Adobe After Effects 6.0 Standard Reviewed [Archive]

Philip Colmer

09-16-2004, 06:00 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-cover.jpg" /> Product Category: Video compositing software Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.adobe.com/">Adobe Systems Inc</a> Where to Buy: Amazon: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00021XI1U/ref%253Dase%255Fjasondunn-20/jasondunn-20">Windows</a>; <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00021XJ64/ref%253Dase%255Fjasondunn-20/jasondunn-20">Macintosh</a> (affiliate links) Price: $699.99 USD (now version 6.5) System Requirements: Windows: Penium III or 4 (multiprocessor recommended), Microsoft Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4 or Windows XP Professional or Home with Service Pack 1 or later, 128MB RAM (256MB or more recommended), 150MB harddisc for installation (500MB or larger recommended for ongoing work), CD-ROM drive, 24-bit colour display adapter. Macintosh: PowerPC processor (multiprocessor G5 recommended), Mac OS X v.10.3.2, memory/discspace/graphics as for Windows. Pros:<li>Fantastic levels of sophistication and flexibility; <li>Tight integration with other Adobe applications; <li>New text and paint features offer high quality results and extensibility through animation and effects.Cons:<li>Steep learning curve; <li>Rendering can take quite a long time.Summary: After Effects is pretty much unmatched as a single tool that brings you 2D and 3D compositing, animation and visual effects. Version 6 continues to build on previous versions by increasing the integration with other Adobe applications, delivering new functionality like the text and paint engines and improving on 3D rendering with OpenGL support. Used by Hollywood and TV broadcasters, it delivers fantastic results and yet can still be used by beginners for the simplest of tasks. Read on for the full review!<!> <PAGEBREAK> Introduction Before I get started, it is worth clarifying a couple of points. This review is for After Effects 6.0, Standard Edition. There is now a version 6.5, and there is also a Professional Edition. Indeed, there is even the combination - a version 6.5 Professional Edition. Adobe After Effects is, to say the least, an interesting piece of software. The next few pages of this review will look at some of the capabilities of the product but if you've never encountered After Effects (AE from now on) before, you might be wondering just what this product can do. If, on the other hand, you are a long-standing user of AE, you can skip ahead to the last section (page 5 if you are reading this in paged mode) where I look at what has changed in the release of version 6.0. A good analogy, at least to begin with, is that AE does for individual frames of film what Photoshop does for still images. Except that comes nowhere close to adequately describing its capabilities ... but it is a start :D. In fact, I've found it quite difficult to adequately describe what AE does and what it can be used for. One of the reasons why it is so difficult is because the product's capabilities can be extended through plugins, much in the same way that you can get Photoshop and VST plugins. One thing that is true is that AE is not just about adding effects to existing footage. Yes, you can do that and AE does it very well. You can also create entire self-contained compositions within AE, so let's start by looking at what AE defines as a composition. Compositions A composition in AE is comparable to a sequence in Premiere Pro - it has a timeline and a series of layers. Figure 1 shows an example timeline. A layer is very similar to the concept in Photoshop - it contributes to the stack of images to produce the final result. It is much more powerful, though. As you can see in Figure 1, it is possible to have a layer only visible for a certain amount of time. The top layer in this example only starts to appear 5 seconds into the timeline and is only visible for a short period of time. AE supports different types of layer. The simplest one is an existing picture or video sequence. Some of the other layer types will be looked at later on in this review. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-timeline.gif" /> Figure 1: A composition timeline As with Premiere Pro's sequences, you can nest compositions in AE. This allows you to build up a composition in stages. A project, therefore, can consist of multiple compositions. Each composition in a project can be a different size, use a different pixel aspect ratio, a different frame rate and a different duration. In fact, that last point is another interesting difference from Premiere Pro. With the latter, your sequence runs until you reach the end of the workspace, which is normally the end of the last clip of footage. With AE, a composition also understands the concept of the workspace (which is useful for working on just a small bit at a time) but the duration of the composition is fixed in its settings. If you want to make the composition longer, you have to edit the settings first. That brings up a very important point about AE compared with, say, Premiere Pro. AE pretty much demands proper planning first. With Premiere Pro, you can get away with throwing a bunch of clips together, tossing in some transitions and effects for good measure and you've got your results. With AE, you possibly could try to work the same way, but it would be really hard. To get the best results, you need to have thought beforehand what you want the end result to look like and really plan how the layers need to interact, what effects etc you are going to need, in order to get to that end result. Animation The cornerstone to animation in AE is a combination of the parameters that you can adjust on every layer and effect, and the use of keyframes to adjust the values of those parameters over time. Figure 2 shows a section of a timeline with some parameters down the left-hand side, the values in blue next to them and a bunch of keyframes to the right. AE, like Premiere Pro, allows the values between keyframes to be calculated in a few different ways. The first is linear - a straight progression from one value to the next over time. For a lot of animation, though, this gives a mechanical appearance. If you are after something more organic, you'll want to use the "Easy In" or "Easy Out" modes or, if you want that on both sides of the keyframe, "Easy Ease". This provides a slow out followed by a curved progression towards the value and a slow in, and this is what is being shown by the black lines in Figure 2. