22 Useful Tricks in After Effects You May Not Know About - Part 2 of 5

hello and welcome to Ukraine Mediacom my name is Sergey rock Nevsky and today I'm going to show you 22 useful tricks in After Effects you may not know about and obviously I do realize there's a lot of you that probably know them all and if that's you I'm sorry for wasting your time be sure to come back next time but anyway this is also a part two video too the one I made two weeks ago 20 useful tricks and After Effects so be sure to take a look at that one first before you give this one a try but anyway in the meantime let's dive in into our number one it is shift parenting behavior so for this I have a quick little animation basically two objects doing different things and what if let's say I wanted this orange logo to be inside this blue logo and but yet holding on to its animation basically scaling back with the position keyframes what would I do so in the past what I would do I would select position keyframes and make sure snapping is on and I would drag it over here and snap it to the blue object and then parented to the blue object and and then I will get what I'm looking for but there's a much quicker and better way to do it so all you have to do is hold down shift on your keyboard and then parent your logo to the blue object and it will basically not only snap it to that object but it will keep the the same keyframes you had for for that logo animation which is really awesome another way to do it is basically holding down shift and just doing it from here parenting it to the blue object and it will get you down so yeah shift parenting behavior is awesome number two is layer selection and this one is pretty cool actually so let's say I have all these blue elements linked or parented to this object right here and as you can see that it is what if let's say I want to select everything that's parented to this object what is the quickest way to do it I mean one way you can do it is just going through layers and make sure you find them if you have a lot of objects it can get very time-consuming the quickest way to do it is basically select the parent or the object that everything is parented to and then right click on it and say select children and it will select everything that's parented to and let's say what if I want to invert the selection which how can I do that basically right click on the selected layer and just say invert selection and it will get you there number three is go to visible item in a timeline and for this I have a quick animation it's just a lower third animating but what I'm interested in is basically the keyframes here what if I wanted to go to the next available keyframe and do changes what's the quickest way to do it I mean obviously you can hold shift and drag and you can snap the keyframes but the keyboard shortcut for it is just hit K and it will go to the next keyframe forward and to go backwards to just hit J and it will do the same thing backwards but also there's a cool cool feature if I want to go this marker because it doesn't read markers all I have to do just right click here and just say go to marker time and it will go right here you can do also the same thing for keyframes just right-click on a keyframe and say go to keyframe time number four is revealed properties and this one is very common a lot of you know it but they did a little like a small tweak to it and a Creative Cloud that I really like so in the past if you wanted to reveal your positions or all your key frames and stuff you would hit you on your key keyboard but when you would do that you would see all your expressions positions scales which is awesome but expression part wasn't that great because sometimes if you have long expressions they would just take up most of the time line and it's frustrating but what they've done now is awesome so all you have to do is to reveal your keyframes just hit once a you once and you'll see what all your keyframes but if you want to see keyframes and expressions you would just hit it twice and you get that number five is paste layers at current time and this one sounds kind of obvious and I'm sure a lot of you use it but I'm still surprised so many people either don't know about it or just don't use it period so all it is basically let's say I want to copy this layer I would do ctrl C and to paste it I would select the layer I want to paste on top o so let's say that and then ctrl V to paste so that's that's good but what if let's say I want to paste what I just copied right at three second mark because if I can do ctrl V it still pastes at zero so but how do I do it three seconds so I guess I hope you're not doing this I hope you're not doing ctrl V and then holding shift and click and drag and snap it to the time indicator but there's a quicker way to do this so all you have to do is just do control obviously copy first and then do control instead of doing ctrl V just do ctrl alt V and that will paste it right at the time mark your time indicator is at number 6 close other timeline panels and so I kind of went over closing panels in my other video and all we have to do you know ctrl W will close one at a time and control all W will close will wipe you know the whole frame but what if I just want to keep this one and close all the other one what's the quickest way to do this and the quickest way is just basically going in here and then do close other timeline panels and it will give you exactly what you want number seven is finding missing footage effects or fonts and let's say I have a composition that has a bunch of elements