Beginning a New Project

Transcription

1 3 Beginning a New Project Introducing Projects 000 Creating and Naming a Project 000 Importing Assets 000 Importing Photoshop Documents 000 Importing Illustrator Documents 000 Importing QuickTime Movies 000 Importing a Folder Containing Various File Types 000 Creating Folders 000 Animations, motion graphics, and visual effects often require a large number of individual images to make up the finished piece. For example, a typical title sequence for a film or video includes multiple layers of text, video, and moving textures. When creating these kinds of pieces with programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, you d store all the artwork for a picture either on multiple layers or flattened inside a single layer. Adobe After Effects 7 is different in that it keeps art, video, and audio elements separate, allowing you to combine different kinds of elements in unrestricted ways. This is why an After Effects document is called a project, since it is more than a simple file. As you learned in Chapter 2, Understanding the Workspace, the Project panel is where After Effects 7 stores references to all the footage and image elements for your project. This panel helps you organize the images, movies, audio tracks, and compositions used by your project. In this chapter, you ll learn exactly what a project is, and you ll see how to set up a project, import images, and organize items using the tools provided in After Effects 7. Setting up and organizing a project is the first step toward creating animations in After Effects 7 and is necessary for properly managing and using the media you import. 26 After Effects 7 : H O T

2 Introducing Projects An After Effects 7 project is a single file containing references to all the images, video, and audio files you ll need for your work. A reference is a pointer to the location of a file on your hard drive. After Effects 7 uses references instead of copying the images, video, and audio files into the project file. Your project knows where to find the files it needs because After Effects automatically creates the reference to the files when you import them into After Effects 7. In After Effects 7, all images, video, and audio elements any media that After Effects 7 uses inside a project are your footage. These elements are also often called assets. In addition to holding references to footage, the project holds one or more compositions you create in After Effects 7. You ll learn about compositions in detail in Chapter 4, Creating a Composition. For now, think of compositions as the editing environment in which all the action happens. You can t edit inside the Project panel. The project merely holds all the footage and compositions making up the product you re creating. The project can contain more footage and compositions than appear in the final product, though. For example, as you probably know, in live-action filmmaking, a shot is the viewpoint from a single camera that is edited into a film. In After Effects 7, you can think of a shot in the same way. You can create many versions, or takes, of the same shot and keep all the takes in one project file. This is valuable when working with clients; for instance, you can automatically maintain a record of exactly what you do in each take during the course of a project or easily show multiple versions of the same assignment. When you save a project in After Effects 7, you are saving the project and its compositions, not the individual footage. In other words, each time you save in After Effects 7, you re saving the reference to where all your footage resides on your hard drive, and you re saving the updated composition files. For this reason, projects have small file sizes, whereas the footage items they reference might be huge. If you see an asterisk, save your project! Because saving is so important, After Effects 7 puts an asterisk by the file name whenever the project has not been saved since a new change was made, as shown in the illustration here. Finally, you can have only one project can be open at a time. Closing a project will close all the project s assets that are open in various panel and leave only the empty panels on the screen. NOTE: Working on the Motorcycle-Themed Project Throughout this book, you will be working with a series of motorcycle-themed files, which you will use to create a project for a fictional motorcycle company. Additional exercises and media will also illustrate a variety of topics. By following the exercises in this book, you will be able assemble your own commercial and export the finished piece to DVD or the Web. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 27

3 EXERCISE 1 Creating and Naming a Project Setting up a project in After Effects 7 is quite simple. In this exercise, you ll create your first project and learn how to save the project. Creating a new project is the first step toward constructing any animations, motion graphics, and visual effects you create in After Effects 7. 1 Copy the chap_03 folder from the After Effects 7 HOT CD-ROM onto your desktop. 2 Launch After Effects 7. If necessary, create a new project by choosing File > New > New Project. When you open After Effects 7, in most cases an Untitled Project.aep project appears, with the project name displayed at the top of the application window. The project is untitled because you haven t saved it yet. The Project panel holding your footage and compositions displays in the upper-left corner of the screen. Right now it is empty because you haven t imported any footage or created any compositions. 3 Choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, navigate to your desktop. Click the New Folder button (Mac) or the Create New Folder icon (Windows). Name the folder AE7_HOT_Projects, and click Create. The AE7_HOT_Projects folder is where you will be instructed to store all the exercises you work on in this book. Saving your exercises in this folder is important so you don t write over the originals. 4 With the Save As dialog box still open, navigate to the AE7_HOT_Projects folder you just created. Name the file Moto_Project.aep, and click Save. 5 Leave Moto_Project.aep open for the next exercise. You ve now successfully created your first project and saved it. It s time to import footage into your project. You ll learn how to do this next. 28 After Effects 7 : H O T

