With video, it is automatically going to generate the length of the comp to the length of the clip, but if you bring in still footage that can be arbitrated very differently.
Let us come up here to the Photoshop files and also the illustrator files. Now, we have a title here the Streets Title for our TV title sequence and also have a serious of photos down here, a high def background image the Golden Gate.psd and then three Photoshop layers that may come Silhouette figures that should appear in the title.
Now, in order to make the selection process easy, we are just going to make a small change here. I want you to take the Streets Title file and drag it into the Photoshop files folder.
There is a reason for this, if we select multiple clips here in the time line whether they are images or video and we generate a new composition from them, the order and which we select them can affect the way that there layer orders stock when the composition is created.
So, what I want to do in this case is make sure that Golden Gate is the background image the silhouettes and the titles appear on top of it. So, what we will do we will start out by selecting just the first silhouette, let us hold down the command key again or the control key on the PC and we will select the other two silhouettes then the Streets titles. The last thing we want to create is the Golden Gate image.
Now, let go of the command key or the control key and now drag down onto the new comp icon and we get the same log book resource second to go, but this time yes we are going to do a single composition, but we want to make sure that we are using the dimensions from the largest file.
In this case, we want to make sure we use Golden Gate as the dimension file. So, it is going to give us a full high def square pixel composition. The Still Duration is set to a default of two seconds. Now, even if we drag video in here that was longer, after effects would make a composition that was the same length of the video clip, but the Stills could automatically reset himself to just two seconds in length.
So, first you are going to highlight that value and maybe give us around six seconds to play with. So, after effects will turn the layers out to two seconds, we can specify whatever we need. Now, there is another option here, we are going to try out in just a second, but for now go ahead and click OK and again you should notice the brand new composition appears here in the project window. We have now got the high def comp the image of the Golden Gate in the background -- the titles and the three silhouettes arranged on top and they are perfectly arranged here in the time line just as we wanted to based on the way that we selected them.
Now, we have that one small option inside the dialog box to go back in tackle and for this what we are going to do, let us close up the Photoshop files for the first second and the illustrator files and if you come to the very top folder here, we have got one that is called Americons or Americons.
Okay, if you drop this down, you will see there is a series it is about 20 or 30 I think -- Photoshop files in here each one is just a white graphic on a transparent backgrounds. Do you see they are just different icons and look very cool if we could immediately create an animation that showed each one of these icons for maybe 10 or 12 frames and then cuts to the next one, but maybe with the transition between each of them. We do not need to generate a brand new comp arrange of all the layers manually and apply animation key frames to their positive values to do that.
This is actually something after effects can do automatically for you. Let us give us a try. Twill up the Photo, go back and select the folders itself the full Americons folder, drag it down onto the new comp icon. So, it is always the same is selecting the layers individually, it would work the same way. We are going to make a single composition. All of the layers have exactly the same dimension. So, which ever one of these you wish to choose, it is totally up to you, I am just going to leave it set to the default one up here at the top.
Now, the Still Duration is still set to six seconds, but we want to sequence these layers one after the other. So, we are going to make them appear for a very short space of time. In this case, just 12 frames, so I am going to change the Still Duration here so there is no seconds, but add it 12 frames at the end, but then very importantly come down here and turn on the sequence layers. Now, what this means is every layer will bring down to 12 frames and at the end of the first layer when we get the 12 frames, after effects will move the next layer.
So, it stops at 12 and it ends at 24 -- the third layer continues on from there and so on and so on and you end up with an animation of these icons is just flashing for the shortest amount of time. But I mentioned about a transition that can also be done here as well. If we turn on an overlap option, after effects gives us the ability to apply no transition if we desire or we could dissolve the front layer which simply means it will add transparency key frames for us or it could cross dissolve the front and the back layers.
But I should choose to dissolve the front layer, but very importantly we make sure we give it the right amount of transition time. Remember, the Still is 12 frames long, we certainly do not want to give it more than about five or six frames all transition.
So, and then we are going to make sure it is not one second, but I am going to bring that down pretty sure and maybe just three frames on each layer. As you go ahead and click OK, the new comp will be created for look down here in the time line and I am just going to expand the work here, we shrink it down as far as we can.
You can see the after effects is automatically arranged all the layers side by side and if we you wish to hit the space bar and play this now, you will see that the clips all play one after the other perfectly timed and each one with a transition of three frames between them.
So, a whole animation there actually created with a minimal amount of work and we did not have to apply a single key frame on cells. Now, you can click just stop play back there. Let us come back up to the project window and just twill up the photo for a second. They will notice when these comps in made after effects automatically puts them in the location that the footage came from.
So, in this case, the Vesper Americons file actually came in this folder and also if you twill up and go down to the Photoshop files, we can see that Golden Gate was created in there as well. But it might make sense to pull us out into their own location here in the project window so they not stored away ion folders and you can do that actually just by dragging it and pulling it slightly to the left. What after effects will then do is take it out of the folder it is in and put it in the main project directory.
So, again if you come up here to Americons, you cannot even see what is below so you could drag downwards. This is why dragging left actually takes care of it for you. But we just twill this up for now, you can see the two extra compositions thing created.
Now, we saw early around that you can name a composition when you create it, but we created two comps and we did not get an option to name them as we go along. Well, there is two ways we can do that.
We currently have the Vesper Americons composition here, so, maybe click over here in the comp window. If you would to press command Key or control key on the PC, that would bring out the same dialog box that we started out with, but in this case is actually relating to the composition we already have opened.
What we can do here is simply rename this one Americons say, Ok. That is now updated its name, but you can also change names in the project window itself. So, Golden Gate we have she want to change to a different name maybe Streets because that is the name of the TV series. Select the comp here and just hit return on the keyboard and after effects opens up the text field allowing you to rename it.
So, I am just going to type
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