missing and I would hate to go to each one right click and reveal improv a project and stuff like that and then replace it there but what if there was a way for me to see all of them at once all of the missing stuff in here instead of trying to go and find them in here so what's the quickest way to do it all you have to do just start typing missing and it'll give you three options footage fonts or effects so in my case I'm just going to footage and as you can see it'll show all my missing footage and then here I can do control age and replace with whatever but there's another way to do it is just go file and dependencies and you'll have the same options as here number eight is reveal in Explorer and you know in the previous versions of after facts to reveal something an explorer you had to take few steps and basically you would have to right-click on this and then go to real layer source and project and only out of here you can go you know go right click and then reveal and Explorer and only then you can get there but now in Adobe Creative Cloud all you have to do just right-click on the layer and go to reveal and Explorer right here and you'll get there faster number nine is copy with property links this one is a May and I think it's only available to creative cloud users so I'm sorry all the other versions of After Effects so all it is let me explain so let's say I want to apply some kind of effect to my this this logo and I'm applying change to color so let's say I want to change orange to I know some kind of a bluish color okay and let's say I also have to do the same thing to this one and let's say I have a bunch of bunch more you know so it can be time-consuming so you would ctrl C copy that and then paste and you can go on and on and on but what if your boss came back or your client came back to you and said hey change this to purple so you would go in here and then change to some kind of purple color then okay and then again you have to do control C paste it to all the other ones I mean these are all the steps that I wish we could avoid and now we can so basically what you do now instead of doing this I'm going to erase this effect instead of copying control C like a regular copy now you just do ctrl alt see it's basically this right here ctrl alt C and it's copied with property links so control I'll see and if you paste it now control V inside this one if you go back to your original one and play around with colors it automatically adjusts your other ones so it's very awesome the same thing goes I don't know for all the other properties I mean let's try like scale let's do ctrl alt C and then paste it in here so now if I mess with scale in this layer it automatically I just know does that one as well let's try mask the same thing let's say I'm going to copy this control I'll see and then paste it control V so now if I go into this one if I move a point it will do the same thing here I mean the sky is the limit for this you can use it for all kinds of things so it's very cool but there's also if you go to edit there's another one that says copy with relative property links and basically the way I understand it I think it's the exact same thing except that it creates expressions that do not reference the the source comp by name when you copy it so number 10 is center anchor point and basically for this one I'm just going to bring in a text into my composition so ctrl T to bring the text so I'm going to type u Commedia com and let's say I want my anchor point of this text to be in the center one way you can do it you can you know do the whole ruler thing and line them up exactly to the center I hope you're not doing that and then hit Y on your keyboard and grab this anchor and then Center it snap it to the center that's one way to do it another way you can obviously do the whole snapping thing and just drag it to the center and then that's one way to do it but there's a much quicker way to do it all you have to do to select your um your text or any object let's say even this one I'm going to offset it and all you have to do is just do ctrl alt home and it will Center anything that you have control out home so it's a quick little shortcut but it's very awesome number eleven is Center in view and this one's kind of small but it's very useful really so let's say I have this text and what if I wanted to Center it to the view or a composition what's the quickest way to do it one way one way you can do it is basically bring some kind of a reference of your Center and bring it in here and do it like this or something like that that's one way to do it but there's a much quicker way to do it all you have to do is just hit control home on your keyboard and it will Center anything the same thing goes for objects so control home and I'll do the same thing but the way it does it it basically centers it according to your anchor point so if you move your anchor point to any other position and you control home it will Inc centered according to that anchor so that's good to know and so it's very small but it's extremely useful number twelve is fit to comp and this one is kind of a common one but there's still a lot of people either don't know about it or just don't use a period and so what this is is simple let's say I have an image in my composition and I want to scale it to the width of my composition so what's the quickest way to achieve that and there's a shortcut for that so just do ctrl shift alt + H and it will scale your image to the comp to the width of the comp and then what if I wanted to scale it to the height of my compass