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After Effects Tutorial: Reusing bits and nesting

I've had this comp kind of worked out for some time, but haven't had the time to write it up. Given that it's pretty easy, I've decided to let it out and hopefully get you intruiged and dive into After Effects a bit.  If nothing else, use the attached project file and substitue your own footage or stills.

Basically, this animation is a study in realizing that you can use things more than once. For example, all five of the columns are just five instances of a single comp.  Also of note, is the simple use of track mattes that allow you an easy way to create a mask or shape for your elements to conform in.  For example, each of the pictures is bigger than the bit of screen they occupy - it's done with track mattes.

Finally, a lot of beginners don't get the concept of 'nesting comps.'  This concept is really quite simple. You take a composition with many layers and drag it into another comp where it becomes a single layer like anything else.  If you apply a blur to your layer (comp) that is in another composition, all of the layers will be affected.  Much more efficient than applying a blur to 12 independent layers right?!?

So, take a look and hopefully learn something from it.

After Effects Tutorial

Posted by Dennis Radeke on October 3, 2008 4:51 PM |

Comments

Dennis,

Thanks for the post.
Fun little project to play around with.
You saw rectangles, I saw circles.
Take a look: http://www.zfxstudios.com/

Best,
James Wicks

[DR - Hey thanks for the blog mention. Nice little animation!]

Posted by: James Wicks | October 11, 2008 11:32 AM

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