Total Training for After Effects 6.0 Reviewed [Archive]

Philip Colmer

09-17-2004, 05:00 PM

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-cover.jpg" /> Product Category: Video-based training Manufacturer: <a href="http://www.totaltraining.com">Total Training</a> Where to Buy: <a href="http://www.totaltraining.com">Total Training</a> Price: $319 (After Effects 6.0 Standard), $449 (After Effects 6.0 Professional) System Requirements: A means of playing the video DVDs, although to get the most benefit, you ought to have Adobe After Effects available as well to work through the projects. Pros:<li> For beginners to experts; <li> Excellent value for money; <li> Great real-world projects to work through.Cons:<ul><li> Prepare to sacrifice a chunk of your life to watching this!</ul>Summary: If you want to learn how to get the most out of After Effects, this has got to be one of the most cost effective means of doing so. The added bonus of having it delivered on DVD means that you can watch the bits you want to watch over and over again. Read on for the full review!<!> <PAGEBREAK> Climbing That Learning Curve If you've read my review of Adobe After Effects, you'll know that I've already mentioned the learning curve that beginners to AE have to go through. Indeed, when you open the packaging and you're faced with a manual of roughly 560 pages, you just know you've got a lot of learning to do 8O. These days, there are a few ways you might want to tackle getting to grips with a product like AE. The first, and cheapest (given that you own the software), would be to teach yourself by sitting down with the manual and working your way through. The biggest problem that I can see with this approach is that if you follow the steps given for a particular task, how do you know if you've got it right? The manual, being a printed product, is incapable of reproducing moving video and Adobe don't provide movies for each of their instructions. The second step might be to invest in a teach-yourself guide, such as Adobe's Classroom in a Book. These typically do come with resource material on a CD but, again, you might find yourself in the situation of not knowing whether or not you've got it right or, even worse, getting stuck and not knowing how to progress from there. A possible third choice, these days, is to look through tutorials on the web, and there are plenty out there. The advantage of these is that, being online, they can include video clips that show the final results and, possibly, the results at intermediate steps. The drawback here, though, is that you are limited to those tutorials available, which means you might not cover all of the material. Option number 4, if you've got a lot of money (or you need to use AE for a living and you've got a generous boss) might be to attend an instructor-led class. I did a quick search on Adobe's site for Adobe Solutions Network (ASN) Training Providers. One provides a 3 day introductory course for $850, a 2 day intermediate course for $600 and they don't have an advanced course yet. Another provider offers a 3 day course and a 3 days advanced course, each for $1295. The biggest problem I found here, though, was that there weren't any ASNs offering AE training in the UK. Also, despite the providers being Adobe-approved, there didn't seem to be any consistency in the material being covered by the providers, so you have to do a lot of research to find one that is going to meet your needs. And so to option 5 - and the subject of this review - Total Training for Adobe After Effects 6.0. Getting Your Money's Worth If you did the sums from the example training providers, you'll have found that you would be spending the better part of $1400 with one provider or $2500 with another. Keep those figures in mind for a minute. For $449, you get 13 DVDs of video-based training and 5 CDs containing the project files so that you can work along with the presenters. The running time of all of the video training exceeds forty hours! The material is broken down into four sets:<li> The Fundamentals; <li> Animation and Special Effects; <li> 3D, Expressions, Text and Design; <li> Compositing and Advanced Effects.The full course outline can be seen on Total Training's web site: <a href="http://www.totaltraining.com/store/2003/outlines/AdobeAfterEffects6.html">http://www.totaltraining.com/store/2003/outlines/AdobeAfterEffects6.html</a>. If you've previously used or owned Total Training for After Effects 5.5, you will see some overlap. Not all of the material is new for AE 6.0 because AE 6.0 isn't a completely new product. Total Training do offer an upgrade to owners of earlier versions of their products. The Presenters This product has two presenters - Brian Maffitt and Steve Holmes. Brian has been involved with After Effects since version 1 and, to be honest, it shows (in a good way!). His knowledge of AE is fantastic and his presentation style is easy going. Steve is an award-winning designer and Motion Graphics Artist. I was quite amused to see the bio text on the case finish with "... And he's a Brit!". Hmmm ... how should I take that, I wonder :wink:? Steve concentrates on the special effects side of the course and Brian does the rest. Each of them has got their own style, but they are both easy to understand and they come over as very passionate and excited about using AE. These Guys Can Teach! As a personal sacrifice and as a service to you, dear