Adobe After Effects CS3 Creating an Animated Title Strap

After Effects CS3 Pro – Getting Started

Creating an Animated Title Strap

By the end of this tutorial I hope that you will become familiar with the After Effects working space and be able to create and export an animated title strap with a transparent background.

Firstly, just as we did in Photoshop, we are going to reset our preferences file so that we can be sure that our tools and settings are set to default.

The manual advises that to do this you need to press the Ctrl and Alt and Shift Keys immediately after you have started to launch After Effects.

Like a lot of things stated in manuals this is easier written than done! After several attempts at getting no where I adopted this approach that I would like you to try now.

1) Don't open After Effects yet! Click once on the After Effects short cut on the desktop so that it is highlighted.

2) Rest three fingers on the Ctrl and Alt and Shift (left hand) Keys and another on the Enter key.

3) Hit the Enter key and then immediately press the Ctrl and Alt and Shift (left hand) Keys simultaneously.

Hopefully you will be rewarded with an 'Are you sure that you want to delete your preferences window'.

If this is the case you can feel suitably chuffed and Click OK and After Effects will open with its default settings. If not then perhaps a few more attempts will be required (or the help of someone with faster reaction times!).

Before we get down to the nitty gritty let's have a go at changing our user interface settings.

To do this go up to the main menu and choose Edit > Preferences > User Interface colours.

Click and drag the user Interface brightness fader to the left and you will see the 'look' that I have used for this tutorial.

Now either click OK to accept this or drag the slider back where it was, the choice is yours!

Now we need to set up our project settings.

By P.Felstead – April 2008 1

Go to File> Project settings and choose 25 FPS (the UK PAL format) from the Timecode base.

Now click OK.

This is also a good time to enable autosave as a precaution against loosing our work.

To do this go to choose Edit > Preferences >Auto Save and tick the box to enable it.

You can leave the settings at the default properties for now.

Importing footage into your project

In my getting started in Photoshop tutorial I guide you through creating a transparent title strap. We will now use a similar file to this as the basis of our improved animated title strap!

Go to the main menu and choose File > Import > Multiple Files and open the tutorial file folder.

Click on the “Globe spin transparent” file and then choose Open.

The “Globe spin transparent” file will now be in your project panel and you should still see the Import Multiple file dialogue window open.

Now choose the Live @ 7 Title strap file and click open.

As this file is a Photoshop file that is made up of several layers we have a choice to make.

Either way we want to choose Footage from the Import kind option.

Now, if we didn't need control of the separate layers from the Photoshop file we could choose Merged Layers from Layer Options, which is selected by default.

We do however want control of these so select Choose layer as shown below.


We will now be able to import the “LIVE” layer of our Photoshop file and have control of this in After Effects.

Leave the other options as they are and click OK.

The layer will now appear in our project panel and we will be brought back to the Import Multiple File Window.

Choose the Live @ 7 Title strap file again and click Open.

Again we find ourselves back at our previous window.

This time we need to select Choose Layer, as we did before, but make sure that you select the @ layer from the drop down menu as shown below.


Now repeat these steps until you have all 7 layers imported and then choose done on the Import Multiple File box when you have finished.

Click on the Grey space below your footage in the project panel to deselect them and your clips are now ready to work with (shown below).


As we have quite a few files let's take a moment to organise them.

Click on the create new folder button at the bottom of your project panel.

Notice that as it is created it is named Untitled 1 and highlighted in blue allowing you to rename it straight away.Call it title strap and press enter. If you want to re name folders or clips in your project you can simply select them one at a time and then press enter, then as the name is highlighted re name it.Let's re name our files to the following - @ Symbol/ Number 7/ Globe / LIVE text / Map graphic / Name text / Occupation text / Strap background. Note that as you re name each layer it's stacking order will change as this is arranged alphabetically.

You should end up with something like this -


Now we can go ahead and select our title strap layer files and put them into our newly created folder. Just simply Ctrl click or shift click to select them and then drag them in. Remember to leave the “Globe file” outside of the folder as this is a separate element.

Now let's have a look at our rotating Globe movie file. Double click on the Globe layer and you can view it in the Composition widow to the right of the project panel.

Pressing the space bar will start / stop the footage and you can also scrub through using the slider (shown below).


We are long overdue saving our project so let's go ahead and do that now!

Simply go to file > Save and save it as After Effects Title Strap in your desired location.

Creating a Composition

OK, you are now going to create a Composition which will be our animated title strap for wide screen T.V.

Go to the main window and select Composition > New Composition

When the Composition Settings window appears type in Title Strap 1 for the name and select Pal D1/DV wide screen from the pre-set box.


Now click OK and you will see your composition appear in your Project panel.

Make sure that your current timeline indicator is at the start of your Composition.

Drag your Title Strap folder onto the bottom left hand side of the timeline

What you will have now is a New Composition with all the title strap layers at the start.

The result should be something like this -


Click on the grey area below your clips in the timeline to deselect them.

OK, what we need to do now is substitute the map of Cornwall for the “Globe”.

First, turn of the little eye icon next to the Map graphic layer in the timeline. You will see that in the Composer window the map has disappeared from our title strap.

Now making sure that the marker in the timeline is at the beginning drag the Globe move to the top of the Timeline layer panel.

Apart from being very large notice that the globe is squished and instead of being circular.

This is because the globe's aspect ratio does not match that of our project.

To sort this out right click on the Globe file in the project window then choose Interperate footage > Main.

Now down the bottom of the Interperate footage box change the Pixel Aspect ratio from square to D1/DV PAL Widescreen.

When you now click on OK your Globe will be round and will look something like the following.


OK now let's sort out the size.

