I have After Effects but don't know how to use it...where is a good place to start? I have the turorial by Adobe, but even that seems a bit overwhelming...

The web is not edited for conciseness. You will learn faster with a book or video. Total Training is very good.

Thank you also Emre...I guess help is where we find it...eh?

http://www.videocopilot.net (a little more advanced)

Excellent Jim...thank you

It really depends on learning style, but whatever yours may be, you need to start doing tests and practice as much and as early as possible.
If you are like me, just dive in with some tutorials or whatever you feel like and figure it out as you learn.
Others need to read a book then apply that, which is fine, but the learning will still need to take place after, and others learn best by example (video tutorials).
Find something that makes the principles clear to you, but then just start doing it.
There's no wrong way to practice FX.

I really like the Billfishes adventure site as well as AE Basic training...I'm going to try it out...

Hey guys, I have a very specific use for AE in mind. I need to find info, but do not know what what I want to do is called!

For slideshows I want pics and cutouts of figures to come from background and appear to move towards screen, and for them to appear to in front or behind each other in a 3d sort of way...

Generally I suppose this is compositing...but is there a specific term for this use of images?

I gotta tell ya, I've just begun to play with AE, it is amazing...I've got two pics and I clicked on 3d thingy and a rotational tool...wow...If keyframing works in AE at all like Vegas I can do it I think....just can't get the keyframing thing figured out just yet.

Good news, AE can do that. :)

This is a VERY rudimentary way to describe it, as I know there are tutorials out there, but this is the basic process.

It takes a bit of getting used to, but down next to the timeline, next to the name of each clip there is a row of switches for different properties of the effect. One is 3D. Look for what appears to be a cube above the column, and once you do that, you can control that clip in X, Y, & Z space, instead of just X and Y.

You will be using the Z axis to move the clip towards the camera, and then opacity and effects to make it all pretty.

And a big word of advice : before you get annoyed at AE, the first few attempts at projects with AE is going to be troublesome. It's a very complicated piece of software, but able to do some really nifty things for that very reason. Don't get disheartened. Track down a few good tutorials on using after effects on 2D graphic projects, and get a feel for the basics first, 3D is one of the more complicated aspects of after effects, second only to using high level math to control your effects, something I've never had to do but I know it can. =D

Carl

Thanks Carl, I'm on it!

Jeff

Just keep plugging away and here is what you can get, all AE

http://www.sfgmedia.com/uwol/five/JM_UW5_civilized.html

Amazing stuff, Jim....as I mentioned earlier, I started messing with it earlier, and I can't do anything in it yet, but I'm hooked....

I personally was lucky, my first large number of projects in AE were doing the titling for commercials edited in FCP. And then titling and color correction in the same manner. Small projects that gave me reasons to tinker.... easiest way to learn it :)

Find tutorials of cool things you want to do to small clip(s). Do it, and enjoy :D

C

I recommend to invest to books, especially written by Chris & Trish Meyer.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/026-2643234-8138835?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books-uk&field-author=Chris%20%26%20Trish%20Meyer

Margus

Thank you Marcus. I greatly appreciate the recommendation. But I must be truthful and admit I don't do well learning these types of things from a book. I am an avid reader of other materials, but for applications it doesn't translate for me, I've never know why.

Nevertheless, I thank you again.

Specifically for photo/cut-out/3D work check out training and demos by Josh Fozzard (www.pickwhipstudios.com) and "The Making of A 3D Photomontage"(www.pixelpops.com).

These guys are setting the pace.

Not a patch on the work described in the last post but here is my first attempt at that kind of thing. Actually this is probably my first AE comp of any real complexity, having used it for titles and 2d stuff for a couple of years.

www.film-it.net/client/ppintro.mov

At first the client didn't want me to show this as the sequence contains images of children from thethe school but it transpires that all of these kids have now left and most of them have returned overseas, so they relaxed the rules a bit!

Still to be tidied up (this is the client approval copy) but gives a flavour.

I took the scribbled sketches from a school term wall planner that the client had had made for them and animated the insects, clouds, sun, flowers etc (v. basic animation!). I took the kids pictures from another brochure they use and all the other colours (esp the sky and grass) were lifted from that also. Then I dropped them into my virtual 'garden', animated a camera to fly through, added some lights and that was about it. The music is probably not the final choice but was added to give depth to help the client to review the piece.

Sad to say my pre planning was lacking and this doubled the length of time it took to produce. Had I done a little more than just sketch this out on a napkin I would have found it a lot easier! The biggest problem came when the client asked me to shave off 10 seconds. Ouch.

Anyway, great learning experience. I've seen the photo montage video mentioned earlier but not seen the tutorials - must look into that.

Cheers. Ian . . .

Sorry, I went a bit off topic in the last post - what I meant to say was that I have been inspired and educated through a great book called Creative After Effects 7 by Angie Taylor. Also a book called After Effects & Photoshop by Jeff Foster is well worth a mention, as is the new Chris & Trish Meyer book (not scheduled for release until 2008 but I seem to have got a copy OK from Amazon uin the UK! Not sure how but no complaints!). Working through that one now.

Jeff, it's interesting that you say you don't do so well from a book. I was EXACTLY the same with Vegas - no book really did it for me - I learnt through trial and error, by doing every tutorial under the sun, and by using it for hours every single day.

But with After Effects it was the opposite!! Trial and error had me so utterly frustrated that I turned to the books and started to pick it up from there. Long way to go still, but that was the nudge I needed.

Hope it's the same for you. Vegas books, nil points. After Effects books, douze points! (Hmm, that reference ain't gonna work outside Europe!).

Thank god the rest of the world has not been exposed to that kitsch.

Thanks for the encouragement Ian.

You should also check out this link :

http://www.totaltraining.com/prod/adobe/aftereffectcs3_ess.asp

I have the complete training set for AE 6.5 Pro and its absolutely superb. Informative, and well presented

As a result of some of that training, other tutorials on the web and fiddling around and playing you can make simple little effects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdDRN7rDmEM

Or move towards more dynamic movement type styles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMI3nL0RHAU

You can see the tutorials for the above effect at the following website : http://www.ayatoweb.com/ae_tips_e.html

If you need to ask any questions, drop me a line.

Thank god the rest of the world has not been exposed to that kitsch.

Sorry, don't understand! I'm hoping you're referring to Eurovision, not my video!!

Great site Niall, thanks for the link (ayatoweb.com).

Sorry, don't understand! I'm hoping you're referring to Eurovision, not my video!!
Haha, yes I meant the ESC!

Great site Niall, thanks for the link (ayatoweb.com).

No problem at all.

Some of the tutorials have gaps in them, what with English not being his first language. So the steps sometimes are a little lacking in detail required.

Best bet, is to use them as inspiration and then play around with the effects you are using to see what they do, and how they work.

The TSN wipe stinger I did, took me 2-3hours to do initially. Now I can rollout custom ones to requirement in around 15mins.

Its all about practice. Drop me a line if you need any more help

Oh in addition:

recommended plug-ins for After Effects

www.zaxwerks.com - Look at Invigorator Pro. Can use Illustrator files, and can be animated.

http://www.trapcode.com/ - Checkout shine on this website. Incredible Plugin

Just to show simple effects using these plugins (yes I know they suck :P)

Example of Invigorator :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Vd-FovEy4

Example of Shine:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjqGXWx5BSM
The TsN wipe was using shine as linked in other post.