After Effects Session 4

In this session of After Effects quite a lot of the time was set aside for dealing with personal issues regarding our Silent Movie brief, but there was still some important stuff taught as well.
The things taught were to do with layer properties and easing movements.

In this above image you can see all the layers and the basic properties that can be applied to them by tick boxes. On the left you can see the usual 'visible' property that shows whether a layer is visible or not represented by the eye logo. Next to that is the 'lock layer' selection along with a 'tag' colour, 'layer number' and then 'layer name' just like in most adobe programs. Then there are some symbols and switches that are different to other adobe programs.

 This is the shy switch which can single out layers to hide similar to the layer visible switch. 

 This is the 'Collapse Transformation/ Continually Rasterise' switch. If the layer is a precomposition then the transformations will be collapsed and if the layer is a shape, text or vector graphics file then it will be continually rasterised to increase quality but may extend ram preview times. 

 This is the quality switch which will toggle between different layer qualities and will also be applied to the ram preview.

 Effects switch. Once an effect is added to a layer this switch will become available to choose whether or not it will be rendered with the effects. 

 This is the Frame Blend switch. It is used to set frame blending in 3 different states. Frame Mix, Pixel Motion or off. 

 Motion Blur switch. Adds a realistic looking motion blur to a layer. 

 Adjustment Layer switch. Shows that the layer is an adjustment layer which can be used to apply some properties to any layers underneath it in the order. 

 3D switch. Changes the layer to a 3D layer. 

Next to these switches is the parent column. In this column each layer can select a parent layer. This means that anything that happens to the parent layer will also happen to its 'child' layer. So for example, if you needed to move lots of thing around on the screen but wanted them to stay in the same relation to other layers, the parent tool would prove really useful. The spiral logo can be dragged on to the layer that you want to be the parent rather than selecting it from the drop down list. 

The larger symbols above the switches are used in conjunction with the switches column to make certain layer properties function. 

Above you can see an example of the motion blur in effect.

The next part of the lesson was about the easing and how to specifically set the way that things ease. 

Until now I had already experimented with using the 'Easy Ease' property but it doesn't give any kind of user settings to actually define how you want the ease to work. 

If you select the last large symbol above the parent column then you get a view similar to the one above.

This is the speed graph that it used to  specify exactly how the acceleration and velocity of the animation should go. 

Making sure that the view is on 'speed', you can move the different parts of the curve around to set the easing as you like. 

We then had to try and create a realistic looking pendulum which swings once and this is my attempt.