Click your Globe layer and press the S key, this will open the scale properties for the layer. Click and scrub the size down to around 20%. Alternatively you can click on the value and type a new value in.

Now press the P key and you will bring up the position properties.

Click directly on the Globe in the composition window and drag it onto the title strap on top of the existing Live @ 7 text like so:-


Now we need to change our layer stack order for the Globe so that our strap looks right so drag it from the top to just above the Strap Background layer.

This is what you should have -

If you look at the timeline you will see that our Globe footage is only slightly over 11 seconds long and our Composition is a lot longer so we are now going to trim off the end.

Hold down the shift key and drag the timeline slider to the end of the globe footage, it should snap to the end of it.

Now press the N key which will position the work area bar to end at that point.

If you now select Composition > Trim Comp to Work Area from the main menu we have trimmed off our unwanted surplice.

To Preview what we have so far press the 0 key on the numerical keypad (make sure the Num Lock button is selected).Your preview will loop until you press the space bar.

K,looking good, except that the Impact of the spinning globe is lost because it is too small.

Using the S and P keys with the Globe layer selected size up and re position the Globe so that it looks something like this


Preview your work again (0 on the keypad). You may notice that when it plays for the first time a green bar moves along the work area and it plays at slower than real time. This is After Effects rendering the preview and is normal.When your preview loops through again it will play at normal speed.

Now that things are really starting to tale shape take a moment to save your work.

Our title strap will appear over live video when we import it into the edit system.

So before we go any further let's go through how we get our existing title strap exported so that we could import it into Avid with transparency.

This is done when you have finished your work but we will have a go now and then do it again at the end.

From the main menu go to Composition > Add to render Queue

Your render cue is now on top of your composition window as shown below

Down in the render cue under Output Module (circled in the above screen shot) click on Lossless, This will bring up the following window.


Choose Quicktime Movie from the Format options (as shown above).

Now from the Format options settings choose Animation and change the frames per second to 25.

Choose RGB + Alpha from the Video Output / Channels menu.

As we don't have any audio untick the audio output box.

Now click OK .

Back in the render Cue click on the Output To - filename text and select the appropriate path for your saved work.

Now click the Render button and After Effect will create your movie.


OK, now that we have covered that lets go over a few other things! Click on the Title Strap tab in the timeline to go back to your composition.

What we will do now is use the text capabilities in After Effects to enter in a name and occupation for our title to replace our current Photoshop text.

We will also be using key frames to animate it in to make it look less static.

First let's get rid of our Name and Occupation text layers in our Composition timeline as we will no longer need them.

To do this Ctrl and Click on the two layers to select them

Now simply press the backspace key.

Now select the text tool which is located just below the main menu.

You should now be able to see the text option window to the middle right of your screen.


For now let's choose the following -

Font – Verdana – Size 23 – Font Colour – White

Now click on the blue of the title strap and type in a name e.g “Willy Wonka”Move your cursor away from the text and you will see that it changes into a move tool allowing you to position the text.Place your text on the top of the strap on the left hand side.In your layer window you should now see that you have a new text layer called – Willy Wonka.Hold down the control key and click on the layer to de-select it.

Repeat this for another layer this time for occupation e.g “Confectionist “but this time reduce the font size to 18.

You should end up with something looking like this! -

OK, now to animate in our newly created text.

Drag your timeline position indicator to around the 1 second mark.


Now select both of your new text layers and then press the S key, this will open up the scale property value.

Change the value from 100 to 0, both lots of text should now disappear!

Click on the little stop watch icon next to the scale properties. This has created a keyframe property which has scaled our text layers to zero. You will see in the timeline that this is indicated by a diamond shape on each layer (see below).

Now move the timeline position indicator to around the 2 second mark.

Now drag the scale property up to 100% and both of your text layers should be visible again.

Notice that you do not need to click on the stopwatch again as once the first keyframe has been set altering the value automatically creates another keyframe at the position of the timeline.

Now press 0 on the numerical keypad to preview your work and you will see that you have now animated in your text.

Remember that the first time that the preview plays it will not play at real time as it is being rendered.

K, finally we are going to look at applying presets.

There are lots of interesting presets provided for you to get you a creative result so let's try one out.

Click on the stop watch icon next to the scale property to disable our current key frames.

Now, make sure that the timeline indicator is around the 1 second point.

OK, up to the main menu and choose Animation > Browse Presets.

This will open Adobe Bridge and show you the preset folders for After Effects.

Open the text folder and you will see more folders giving you a comprehensive choice.

Let's try Animate in so go ahead and open that folder.

If you single click on any of the presets you will get a preview of what it will look like.


Let's look at Characters Shuffle in and then double click on it which will apply the preset to our project.

Press 0 on the keypad to see a RAM preview of your work.

If you want to try out others just simply go to Edit > Undo and then choose a different preset.

Remember to save your work and then just export it via the render cue as discussed earlier.

Importing into Avid

When you want to import your animated title strap into Avid simply select your bin and choose File > Import from the main Menu.

This window will appear.

Choose your Quicktime file too import and then click on options.Choose Invert Alpha as Shown then click on K


When you now return to the previous Files to Import window click on Open andanother option box will appear

Choose Flattened image and your file will import into the bin.

For further tutorials I would recommend visiting -

http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html

Also the library has a couple of copies of Creative After Effect by Angie Taylor which is well worth a look!

Remember also to explore the MOTIONOLOGY area on the learning space located under support and the Media Centre.

If you need to ask me a question relating to Photoshop or After Effects please come and see me or contact me on [email protected].


http://webmail.falmouth.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.creativecow.net/articles/aftereffects.html

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Adobe After Effects CS3 Creating an Animated Title Strap

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