4 Importing Assets As stated earlier, the images, video, and audio tracks you use in a project are the footage, or assets, of your project. Think of assets as valuable items necessary to create new compositions. Given how long it can take to create images, video, or sounds, assets truly live up to their name. Remember, when you import assets into After Effects 7, you don t actually copy and paste the files into your project. With the import process, After Effects 7 creates references inside your project to files residing on your hard drive. In the following exercises, you will learn to import several types of footage into your new After Effects 7 project. Each type of footage has its own characteristics, and After Effects 7 offers many options to take advantage of various file formats. After Effects 7 is a forgiving program. It will import almost any format PSD, TIF, EPS, AIF, WAV, MOV, AVI, and so on. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 29

5 EXERCISE 2 Importing Photoshop Documents Photoshop files are one type of document that is commonly used in After Effects 7 projects. The main advantage of Photoshop files is their ability to utilize transparency, as well as multiple layers of images, organized in a single file. In this exercise, you will learn how to import a series of Photoshop files (which have been provided for you). Although this exercise provides an introductory look at bringing Photoshop files into an After Effects 7 project, you will learn additional ways to work with Photoshop files as you progress through the book. 1 If you followed the previous exercise, Moto_Project.aep should still be open in After Effects 7. If it s not, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click Moto_Project_2.aep to select it, and click Open. 2 Choose File > Import > File. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop. Click the Moto_Scene folder to open it, and click Landscape_1.psd. Hold down the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows), and click the Palm_Tree.psd, Motorcycle.psd, and Sky_Background_1.psd files. When you have selected all the files, release the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows). Be sure the Import As popup menu is set to Footage, and click Open. Note: In addition to using the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows) to select files that are not adjacent to each other, you can hold down the Shift key to select multiple files that are next to each other in the same folder. This is referred to as a contiguous selection. 3 For each item containing multiple layers, you ll see an import prompt box, as shown in the illustration here. Click OK for each item to choose the default settings. Because some of the Photoshop files you are importing contain multiple layers, you will see this import prompt box asking you whether you want to use merged layers with this file. Clicking OK tells After Effects 7 to flatten all the layers. Congratulations! You just imported your first assets! Note: You will learn how to work with more complex layered Photoshop files in future chapters. 30 After Effects 7 : H O T

6 4 Click inside a blank area of the Project panel to deselect the PSD files, and then widen the Project panel by clicking between the intersection of the Project panel and the Composition panel and dragging. This allows you to observe the additional information available. Also, you can click any of the column headings in the Project panel (Name, Label, Type, Size, Duration, or File Path) to sort the project s files by those criteria. You ll try this next. 5 Click the Size column name, and notice how the items in the Project panel rearrange themselves according to size, biggest to smallest. Narrow the Project panel to return it to a smaller view by clicking between the intersection of the Project panel and the Composition panel and dragging. 6 Click the Name column to select it; notice that the files now appear alphabetically. 7 Choose File > Save, or press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Leave Moto_Project.aep open for the next exercise. The asterisk at the top of the application window goes away as soon as you save the file. Again, the asterisk is a handy message from After Effects 7 to remind you to save your work; take advantage of it! Note: You can import Photoshop files in many ways, including with the capability to use all the layers of a file. Before you learn to import this way, you ll need to understand what a composition is. You ll learn about this in Chapter 4, Creating a Composition. NOTE: Locating Your Footage After Effects 7 is pretty powerful when it comes to locating footage on your hard drive. Even if you move or rename footage after you ve quit the program, After Effects 7 can often locate it without much effort on your part. If you ever want to give your After Effects 7 project to a client or co-worker, a handy feature lets you collect all the footage into one neat folder. You ll learn how to do this in Chapter 20, Rendering Final Movies. Meanwhile, what do you do if After Effects 7 can t find your footage? For example, say you move some files on your hard drive without realizing that they are being used in an After Effects 7 project. In this case, the files will appear in your Project panel as empty reference links (the thumbnail previews disappear), and a placeholder item containing color bars will appear, along with the names in italics. To fix the broken links, just double-click the name of an unlinked footage item to open the Import File dialog box. Navigate to the lost footage on your hard drive, click Open, and After Effects 7 will reconnect the link. If other unlinked footage items appear in the Project panel and they are in the same location on your hard drive as the first item you reconnected, After Effects 7 will automatically reconnect them as well. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 31

