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undiscoverable menu commands in After Effects

I just saw a message that referred to the "top 6 undiscoverable menu commands" in After Effects. I thought that I might be able to make them a bit more discovered (if not more discoverable) by broadcasting a short message telling y'all about them.

View > Look at Selected Layers
This is handy for orienting a 3D view to look at selected layers. It's otherwise too easy to get lost in a huge 3D world, not really knowing where you're looking.

Layer > Mask > Hide Locked Masks
This works well with Layer > Mask > Lock Other Masks. To isolate one mask, you can lock other masks and then hide locked masks.

Layer > Mask and Shape Paths > Free Transform Points
Free-transforming a set of path points (vertices) is a way to scale, position, or rotate a set of vertices together.

Composition > Crop Comp To Region Of Interest
The value of this should be obvious... once you know that it exists.

Layer > Transform > Fit To...
You can scale a layer in many ways, including fitting the layer to the composition's height or width, preserving the layer's original image aspect ratio.

View > View Options
You can toggle which layer controls (light wireframes, layer handles, mask and shape paths, effect control points, motion path controls) to show in a view.

Comments

Hi Todd,

I'm sure a lot of users will find this useful. it always surprises me how many menu items get missed by folks!

The other one that many people seem to miss is Layer > Transform > Auto-Orient . . . To make a layer rotate to face the direction of a motion path.

cheers,

Angie

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