Hi guys and welcome to your first Effect.
The purpose of this lecture is not only to show you the effect but to show you how effects work in aftereffect.
They're pretty simple.
As soon as you get the concept a bit at least you'll be able to play with all the effects that aftereffects
has.
Just a word of warning not all effects will work with you.
Some of them will be hard to play with and hard to apply and some of them you will not see anything
on the screen and some of them require solid layers and other kind of layers
So let's start.
The first thing we want.
Like we said in the previous lecture, is a composition just come to the button here and click Create
a new composition.
Now we want the same parameters we are going to put the name let's say visual for visual effects the
slight effect is OK and choose also HDTV 720 By 25 .
you can come to the menu if you don't have it and choose it over here and it will give us a composition
of 12 80 by 720 that's fine.
The frame rate you can't care less but the duration here.
Make sure you type at 500.
Let's leave the background color to black.
We click OK and here we are we have our first composition and we notice that a composition has
been created.
It's called visual effects.
We want now to put some text. Come to the T here in your toolbar.
OK you click on it and then you come in the middle of your composition somewhere you click and let's
write a visual choose your selection tool.
If you notice the character panel has opened it should open with you.
So what I would like you to do if you have a different font.
Please make it uppercase or all caps and make it bold.
We need that.
Then you can make it big and small the way you want by doing like this let me show you.
Come to the TT here.
The font size and your cursor will turn into a small hand as a finger up and two arrows.
You click on it and you can scrub up or down.
Just scrubbing and you will get the size the way you want fine.
Now you have put the size what you want to do is to put the effects. Come to window and go to effects
and preset click on it make sure it is ticked.
If you are already ticked you will see here the Effects & Presets
Now there are so many effects and preset here that it's impossible to know what is what for now.
Later on you will become very familiar with this come to the search here.
Just click inside and write a ball and you will find all the presets and the effects that have a ball
inside them inside the name.
But we want a simulation board.
Click on it.
Now you can click and drag.
You can either drop it on the player inside the composition viewer or come to your layer inside the
timeline here and drop it.
I want to drop it here.
It is nicer.
You notice how it made the square around and two bars to show you that this is there where you are going
to put your effect.
So let's release the mouse and it immediately takes effect.
That's good.
Now what happened exactly.
Notice that visual here nothing change.
I don't see anything in my layer but a panel has opened.
This is the effects controls panel. it is here opening on the layer called visual If you click on it you can see the
layer visual on there and then its visual effects and it's a layer visual fine.
Now we have the name of the effect here and you have several parameters like scatter rotation ball size
and so on.
Most of them have stopwatches.
When you see a stopwatch it means you can keyframe it means you can have an animation before we start
animating.
Let's look at these parameters.
Now most of the effects are the same.
You have the name of their effect and then you have parameters.
Sometimes you have group of parameters it gets complicated.
This is a very simple one.
Let's look at scatter.
I can come and click when the mouse has become a hand with double arrows click and scrub it to the right
or to the left and you notice what's happening.
You can see the effect.
Exactly what is happening to the effect.
That's about Scatter.
If I want to reset it all I have to do is to point at the parameter.
In this case cutter.
Right click and say reset goes back to its initial value when you dropped the effect on the layer.
Now we have a rotation axis.
This is a choice.
Lastly with the X-axis you have a rotation and to rotate it here you have the full rotation.
The first one zero times are the full reiterations and here the 0.0 degree is the angle
that you want to have.
If I click and scrub through you notice you are working already in 3D and that is pretty amazing already.
See how you can even create an animation comes from here to here.
Things like this. I will right click and say reset.
Lets look at the twist property.
Also you have some choices here you can make.
Nevertheless let's
Keep it on x axis.
Then you have the twist angle full rotations and the degrees here.
I can click and write for example 90 degrees.
Here are are I have a twist. More interesting if I click and drag.
I notice how it is twisting the layer very nicely.
That will be a nice animation comes from here to here for example.
Not the ascribing left and right and is changing the values I want to reset it right click and say reset.
So now together we are exploring this effect and that's what you should do.
Sometimes you get nothing.
Be careful.
Now there is the grid spacing here.
If I take it up I notice that it's giving me some funny big balls and it's quite nice by the way.
If you start from here to here actually zero is normal.
Let's put this one to three. So you put it at 3.
What I did is to click on it and type 3.
Now the ball size that's going to be interesting if I click and scrub down so the value is down now.
Actually I'm having something pretty interesting here.
That is cool fine.
This is very beautiful.
Now you already have a visual effect or an effect on your text.
There was no need to do much just take the CC Ball drop it in change a value of grid spacing and ball
size and you really have something amazing.
Let's create an animation.
Let's go to one second do click on your current time indicator and you drag to 1 second.
It will really snap a bit.
You'll see one second here.
Let's take the scatter and take it to the maximum.
It's going to go very big.
I can click in and write 1000.
So it has totally.
Now I would click on the stopwatch.
Unfortunately when you click on the stopwatch it will not show anything in your timeline.
What you have to do for the effects come to your timeline.
Click on the layer and press the you key and here you are.
You can start seeing your keyframes the keyframe has been created here.
When I clicked on the stopwatch where the time line indicator was I click on the time line indicator.
Drag it to the beginning come to scatter and put it back to zero.
So now to run our animation and see our work we can come to preview and click on the play stop or we
can press spacebar and it will play.
I will press spacebar and here you are.
You have a very nice animation of course is a very simple animation but it will give you a notion of
how visual effects work.
Let's press the spacebar again and have some fun here.
Of course you can come and change the color of the text you go to characters you change it to.
For example blue and your animation is still rallying and the colors have changed. Cool that's wonderful
if you come to the keyframe here and try to change the value of the grid spacing for example run my animation
is always the same.
Beautiful.
So what I would like you to do is to go to after effects big CC Ball from the effects & presets
and drop it on your text layer.
You can drop it on a shape layer if you like it will have the same effect and nicer and come and mess up
with all these parameters.
The purpose of this is for you to you know get somehow familiar with the effects so an effect is applied
to a layer and then the act itself has several parameters.
Some of them can be keyframe in case.
all of them and some of them will not be able to keyframe they're just a choice.
And then you can create an animation using the keyframe like we have seen in this lecture and the lecture
before or couple of lectures before.
So thank you very much for listening.
This was an introduction about visual effects.
It's very interesting.
I encourage you to come and play with CC ball action and then return to the course and we continue
together.
See you in the next lecture.