reader, I can confirm that I have watched all of the video contained within this product ... much to the dismay of my wife, who hasn't seen much of me for a while :roll:. The great thing about video-based training is that you do it at your own pace, and you can watch a segment over and over again. The pace and flow of the material from Set 1, Disc 1, all the way through to Set 4, Disc 3, is steady, logical and full of real-world examples of how you can put AE to good use. This is another point where Total Training's product wins over, say, reading Adobe's manual. The manual will explain how to use a particular feature or effect. Brian & Steve show you how to use combinations of features and effects to give you the desired end result. Sometimes, those combinations might not seem too intuitive to begin with but then, that's why you are thinking about training, eh? Throughout the material, both presenters introduce and remind you about keyboard shortcuts. If you consider yourself a power user for any software that supports keyboard shortcuts, I'm sure you know a lot of the keyboard shortcuts because they make your life easier than trying to find the option on the menu. AE is no different and, trust me, there are a lot of keyboard shortcuts! What is really good, in that respect, is that in recognition of the fact that AE is available for both the Windows and the Macintosh platforms, all keyboard shortcuts mentioned in the training are presented for both platforms. In addition, both platforms are used throughout the training for the demonstrations, confirming the OS agnostic nature of the product. <PAGEBREAK> Project Work There is no doubt in my mind that learning is best retained when reinforced with practical work. Total Training's products come with project discs to allow you to work alongside the video as it plays, and this one is no different. One thing I think that Total Training need to do, though, is to include AE project files for the finished result as well as the starting point. That way, if you struggle to match what Brian or Steve are showing you, you can always open up their version and try to compare it with yours to see where you are going wrong. Another reason why I think finished project files would be a good idea is related to the use of Adobe Illustrator by the presenters. Steve, in particular, uses Illustrator a lot to bring elements like paths into AE. Unfortunately, if you haven't got Illustrator (and I don't), it means that there will be some part of the presentations that you cannot work along with. If you have read my review of After Effects, the videos were all made by my own fair hand from projects covered in the Total Training product. To further whet your appetite, here are some more. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/caustics.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-caustics.jpg" /></a> Figure 1: Demonstration of Wave World & Caustics. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (4.5MB) <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/shatter.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-shatter.jpg" /></a> Figure 2: Demonstration of Shatter. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (14MB) <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/motiontracking.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-motiontrack.jpg" /></a> Figure 3: Motion tracking. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (16MB) Just a quick point here - motion tracking is only available in the Professional version of AE, not the Standard version. This video clip actually has two motion tracked objects - one obvious and one, perhaps, not quite so obvious. The final example I'm including also requires After Effects Professional, which is why the tools used to produce this video weren't discussed in my review. To begin with, have a look at Figure 4. If you click on this to play the movie, you'll see an animation that has been created in LightWave. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/3deffects1.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-3Deffects1.jpg" /></a> Figure 4: A 3D animation created in LightWave. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (6MB) Now click on Figure 5 to play the next movie. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but suffice to say that this was created using the video generated by LightWave plus just two stock footage files from ArtBeats. The ease with which this movie was created is down to two things - LightWave's ability to export it's footage in Rich Pixel Format (which preserves the Z position for each frame) and After Effect's Depth Matte and ID Matte effects. <a href="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/files/3deffects2.mov"><img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/colmer-ttae-3Deffects2.jpg" /></a> Figure 5: Robot in distress. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (7MB) 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 There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Total Training for After Effects is excellent value for money. You can return to it time and time again as you need to hone your skills on a particular aspect of using AE. Both Brian and Steve really know their stuff and they truly manage to convey it to the watcher. If you are serious about wanting to use After Effects in an efficient and effective manner, go out and buy this now.