composition something like this what's the shortcut for that and all you have to do just hit ctrl shift alt G and it will scale it to the height of your composition but what if I want to scale it to the whole composition in other words something like you know something like this or something like that what's the shortcut for that you just hold down ctrl alt and F and you'll get exactly what you're looking for number 13 is flexible masking options and for this one I have a footage of my son walking our dog I shot it with a you know cell phone says kind of a crappy footage but anyway so what if I want to blur out his face what are the steps I can I can do you know in the past you would probably use like I don't know like adjustment layers something like that and then do it that way you know track the face but now you can just do it all within this layer so let's say I'm gonna use a mask and by the way in the past I mean anything before Creative Cloud so let's say I select this footage and then the mask out his face something like this maybe and then um I'll give it non here okay and now in Creative Cloud you can track masks so I'm going to go to tracker here and then make sure that the session scale rotation is selected and I'll hit play and it should give me a nice little track good so now I have his face tracked so next what I would do is apply fast blur effect okay so and I'll do my thing here 10 okay good so here's a problem my footage is blurred out the whole thing I only want to have the masked area blurred out so what can I do to make that happen so let's go into my effects I on my keyboard and then just go down here and now if you go to composition options and by the way this feature is available in any effect not just fast blur just just so you know so and if I hit plus here I'll open it will give me this mask option so I'm going to just say mask make sure you select your mask but mine is mask 1 okay I assigned it but it's still nothing still nothing is happening so I'm going to go shift em and bring my masking options and inside here where it says none I'm just hit add and you can sell that it basically a lie it basically applies that effect within that mask and you can preview that as well number fourteen is busy air paths for shape layers and basically this is gotten like an update in the Creative Cloud you can do busier paths for shape layers and what I mean by that you know how in the past if you were to mask any kind of content with like on the layer you had an option either do the handles things or you could do the sort of busier thing and it kind of automatically smooth things out for you but you didn't have that option for shape layers in other words if I go to shape layers and don't select anything and just create a shape layer in the past you you were stuck to these handles so but now when you select your pencil or whatever you have an option now to have a you know Bezier path or roto Bezier thing and also the same thing applies for like shape layers let's say like a star or I don't know a polygon let's say and if I don't have the Bezier path selected you stuck to the way it used to be and you couldn't adjust points you know you can drag them and stuff you can adjust how many but now if you select a shape you want and then just select this busier path and draw one it will create a shape layer and you can actually you know go inside each point and adjust them now so it's kind of cool number fifteen is revealed in timeline and this one is a quick one let's say I'm in this composition and I'm in the logo effects let's say I'm working and I have a bunch of effects and say I want to see this option in my timeline what's the quickest way to do it I guess one way you can do it just hitting E and just going through it and you're there but the another quickest way is just right-click on anything and just say reveal on timeline and they'll open it up exactly where you left off number sixteen is default render setting and basically for this one I just have a quick composition let's say I want to send it to my queue so I can render it or you can also send it to Adobe encoder by doing ctrl alt M and I'll send it to on the Adobe encoder and you can render it out of there but I'm going to use render it out of my render queue so if I hit ctrl M it will send it to the queue but let's say I do my adjustment here and I'll say I wanted to be H to six or but if I want to do another one and undo ctrl M it goes back to the default so what is the quickest way for me to set it to h.264 every time so one way to do it is when you click here and then hold ctrl and just click on h.264 here and next time when you do ctrl M it will automatically remember your that setting as a default and another way to do it is basically going into here and then make template and inside here movie default you just set it that way number 17 is set work area to duration of selected layers and what I mean by this is simple so let's say I have this let's say I want to end my composition right in here I mean one we can do it you can do to the end of that and just hit N or you can you know drag it and shift snap it but the quickest way to do it especially if you have bunch order or especially you know if you would just want to do quickly just to control alt B while your layer is selected and it will automatically set the duration of your composition according to selected layer number 18 delete all effects from selected layers and this one is a very cool one let's say and this composition I have all these elements and each element has some kind of effect on it an actual capital