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-parameters.gif" /> Figure 2: Adjusting parameters & setting keyframes A particularly powerful feature of animation in AE is the concept of parenting. This allows you to take one layer and make it the parent of another layer. What this means in practice is that, for example, if you rotate the parent layer, the child layer(s) rotate as well. If you click on Figure 3, this will download a QuickTime movie that shows keyframes, rotation and parenting to good effect. This particular clip also uses a feature that really helps to make the final result more realistic and that is motion blur. This allows AE to simulate what happens when you have a fast moving object going past your camera's shutter. All you have to do is turn the feature on for any layers to which you want this applied. AE takes care of the rest. Amazing. To give you an idea of how easy it is to create an effect like the one shown in the clip, there are three identical "widgets" that act as the arms of the robot dinosaur. Two of the arms are scaled down and they are linked to each other with parent/child settings. A couple of bolt heads are overlayed at the joints and again parented to the relevant arm. The dinosaur skill is made of two parts, the jaw and the skull, with one being the parent of the other and, again, linked to the arms. Finally, some keyframes set the rotation of the various objects through the clip to give you the movement that you see, coupled with motion blur. Remember - no other keyframes have had to be set - just rotation. Without parenting, a lot more effort would have been required to achieve the same result. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/dinowidgets.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-animation.jpg" /></a> Figure 3: Animation with After Effects. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (2.55MB) <PAGEBREAK> Masks Masks are used to either hide or make visible portions of one or more layers. AE makes it very easy to create masks of shapes of your choosing, using a combination of straight lines and Bezier curves. You can then adjust those mask shapes over time. As with other keyframe usage, AE interpolates the values between the keyframes, resulting in a mask morph from one keyframe to the next. In addition to using the tools to draw out a mask, AE supports pasting a mask from Illustrator or Photoshop, converting a text layer, creating a mask from audio and creating a mask using Autotrace. Autotrace is a new feature for AE 6. It allows you to select a channel from the image that you want to mask. This channel would typically be the alpha channel but you can also use red, green, blue or luminance. The tool then creates a series of masks either for the current frame or the defined workspace. This particular tool has been used in the next example, which can be seen in Figure 4 - click on the image to download the movie. This project uses two movies of a rotating yellow car. One is a wireframe car and the second is the solid version. To begin with, autotrace has been used on the initial part of the movie to trace around the rotating car. A scribble effect has then been used within the mask to draw the lines across the body of the car. The audiotrace effect has been used to create the spiky yellow lines coming out from the edge of the car. This is keyed to the music track and is handled automatically by AE. Like most effects, you have wide control over the parameters that you can keyframe so that you could, for example, change the colour of the bars over time or their length or ... you get the idea :lol:. A radial shadow has been used on the final rotating car to give the illusion of moving from a drawing, through to wireframe and then to solidity. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/autotrace.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-masks.jpg" /></a> Figure 4: Autotrace and audio trace in action. Click on the image to play the Quicktime movie (13MB) Effects After Effects comes with an amazing library of effects, arranged into the following categories: 3D channel, adjust, audio, blur & channel, sharpen, distort, express controls, image control, keying, matte tools, noise & grain, paint, perspective, render, simulation, stylise, text, time, transition, video. Phew! Recognising that trying to find the desired effect is difficult in a menu structure, even when categorised, AE now has an Effects and Presets tool window that allows you to start to type in the name and AE lists anything that contains what you have typed in so far. Figure 5 shows the effects that have "col" anywhere in their name. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-effects.gif" /> Figure 5: Effects and presets I've mentioned a few times how the various parameters of effects can be keyframed and this can be seen in Figure 6. A large proportion of the power and flexibility in AE comes from being able to set keyframes on parameters and adjust them over time. It is also possible to stack multiple effects onto a single layer and change the rendering order of those effects, thus resulting in different looks. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-effectoptions.gif" /> Figure 6: Effect controls A particularly powerful feature in AE is the adjustment layer. This is a layer that contains effects and those effects are then applied to all layers beneath the adjustment layer. An example of how this can be used is to have an adjustment layer over the picture of a brick wall. The adjustment layer could then have a hue/saturation effect applied to it which then darkens & shifts the colour towards blue for all layers beneath it, i.e. the brick wall. Adding a circular mask to the adjustment layer allows you to "cut" a hole in the hue/saturation effect, resulting in what can look like a searchlight playing over the wall if you move the mask around over time. If the adjustment layer was sitting on top of more than one layer, e.g. you could have a video clip over the brick wall of people pretending to break out of prison, then the searchlight effect would get applied across all of those layers. <PAGEBREAK> 3D Given that AE is used to create film, you might initially be wondering how 3D comes into AE's capabilities. The answer is that when you build up the layers in a composition, you can specify that the layer exists in a 3D world, as opposed to a 2D world, in which case you get to specify the distance between one layer and the next (the Z position), as well as their traditional X and Y positions. It doesn't stop there. AE understands the concept of a camera - you can define a camera (shown in Figure 7), position it in the 3D space and then animate changes to camera's keyframe settings over time. