Tips for Effective Layer Management

So by the way, whenever you're going to import a Photoshop or Illustrator file to turn it into a composition, get into the habit of making that dummy comp. Okay. Trust me, trust me because every time I forget to do it, I always bring it in and make a comp that's like some absurd link and the reason why you want to say it is this, okay, because every so often people ask, well, why do you got to do that? Okay.

So changing the length of a composition is actually very easy. It's composition, composition settings or command K or control days, the keyboard shortcut, and you can change that number of yards content. However, say I make it like 10 minutes long.

Actually, that's, that's insane. Wait a minute. Sorry.

Sorry. Sorry. Let's let's do 45 seconds, 45 seconds.

Okay. Nothing on the timeline looks like it's changed, but when I zoom out, notice the layers don't auto lengthen. The layers are set to the length of the comp when they're added to the comp for any image layer.

They don't auto stretch when you change the complex, which means I now have to select all those layers and manually extend them, which for the record, it's not that it's hard, it's just annoying. It becomes more annoying if you had nested compositions because you'd have to go into each comp, change its duration, go into each layer in that comp, change its duration ad nauseum. So resizing compositions and, and nested comps becomes problematic.

If you're not sure, always overestimate length. It's easy to shorten it. Cause again, we're doing them all or shorten it.

There X-Force is there, but lengthening layers and comps isn't, is annoying. The more of what you got to do. Be aware of the templates.

That's one of the problems, okay? Cause the template may have something that it's designed to last for 10 seconds and you want it to be 20 seconds, which means you're going to have to figure out how it's organized and go change things, which is annoying. So by the way, the instructions have you animate the X (formerly known as Twitter) content. And then at the end of this, there's like a, there's a section at the end of 3A, by the way, that says optional bonus.

And it basically tells you how to copy and paste all the effects to the other layers. 3B starts with that optional bonus filled, figured out. So as you can start with a file that literally has everything animated.

Cause honestly, once anything is animated, the same copy and pasting is just the least trouble. So that's what it has to do. That's awesome.

We'll do the build and then basically finish early. You can do the optional bonus, but 3B, the next section literally says open this file. Okay.

We'll do that. Okay. Now one note.

So the logo and the outer circle will both animate using the scale property. Then it's going to basically do a spot pop-up scale. Okay.

The wedge, which I'll turn back on, add back to solo when I want to animate it. It's going to animate using an effect called radial wipe. Radial wipe is the circular version of the linear wipe we used to fade out the layer yesterday.

So it's going to make it like, it looks like it's drawing itself on an angle. It's kind of cool by the way. The number 22, the number just animates from behind the logo shield out.

So it's a position animation. So it'll be a couple of scale animations, a position animation and effects being animated. Okay.

But they all animate the same way. The same five steps. Anything with the stopwatch animates the same way.

It's pretty consistent. Okay. So the instructions have me animate the logo.

Sorry. Uh, sorry. It has to animate.

You're right. The circle first, put a circle. I don't know why I guess I would X circles would love it.

Same animation, by the way, because I don't know why I did that, but it has me animate X circle. And then it's a scale animation as we copy it. And then I copy that to X logo.

And then those are there. They're going to be copied. So they're slightly offset from each other.

So instead of having the same time, they're a little later. So this section is about basic animation, some effects, animation,  and honestly, getting used to the idea of moving layers around stack, moving them at different parts of time and getting used to the idea of how key frames are affected by that. So you can animate by revealing scale as for scale, by the way, by the way, if you have a scroll wheel mouse up and down, scrolls up and down the timeline.

Okay. You can also reveal that if you don't want to tap ask, by the way, it's fine. Double clicking on scale would reveal it in the timeline.

Also for the record from properties panel, when you click on the stopwatch to animate something, it, it also reveals scale. So I mean, lots of ways. Okay.

So the circle is going to animate in a 15 frame animation. Okay. That's it's ending size.

So that will be the key frame. What's a hundred percent. So I'll make the ending key frame first, because again, it's already at its finished size and appearance.

We're animating into that. Okay. Could I have made the starting key frame? The one at zero first? Yes.

But then I have to remember what the scale was. Okay. Scale's a hundred.

I'm not that lazy. I get that. But position could be in the arbitrary number.

If you're animating like anchor points in the arbitrary number. So animating into it is less trouble. I'd argue.

Okay. So I got to the beginning. I'll just change the scale to zero for the record.

Scale goes negative. So I actually type it. I'll scrub scale down.

Okay. And then I animate that. That's boring.

That's boring. Okay. There is a principle of animation called exaggeration.

Also something called anticipation, by the way, too. So I'm going to use that. This type of animation called an overshoot.

It's also sometimes called an elastic animation, I think, where it basically like has a key frame in the middle that goes past the final size. So you're basically overshooting the final size or final position and then coming back to it. Now, this is why, if you're wondering, the instructions are built this way,  because normally you don't realize you'd overshoot until you realize how boring it is without overshoot.

Okay. The overshoot key frame is usually about halfway through the animation. So it's a 15 frame animation, about halfway through that is about eight or nine frames.

Okay. The instructions say nine frames, but whatever. Okay.

So, and then I'm just gonna scale that up to 125% is what it says, but I mean,  I basically scaled it up to all I could. Now when I play that, it does that kind of bounce a little more interesting,  a little more entertaining, but I think it might be better if it eased. I'm going to right click key frame assistant, easy ease.

Okay. Cause now it'll give me that kind of movement for the bounce, which I think is a little more organic, a little nicer. Okay.

Let's start going around. I can go for that. Okay.

Could you ease the first one and last one? Yes. Does it look good? I mean, I didn't think so, but I mean, maybe you'll like it. It's fine.

You can ease them all and see what happens. It's fine. Okay.