as a stroke drop shadow you know hue/saturation you name it so what if I need to erase all of them for my elements in other words I just wanted to be flat without any kind of effects so in the past I would just go to one and then just go to effect effect controls here and then control a select all of them and erase and then go to the next one you know control a erase and go to the next one I mean this is way too many steps is there shortcut for it and there is all you have to do select all you layers and then do ctrl shift E and it will wipe out all the effects you had on them nineteen is turn off all other solo switches and for this one I just have the same elements let's say what if I saw it some of them like this and then all of a sudden I'm like oh I just want to hold onto this one I guess I can just wipe them out but the quickest way to do it just hold alt and click and it will automatically wipe all the other one and keep yours active number 20 reset rotation and scale and for this one I just have a logo here and let's say what if I wanted to I don't know like a scale at some let's say up like this and maybe rotate at some like that what's the quickest way for me to reset the rotation scale and by reset I mean rotation to zero and scale to a hundred I guess you can always type your value in here but the quickest way to do it is just select your object and just double-click on this selection tool and it will reset the scale and then double-click on your rotation tool it will reset the rotation 21 is REM preview with alternate settings and for this one I have just a footage of my son running through here and getting tackled by his cousin so you know how to preview you just hit hit 0 on your keyboard and you can preview it but if you hit shift 0 you get to activate the alternate settings and by that what I mean if you go to preview here and select you know rim preview is a regular one but if you go to a shift preview you can have second options you can set the frame rate and also like skip every out of frame so let's say I'm going to skip one frame and then resolution here as well but it's kind of nice let's say sometimes you just want to skip every other frame it will take half the speed and that is a user to take to preview and that way you can catch all the spelling mistakes and stuff like that if you work on something that's pretty heavy and so basically I'll show you what I mean by that so let me go to edit here and purge all my stuff Oh memory so I can show you so now if I hold shift and 0 and it'll just preview every other frame alright so the last one is live text templates for premiere so basically what this is is simple now in the Creative Cloud you can actually create anything in After Effects that has text in it and then you can bring the composition into the premiere and change the text inside the premiere without without ever leaving premiere in other words you can hand this lower third that I created over and to an editor that uses premiere and he can change the text in in my lower thirds without opening After Effects and so let me show you how to set this up so I'm going to do ctrl K and go into my composition settings and I'll go to Advanced tab here and make sure you have template here checked and then hit OK so now I'm ready to take my compositions to premiere so I can do it two ways I can either let's say here's the premiere I can either drag it or double click here and then open up my After Effects project so I'm going to drag it in here and then I'll go live or fullscreen on premiere and so and here you can see my animation I'll bring it in and put it in my timeline so you can see that it's playing in my timeline but what if I want to make another lower third and change the names and stuff in it so you can do it this way just right-click on your lower third and then duplicate and then go to inside this duplicate and if you go to effect controls and inside here you see you comedic comm which is this one and then Sergei which is that one so let's say I'll change the name to let's do Mike wolf or Michael wolf and so and then if I go to it right here you can see that it already changed my lower third to Michael wolf and now I can just drag it into my timeline and here you have it alright so this is the end of 22 useful tricks and after effects you may not know about I hope you found it useful please subscribe to my youtube channel like the video comment share it I would love to hear from you guys so add me on Facebook follow me on Twitter yeah it would be awesome but anyway thank you so much for watching my name is Sergei prac Nevsky and I'm with Yuka Mediacom

Channel: ukramedia

Views: 142,564

Keywords: ukramedia.com, Sergei Prokhnevskiy, Useful Tricks in After Effects, After Effects, Tutorial, Motion Graphics, Tips, Animation, Tricks, lesson, ukramedia

Id: DS8HNnXS-Rw

Length: 22min 6sec (1326 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 17 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/billions_of_stars]

You're a machine! I knew some of these but learned quite a few new ones!

The trick of course is now REMEMBERING these damn things when you're actually working on something!

Thanks for sharing ;)

[u/[deleted]]

Thanks for posting. There's some really good stuff here.

[u/HotWingsDogsAndPot]

Is this the previous video, plus 2 more tricks?

[u/[deleted]]

I'm an AE noob, so I really appreciate these tip vids. You did a pro job of putting them together.

Question. I want to use the same sound effect multiple times in a timeline, at somewhat random times.

What's the simplest way to do that?