7 EXERCISE 3 Importing Illustrator Documents Illustrator files are great to work with in After Effects 7. That s because they are vector based and resolution independent, unlike Photoshop files. In other words, if you zoom into an Illustrator file during an animation, it will stay crisp and in focus. A Photoshop file would get progressively pixilated, depending on how much you zoomed into the artwork. For this reason, After Effects 7 and Illustrator work really well together. Importing Illustrator files is quite simple, as you ll learn in this exercise. Although you could import Illustrator documents using the same method of importing you used in the previous exercise, you ll practice a different method of importing here. Note: Unfortunately, the support for Macromedia FreeHand, CorelDRAW, or other vector-based applications is not as good as for Adobe tools. If you re not an Illustrator user, save the file as an EPS and import it that way. Sadly, you lose the advantage of working with layers this way. 1 If you followed the previous exercise, Moto_Project.aep should still be open in After Effects 7. If it s not, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click Moto_Project_3.aep to select it, and click Open. 2 In a blank area of the Project panel, Ctrl+click (Mac) or right-click (Windows). From the contextual menu, choose Import > File to open the Import File dialog box. This is another method of accessing the Import command. Some users find this method faster and easier than choosing File > Import > Import File. Another method is to simply double-click in an empty area of the Project panel to launch the Import File dialog box. 3 In the Import File dialog box, navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop. Click the Illustrator_File folder to open it. Click Palm_Tree_Vector.ai, and click Open. 32 After Effects 7 : H O T

8 4 In the import prompt box, click OK to accept the Merged Layers option and the Footage Dimensions setting of Layer Size. After Effects 7 includes the capability to choose the footage dimension of Layer Size or Document Size for a layer. For now, this decision is unimportant, and its significance is lost until you learn to work with compositions (Chapter 4, Creating a Composition ) and to set keyframe properties (Chapter 5, Creating Keyframes and Animation in the Timeline ). Notice this adds the Illustrator file to the Project panel, and the asterisk in the application window s title bar indicates you have changed your project and have not yet saved it. 5 Choose File > Save, or press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Leave Moto_Project.aep open for the next exercise. In this exercise, you imported an Illustrator file. The process is similar to importing Photoshop files and other still images with multiple layers. In the next exercise, you will import an Apple QuickTime file that consists of video (a series of moving images). Although video files do not contain layers in the same way Photoshop or Illustrator files do, they can contain transparent areas (these transparent areas, or alpha channels, will be discussed throughout the book), and therefore After Effects 7 treats them a little differently. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 33

9 EXERCISE 4 Importing QuickTime Movies QuickTime movies (the standard video format on a Mac) and AVIs (the standard video format in Windows) are easy to import into an After Effects 7 project. The efficiency and portability of these file types are truly time-savers when working with moving images because these movie files contain a sequence of images in one neat package. In this exercise, you ll learn how to import QuickTime movies. 1 If you followed the previous exercise, Moto_Project.aep should still be open in After Effects 7. If it s not, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click Moto_Project_4.aep to select it, and click Open. 2 In a blank area of the Project panel, Ctrl+click (Mac) or right-click (Windows). From the contextual menu, choose Import > File to open the Import File dialog box. 3 Navigate to the chap_03 you copied to your desktop. Click the Moto_Scene folder to open it. Click the Motorcycle.mov file. Hold down the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows), and click Smoke.mov to multiple-select the QuickTime files, and click Open. This adds the QuickTime footage to your Project panel. Note: Using the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows) allows you to select multiple files that are not next to each other in the same folder. This is referred to as a discontiguous selection. In this case, making a discontiguous selection is useful because you want to select only the QuickTime files from the list of available files. You have now added the QuickTime footage to your Project panel. 4 In the Project panel, click a blank area to deselect the files you just imported. In the Project panel, double-click Motorcycle.mov, and press the spacebar. Double-clicking opens the Motorcycle.mov file, and pressing the spacebar plays the movie. If you double-click any of the footage you ve imported so far, you can view it in its own preview panel. 34 After Effects 7 : H O T

10 5 Close the Motorcycle.mov file by clicking the Close button in the upper-left corner (Mac) or the upper-right corner (Windows) of the preview panel. Notice once more the asterisk in the application window s title bar, which indicates you have changed your project and have not yet saved it. 6 Choose File > Save, or press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Leave Moto_Project.aep open for the next exercise. In the previous few exercises, you imported individual files one at a time. Next, you will learn how to import multiple files in a folder at one time, which is a real time-saver. NOTE: What Are QuickTime Movies and AVIs? Think of a QuickTime movie or an AVI file as an extremely handy container. Rather than having many different image files and a separate audio file, a QuickTime movie or AVI file allows you to place all the frames (individual images that are a part of a sequence, which makes up the completed movie) and synchronized audio into one neat package. With the QuickTime Player or Windows Media Player installed on your computer, a single QuickTime or AVI file will play hundreds or thousands of images with synchronous sound. Numerous settings are available for these file types, and I ll cover many options throughout this book. If you are working on a Mac, you will use QuickTime files. If you are working in Windows, the standard video format is AVI, although Windows users can also use QuickTime files (make certain to download the free QuickTime Player application if you haven t already done so). The files created for each format are similar to each other and function in the same way. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 35

