Adobe After Effects (AE) 6 Pro is one of the most complicated programs I have had the pleasure of working with. I honestly mean pleasure, because AE6 is such a powerhouse of animation control for motion graphics and visual effects. AE comes in two flavors: Standard and Professional (which includes higher end compositing tools). Reviewed here is AE6Pro. Keep in mind, Adobe just released AE6.5… The learning never ends!

What is AE?

AE6 is a professional postproduction tool, typically fitting at the end of the video production workflow. The video production process starts with an idea. This concept is usually planned out by using a storyboard, developing a script, organizing a shoot list, finding talent, etc. Once all the footage is recorded (and rerecorded… take 18!), a video editor puts the shots in the right sequence using a non-linear editing tool like Adobe Premiere (see the November 2004 issue of PC Alamode). Once the video production is in an edited state, it’s AE6’s time to shine! AE is all about visual effects and animation.

Postproduction is really just a narrow (if common) example of what AE6 can be used for. Ever since version 5, AE has been capable of exporting to the Macromedia Flash format – a ubiquitous multimedia format used heavily on the web for interactive animated presentations . Many cartoons are also animated with AE. Because of the way effects remain editable in AE, it is also being used more and more by graphics artists who work in print! One niche AE has really corned is title sequences in movies and movie trailers.

In order to most effectively export the Flash format from AE, it is best to stick to vector graphics. Vector graphics are illustrations that are described by a mathematical formula, and are said to be resolution independent, and are generally highly editable. This means that changes to image size (measures how tall and wide a graphic is) and resolution (measures how much data is packed into a given unit of measurement – two common sizes would be 72 pixels per inch (ppi) for images displayed on a monitor; and 300ppi for images that are going to be printed) do not significantly change file size. File size is important when transferring data over the Internet – bigger files take longer to download.

Another common graphics format is the bitmap, also known as a raster graphic. This format is basically a grid of pixels (the smallest editable unit, basically a square of any color). Think of a tile mosaic – when you look up close, individual colored tiles are visible (pixels); when you look at the same mosaic from far away, the tiles blend together to give the illusion of continuous tones. The raster format is said to be resolution dependant, because changes to image size and resolution significantly change the file size. Changes made to raster graphics tend to degrade the image, one of the other big downsides to using this format. The raster format is designed for showing complex gradients, where many variations of the same color create the same effect described in the tile mosaic. This representation is perfect for photographs.

Print artists use both vector and raster graphics, but in AE effects are all vector. This means that effects like adding blur, changing transform (change to scale, rotation, skew), and so on remain editable so the artist can easily go back and endlessly tweak all of the effects in a composition. In Adobe Photoshop, there are some effects that are vector based (located at the bottom of the layers palette in the shape of an ‘F’ icon), but the more powerful ones (in the Filter menu) are rasterized into the image. This prevents the image from being tweaked as readily. Print artists constantly have to make copies of their design elements as they experiment with what combination of Filters (and at what values) will produce the desired effect. If the experiment fails, either undo a bunch of times or trash the layer and start the sequence of Filters again with a fresh copy of the design element. Not so in AE! One simply opens the project, finds the Effect Controls palette and makes the change to the appropriate effect.

Once really nice thing about doing this in AE is that when you physically click on a different design element, the same Effect Controls palette updates with a list of all the effects applied to that particular element. It might take some getting used to, but each effect builds on the previous. This means you get different results when applying the same series of effects in a different order. To take it a step further, you can simply drag an effect up and down the Effect Controls stack, mixing and matching the order (and even visibility) of individual effects! No wonder more and more graphics artists are using AE for print projects.

One of my favorite movie title sequences that was created using AE is for the movie Seven, starring Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman as homicide detectives and Kevin Spacey as the killer. Kyle Cooper of Imaginary Forces created a symbolic depiction of the whole story in the span of just a few minutes. The fastidious madness of the killer is perfectly foreshadowed in the opening credit sequence, which builds a sense of macabre intrigue that both repels and attracts the audience. All this using only text, images and video clips…

How Does AE Work?

Many people have compared AE to Photoshop for video. This is a relatively good comparison for people who use image-editing programs… but AE goes way beyond that. First image stills (like .JPG, .TIF, .PSD – which come with layers, masks, effects intact), video clips and audio are imported into the AE Project window. These elements can be managed in a huge number of clever ways, including color labels, storage bins and sorting features.

