , that got jammed into your head right now, , but hopefully this will give you a pretty good start , into using After Effects , And again, the key here is to really experiment, , play around with all these effects, , get familiar with the interface, watch more tutorials, , and just keep working your way up , to more advanced tutorials , I know I'm going a little bit over time, , but I'm gonna ramble a little bit more , and give you some useful links of other tutorials , that have helped me a lot in the beginning , and that hopefully will help you as well , This is the first website , that I really recommend you look at is Video Copilot , You may have heard of it by now , They have great products, great tutorials , They actually also have a basic training section , So you can see that there's a breakdown , of pretty much some of the things that we talked about, , but it goes really in depth, , so I really recommend you dig a little bit deeper , into all of these videos , The second website is Adobe TV , It's a great source overall, , and it has tons of great tutorials , You can select the product that you wanna learn , Also, if you have time, check out my Sound Cloud , I just made this , I mostly make dub step. (dub step music) , You heard some of it during this tutorial , But yeah, if you have time, , really would appreciate that , And let me just give a quick shout out to all the people , that commented on my last tutorial as promised , Again, really, feedback and comments , and subscribing and all of that really helps out a lot , I know people say that a lot, , but it's because it really does , I'm really focusing a lot on YouTube , and on building a community , and really trying to help you guys out, , so if you could subscribe and like and share it, , that would really be appreciated , Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, , and hopefully it has given you , a better understanding of After Effects , so you can actually start , playing around with it a little bit , Once again, my name is Kris Truing , for Crisco Productions , Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you next time.