11 EXERCISE 5 Importing a Folder Containing Various File Types In the previous few exercises, you imported Photoshop, Illustrator, and QuickTime files separately. But you don t have to work this way. Instead, you can choose to import many different file types at once, and After Effects 7 will figure out what type of files are being imported automatically. In this exercise, you ll learn how to delete the files you ve imported thus far from the Project panel and import all the files in one fell swoop. 1 If you followed the previous exercise, Moto_Project.aep should still be open in After Effects 7. If it s not, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click Moto_Project_5.aep to select it, and click Open. 2 In the Project panel, press Cmd+A (Mac) or Ctrl+A (Windows) to select all the files. Press the Delete key to delete the selected files. When prompted, click Delete to confirm you really want to delete the references to these files. Note: Remember, you are deleting only the references to these files from the After Effects 7 project. The original files are still on your hard drive. 3 In a blank area of the Project panel, Ctrl+click (Mac) or right-click (Windows). From the contextual menu, choose Import > File to open the Import File dialog box. Note: Again, you can also double-click an empty area of the Project panel to automatically open the Import File dialog box. 36 After Effects 7 : H O T

12 4 Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click the Moto_Scene folder to select it, and click the Import Folder button. Click OK as needed to accept the merged layer versions of the files. When you import a folder into the Project panel, all the files will appear within the same folder you selected on your hard drive. Tip: Click the arrow to the left of the folder name to reveal the folder contents. Another neat feature of importing the folder is being able to organize your content so you can find it more easily. As you progress with your project, you may need hundreds of files in the Project panel. Using folders is a great way to stay organized. 5 Choose File > Save, or press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Leave Moto_Project.aep open for the next exercise. Opening the different types of files in separate exercises gave you the opportunity to focus on each file type; however, in reality, importing all the footage at once, as you did in this exercise, is much faster. Next, you ll learn how to create a folder, which helps you organize the files in your Project panel. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 37

13 EXERCISE 6 Creating Folders By creating folders and organizing project assets in the Project panel, you can access footage in a way that makes the most sense to you. For example, you could create separate folders for your Illustrator files, your QuickTime movies and AVIs, and your compositions. You might also choose to create a final folder for your finished compositions or an old folder for footage you no longer need. This is a great way to organize footage; in fact, it can be really helpful when you have a deadline and you re desperately looking for files you need immediately. In this exercise, you ll learn two different methods of creating folders. 1 If you followed the previous exercise, Moto_Project.aep should still be open in After Effects 7. If it s not, choose File > Open Project. Navigate to the chap_03 folder you copied to your desktop, click Moto_Project_6.aep to select it, and click Open. 2 Choose File > New > New Folder. This creates a new folder inside the Project panel. The folder name will be highlighted and ready to accept a new name. 3 In the Project panel, type Stills, and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to name the folder. Note: If you need to rename the folder for any reason, select the folder, and press the Return key (Mac) or Enter key (Windows). This allows you to type a new name. 4 In the Project panel, click Landscape_1.psd. Hold down the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows), and click each of the other PSD files in the list to multiple-select the remaining Photoshop files. When you have selected all the files, drag the files to the Stills folder. Tip: You can click the arrow to the left of the Stills folder to hide or show the contents of the folder. 38 After Effects 7 : H O T

14 5 Click the arrow next to Stills to view its contents and verify you dragged the Photoshop files to the right place. Click the arrow next to Stills again to hide its contents. 6 At the bottom of the Project panel, click the Create a new Folder icon. Clicking the Create a new Folder icon is another way to create a new folder. 7 In the Project panel, type Movies, and press Return (Mac) or Enter (Windows) to name the folder. 8 In the Project panel, click the Motorcycle.mov file. Hold down the Cmd key (Mac) or Ctrl key (Windows), and click Smoke.mov to multiple-select the QuickTime files. Drag the files to the Movies folder. The project is now much more nicely organized. You have a Stills folder containing all your Photoshop files and a Movies folder containing all your movies. 9 In the Project panel, select the Moto_Scene folder, and press the Delete key to remove it. You no longer need this folder, so getting rid of it further tidies up your workspace. 10 Choose File > Save, or press Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows). Choose File > Close. In this chapter, you practiced naming and saving a new project, importing footage, and organizing your footage. You ve now successfully completed everything you need to do to set up, organize, and import footage assets into your first project! You ll learn some of the deeper nuances of using the Project panel as you work through the later exercises in this book. If you feel ready, continue to the next chapter to learn all about compositions or feel free to pick the book up again after taking a break. Chapter 3 : Beginning a New Project 39