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-camera.gif" /> Figure 7: Defining a camera in AE Where this gives you flexibility is that by moving the camera, you can alter your whole perspective on the image, rather than having to adjust all of the layers bit by bit. An example of this can be seen by clicking on Figure 8. This clip has been built from a number of layers. The bottom layer is a moving star field. Above that, two layers define the black & white marble base. On top of those are thirteen layers that create the orrery itself. Parenting is used to tie the planets to the arms and the arms are tied to the centre post. All of these are defined in 3D which causes AE to render the rotation in a three-dimensional space as the centre post rotates. Added to that, the camera tracks from left to right, causing the perspective of the entire image to change as it moves. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/cameras.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-cameras.jpg" /></a> Figure 8: Orrery in space. Click on the image to play the Quicktime movie (13MB) 3D calculations take a lot of time so AE can benefit from OpenGL drivers - a means of using the graphics card to speed up the 3D work. Adobe maintains a list of supported graphics cards at <a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html">http://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects/opengl.html</a>. If you've got a compatible card and you turn OpenGL support on within AE, the difference in update speed when you drag through the timeline or when you adjust a parameter is fantastic. There are some limitations of what OpenGL can do but these don't affect the final outcome - just the previews that you see whilst working on the composition. Expressions Now you might be sitting there, having just read about compositions, animation, effects, etc, etc, thinking "Wow! Great product - must buy it" ... but there's more! Yes, indeed, the best is yet to come! For the parameters of effects and layers are not just limited to where you set the keyframes and AE's ability to morph between those values. How can it possibly be improved? Expressions - that's how. Expressions are Javascript code that allow you to programmatically adjust a parameter. Here are some examples of how you can use expressions:<li> To copy one parameter from a parent layer. Normally, when you've got layers in a parent-child relationship, any change you make to the parent (position, rotation, etc) is copied to the child. Suppose, though, that you want to copy the position down to the child but not the rotation? You do it with an expression. <li> To add randomness to a parameter. AE has a very simple term called "wiggle" which simply adjusts the expected value by a small random amount for the purposes of rendering, whilst leaving the underlying keyframe values intact.AE makes it very easy to reference one layer's parameter in another by using a feature that has been used in Encore for creating references - the pick whip. This allows you to drag the whip to the parameter you want to reference and AE fills in the Expression field with the reference information. You can then enhance the Javascript around that reference if you so wish. If you click on Figure 9, you'll see a very powerful demonstration of how expressions can be used to make animation easier. The moon has an expression that makes it rotate around the Earth. It is also parented to the Earth so that as the Earth revolves around the Sun, the moon stays with the Earth. This is all done with two expressions - one for the moon and one for the Earth. The final touch is to use an effect called Write On which has been configured, again using an expression, to track the motion of the moon and draw a path to reflect that motion. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/expressions.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-expressions.jpg" /></a> Figure 9: Expressions make the world go around. Click on the image to play the Quicktime movie (9MB) Rendering One thing you do quickly realise with AE, though, is that this is not a real-time product. Unless you've got the simplest of projects, you will need to do a RAM preview in order to see what your composition looks like. Fortunately, AE has a number of tools to help minimise the pain. To begin with, you can adjust the size of your render window and the quality of the rendering. Predefined quality settings are full, half, third and quarter, each representing how many pixels are displayed. You can also pick a custom setting. Furthermore, you can adjust how AE does the rendering. You can have wireframes (useful when working in 3D and you want different camera angles), adaptive resolution (where AE does its best to keep up) and OpenGL. It doesn't stop there. You can also turn off updates as you drag through the timeline (so AE only updates the preview screen when you've stopped dragging), motion blur and frame blending, without having to turn those features off on the individual layers. Finally, you can edit the settings for individual layers to go between wire, draft or best quality. If you want to perform a RAM preview in order to see what the true quality is like, and it is taking too long, you can adjust the workspace to define just the section of timeline you want to see. When it comes to the final push, though, you'll want to render your composition. Acknowledging that this process might take a while, AE has a render queue (Figure 9). This allows you to specify all sorts of settings for