These elements are put together in the Timeline Window, which has Layers (like image editing programs) and allows video artists to create changes over time. Key Frames (a point in time that records when and how a particular edit occurs) manage these changes. Layers are used to control stacking order (how elements appear to be in front of or behind other elements) and to isolate individual elements.

Next, Compositions (Comps), the basic building block of AE projects, are created. Comps each have their own properties (like audio, timeline, transformational properties like scale, rotation, skew, etc., effects, masks, and so on). These properties can be edited without affecting other elements. Comps can also be placed inside other Comps, called Nested Comps. A textbook example (from Brian Maffit’s Total Training for AE video series) would be to make a rolling car. One Comp would be of a tire spinning, by animating the rotation property… we’ll call this Comp “Wheels”. The Wheels Comp is then nested into another Comp of the body of the car. The Wheels Comp would then need to be duplicated, since there is more than one wheel on a car. Because AE uses instances, not copies, we could go back to the Wheels Comp and speed up or slow down the spinning tires, and all tires in the Car Comp are updated! Changes you make to a Comp are reflected whereever an instance of the Comp appears.

Once the right effects are achieved, the project is then exported to the desired format. This can be anything from a single still, to a video clip optimized for the Internet or a Macromedia Flash movie. Other output options include broadcast video for NTSC (U.S. broadcast standard), PAL (European broadcast standard), DV and HDTV.

New Features in AE6

AE6 has a number of amazing new features. Following Adobe Photoshop’s lead, AE6 now comes with a brush palette and brushes, including controls for brush dynamics. Because these brushes are vector-based, you can edit strokes at any time. Brushes work in this way due to another new feature in AE6, the Vector Paint Engine. Brushes and the Vector Paint Engine allow you to do things like touch up video footage, create effects over time and rotoscoping (a technique in which images are placed in a scene, one frame at a time – a laborious process when one considers that it takes somewhere between 24 and 30 frames to make up a single second of finished video!).

Fortunately, there is a new Clone tool, which works very much like it does in Adobe Photoshop – this can make rotoscoping a little more manageable, plus gives video artists unprecedented freedom with editing single or multiple frames and/or layers of video.

AE6 also has an enhanced Text Tool, which gives animators unheard of control over text. In previous versions, text had to be broken up letter by letter for certain effects. Now, the Text Selector allows users to define which individual character will inherit what effect!

Another awesome tool is the new Motion Tracker. This allows one element to match the camera movement of another element. An example of this would be if one wanted to set up a special effect of a helicopter flying overhead. Instead of renting the whirly bird, one could either purchase stock footage or use a program like 3d Studio MAX to model and animate a helicopter. Video could be shot on location to serve as the background, where the videographer would have to imagine the path of the helicopter (this is where scripting and storyboarding really pay off!). In AE, the two pieces of footage are merged. The Motion Tracker makes matching the helicopter footage with the motion of the camera from the background footage a breeze.

AE is a resource intensive program. The bare minimum requirements are for a Pentium III processor, 128Mb of RAM and 150Mb of hard disc space for the typical install. It really would be worthwhile to have a multithread processor, about a Gigabyte of RAM and a hard drive disc array. You can never have too much hard drive space when capturing and editing digital video. Performance is much better than in previous versions, especially when previewing Comps. This is due largely to the new OpenGL architecture used to drive AE. There are also many tweaks to the user interface and much tighter integration with the other products Adobe offers. AE6 is certainly at the top of the list for any motion graphics professional in terms of power, features and performance.

I started using AE4 about three years ago. Unlike the other software I teach, which I use constantly in my freelance work, I learned AE specifically to teach it at San Antonio College (SAC). I had experience using Adobe Premiere, Macromedia Flash and 3D Studio MAX, so I thought the learning curve wouldn’t be so steep. AE has such a huge toolset that in the three years I have worked with it, I have touched but a small portion. The learning curve is quite steep!

Don’t let that last comment scare you. While steep, AE is also intuitive, especially for people who have experience using Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator. While the interface is very detailed with what seems like a million buttons, sliders, toggles, twirlies and text input fields, the workspace is very easy to customize and manage. If the sheer volume of controls is overwhelming, the amazingly realistic effects that can be generated quite easily will inspire you to continue. The secret to mastering such a complex program is to take it one step at a time, drill the same thing until you got it, and to keep practicing. I have spent a lot of time studying AE and I will be reviewing some excellent training resources from Total Training, Peach Pit’s Hands on Training series and one of my favorite multimedia artists, Angie Taylor.