AfterEffects: Lesson 1

In this lesson I used after effects for the first time. 

We started off with a task to create a planet graphic with the sun and the earth.

We started a new project (HDTV 1080 25) and made a new composition (remembering to save the file so that it doesn't get lost) 

In the composition we made a new shape layer and added a yellow circle. On the right we added a fractal noise effect(with hard light blending mode). This added texture to the shape. 

We then used alt+leftclick to add an 'expression' to the rotation of this effect. The expression was time*100 which made the texture rotate throughout the animation.

We then added a glow to the sun by duplicating the layer and adding a gaussian blur. 

Then we precomposed the sun , which is somewhat similar to creating symbols in animate. Since you are able to edit the precomposition and it will change in the composition that it is in.

We then clicked the area of interest button, which is at the bottom of the composition window and is a box within a box. This allows you to set the size of the workspace since you can do composition>crop to region and it will remove the unnecessary space. This will not change how the precomp looks like in the main composition. 

We then created the earth by creating another circle and adding some smaller shapes to it with the pen tool. We could turn these shapes into masks using the add button then add a merge paths (exclude intersections) to cut the shapes out. I just drew the shapes on top by accident so I didn't need to do this. 

We then renamed the shapes and added fractal noise to the planet. (Rocky fractal noise for the continents). We also added a glow to the planet in the same way as the sun and adjusted the region of interest. 

After this we made sure that the anchors for the shapes were in the middle by clicking Y and then using ctrl to click the anchor point. Then we added the earth to the planet compostion and made it's parent be the sun.

Next we added rotation to the sun and earth using expressions, then created a moon which would be a child of the earth. The child will follow the movement of the parent.

We added shadows using solid layers with 90% opacity and masks. For the moon's shadow we had to add an expression which cancels out the rotation of the earth 

-thisComp.Layer("Planet").transform.rotation

There is also an option to 'Pickwhip' this expression using the swirly line and attaching it to the rotatoion of the planet. Then adding a - before the expression.

We then precomposed everything and added the space background. We duplicated the planet precomp in the project files since we added a lighten blending mode to the first one so that the shadows would blend in. 

We disabled the shadows on this second precomp, and added a levels effect to lower the brightness. 

We also added a bloom effect to the first precomp to make it brighter. 

After making another prefab we could then animate some text on top. 

We added a new text layer, animated it's scale then added ease in to the second frame. 

We added camera lens blur effect to the text and animated the radius.

And finally we added a subtle scale animation to the planet layer.

There were also bonus tasks to add a CC lightsweep to the text or to duplicate the text and make a mask animation.

After this we got a chance to make our own individual motion graphic. I made a plant which grew, inspired by a similar animation. However AfterEffects crashed and I hadn't saved it properly so I lost my work. 

To create this animation I added a shape and animated it to change from a rain drop sort of shape into a more plant like shape (Bushesand flowers) I then added a plant pot and animated them falling from the sky and then turning into the plant. I also animated the colours. I had also given everything fractal noise effects to give them some texture as well as adding shadows.