the output, including the quality and the output format (DV, AVI, Quicktime, etc). You can set up multiple entries with different settings, hit Render and leave the computer to it. <img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-renderqueue.gif" /> Figure 10: Render queue If you've got the Professional version, it is possible to use distributed computing and share out the rendering process to other computers, thus saving time. <PAGEBREAK> What's New In Version 6.0 Having reached here, you've either used After Effects before or, hopefully, you've now got a reasonable idea of what the software's capabilities. Here is a quick look at some of what is new and improved in this version:<li> Improved integration with Photoshop, Illustrator and Premiere Pro. AE retains the order of layers in PSD files, preserves formatting on imported text, sets a layer's bounding box to fit each layer when you import Illustrator documents and you can apply effects and masks directly to Illustrator files. AE can import nested Premiere Pro sequences as nested compositions. Files with keyframed transparency, cross-dissolves and motion values are converted to appropriate keyframes in AE. <li> Create and animate text in the Composition window. You can now type, edit and format text within the Composition window and AE allows you to animate a text layer by characters, words, or lines within a single layer. Animation of the text is done without any loss of quality. AE uses a feature called "selectors" to allow you to specify just what gets changed over time. An example of this can be seen by clicking on Figure 11. Believe it or not, this was achieved with just two keyframes - one at the beginning and one at the end of the sequence. Two animators were used - one to bulge the text and set the colour, and the second to gradually reveal the text. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/text.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-aftereffects-text.jpg" /></a> Figure 11: Text animation example. Click on the image to play the Quicktime movie (656KB) <li> Paint layers. AE now has vector paint tools that are based on the same brush engine and tools as in Photoshop. You can use them to retouch footage, perform frame-by-frame touch-ups or even direct painting within the composition. The cloning tools are particularly powerful, working on sequential frames from one layer to another. <li> New and enhanced effects. Liquify tools allow you to distort footage just like the tools in Photoshop, e.g. turbulence, clone, twirl, shift, reflection and reconstruction. The new warp effect has fifteen pre-set styles allowing you to transform layers into geometric shapes like arches, waves and flags, or simulate the look of objects viewed through a fisheye lens. The scribble effect allows you to animate a fill or stroke with lines that look like hand-drawn scribbles. The dust and scratches effect cleans up footage by making dust, scratches and other artefacts less noticeable.Using After Effects AE is an extremely sophisticated product and there is no getting away from the fact that it has a huge learning curve. If you read the Adobe & Creative Cow forums, you'll find a lot of people asking for advice on how to recreate a particular effect they've got in mind. Some of the respondents say that they've been using AE for years and they are still learning new tricks. That said, the user interface is easy to navigate and, above all else, consistent. If you've used Premiere Pro and Photoshop, you've got a good start on finding your way around AE. Parameters are set using "twiddles", keyframes, pick whips - all user interface features that are found in other Adobe products. This release of AE continues to build on the solid functionality of previous versions by enhancing the integration with other Adobe applications, adding more effects to the stable, taking functionality from Illustrator like the text engine and from Photoshop like the paint engine, and adding easier ways to do things like searching for effects that match what you've typed. Using AE is a bit like learning to program. You can't expect to come up with a Hollywood blockbuster in a week any more than you could expect to write a web service in C# if you've never programmed before. The trick to AE is to start small and gradually learn how different effects can be combined to create unusual, powerful and effective results. This is not a simple product and it isn't intended to be. It is sophisticated and you've got to have a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve in order to be able to figure out what combination of effects will get you there. It doesn't matter that AE isn't a realtime product. Sure, it would be nice and Adobe, by adding support for OpenGL, has made steps in the direction of speeding up the creative process. But there are plenty of ways that you can help yourself, as explained earlier. The render queue, and the ability to farm out the rendering across multiple machines, means that when you need to get the final rendering done, you can set the queue up and leave it running overnight ... or longer if it is really complicated 8O. Credits My thanks to Total Training for letting me use some of the projects from their "Total Training for After Effects" product as examples of what can be done with AE. There will be more examples of what you can do with AE in my review of "Total Training for After Effects" ... coming soon to Digital Media Thoughts :). If you have any problems playing the clips, try it with one at a time (if you try to play too many, IE has a per-site limit and it may time out waiting for the previous downloads to finish) and try saving it to disc first. You will, of course, need QuickTime in order to play them :wink:. Conclusions I simply couldn't cover everything that After Effects is capable of, but hopefully, if you've never used it before, you've got a better idea :wink:. AE 6 is a significant product and one that is genuinely by broadcasters and movie makers to help them create their material. If you want to animate moving text, insert flying spaceships into a video of a field with grazing cows or create sophisticated DVD menus with motion video and animated buttons, AE is your tool. The results will only be limited by your imagination.