Again, just highlight your key frames. F nine is the keyboard shortcut or right click key from assistant. Easy.

Yes. Okay. I just didn't like that when I did it.

So that's why I didn't use the first and last ones. Okay. One other notes that these can be moved.

Okay. Unfortunately, I think it's annoying. Wait a minute.

That's the layer. Okay. It's command arrow.

No, it's. Sure. Option option or ALT and the left or right arrow keys.

When a key frame is highlighted, move it forward or back in time. Okay. One frame at a time.

Uh, option shift and the arrow keys would move at 10 frames at a time. But yeah, option or ALT and the arrow left and right would move the highlighted key frame forward or back. If you want to like check, test your timing or play with it, it's very easy without an zoom in.

Okay. For the record, there's also a keyboard shortcut that moves layers. Unfortunately, it's a very specific one.

Option or ALT page up and page down, which means if you don't have an extended keyboard, it won't work. As far as I know, there's no alternate keyboard trigger for that. By the way, that would actually nudge layers in time.

For the record, by the way, I literally learned that about a month ago. After using the program for 25 years, I learned that keyboard sort of a month ago, right? So it's cool. Never too, never too late to learn new things.

So I want to take that animation. Hello, scale. I clicked on scale that highlights all the key frames.

I'm going to copy it. Command C. It's not a right click command. I have to use the keyboard shortcut or the menu command, edit, copy.

I want this lined up with the nine frame one. So right there, I'll go to the logo and I'll paste command V or edit, paste. I'll tap you to see it.

When you copy the key frames, it's just a matter of what key frames are selected. Clicking on the name of the property, like scale in this case,  highlights all the key frames. For the record, you could also click and drag a box around them too, but that's annoying if there's a lot of them.

And then the property highlights them all. Copy. But when you paste, they are pasted.

They start wherever the playhead was, the current time indicator is. So be careful when you paste, it doesn't matter where the CCI is. Now I get this offset animation.

Now, if you want to, you can trim the beginning of this layer to line up with the key frame to see, you know, that there's nothing before it, but that doesn't affect that has no effect on what's happening. If you don't want to do it, fine. If you want to do it, fine.

No, it's the middle. Okay. So no result.

That's good. I like that. Now I'm going to hide those properties.

I'm going to select all my layers, command tilde or control tilde to hide the properties. Notice it did not hide the properties. Cause that keyboard shortcut shows all properties on the highlighted layers.

And I do it a second time. Now it hides them all. So as long as you got to press the keyboard shortcut twice, command tilde, tilde being a little key above tab.

It's the key to the left of number one on your main keyboard. Tilde or whatever. I'll just let all my layers.

I'm gonna reveal that X wedge. Hello, X wedge. I'm back at the beginning of my timeline.

So I pressed home to go there or drag CTI there. So that was animating scale and then copy pasting skill animating with effects, radio white. So for this to work, I need this to kind of animate on like it's kind of like drawing itself on from the side.

And because it's basically a pie wedge, it's really easy to do that with the radial wipe effect, which animates something instead of a straight line in a circle. Now layer highlighted effects and presets. I know where radio wipe is in the group.

It's actually, I think down here in transition, but I know the word is radio. R-A-D-I-A-L ignore those, the presets, those have at the most family, those like radio white Cardinal here. I got no clue what that does.

It's got, I know it's got its own animation, but I couldn't tell you off the top of my head what it does. These are the effects. No, I don't want to blur.

No, I don't want a fast blur. No, I don't want another blur, whatever that is. I have no idea what that is though.

Okay. There are hundreds of effects. I couldn't tell you what half of them do.

Radial white. That's what I want. Okay.

Now, by the way, um, radial scale wipe. I don't, I don't know. I'm not even cooler.

I have no idea. There's literally hundreds of them. Okay.

Could not tell you what all of them do. Usually, by the way, the things that have CC in the name tend to be cooler. But cause they're actually not made by Adobe.

They're made by a third party company called a psych or so the CC ones tend to be cooler, but I don't know what it does. I'm not going to try it. Maybe later I'll play with it.

I'll drag it to the wedge layer, or if the layer is highlighted,  just double click applies it. And it pops up in right here. Okay.

Now here's the problem. It's that the white center right now, if I raise that, it wipes from there. I need it to white from here.

So technically the white center can be dragged. That's what it is for the record, right? That's what it is. It's right behind the layer anchor point, which is why it's hard to see,  but it's physically right there.

Now let's say you can't see it though. Cause it's hard to see. Cause it's a little bit behind the other one.

Whenever you see this control, this little crosshair control, here's what it does. You click to activate it and then you click in your comp window where you want to set the number to, and it moves it manually, but like I said, you don't have to physically grab it for this effect. The white center has to be placed at the point where the wedges sides meet.

Otherwise it is full. This look weird. So let's see.

So notice like completion, a hundred percent, the entire layers hidden. The goal is to animate down to reveal it. But like I said, if it's not in the right place, it'll just like kind of double over itself.

So it's all the wipes that is losing, losing a hundred percent. So what is my thing here? This is a 10 frame animation. Sorry.

I'm just trying to figure out where my play head is. Yeah. Zero.

So step three, by the way, it says, make sure you're at the beginning of the timeline. Zero. That's going to be where the first key frame is completion.

A hundred percent stopwatch on. I can start animation right from there. Okay.

Now, by the way, effects, display and effect controls on the timeline. Nothing in properties. Keep that in mind.

So to see the effects, it's either the timeline or it's here. However, completion. I can only ever see key frames in the timeline.

I've turned on the stopwatch. It did not reveal the key frames. So I press U which reveals the key frames.

So I can enable the animation there and the properties from there. But I can only see key frames in here. Do you need to see the key frames to make key frames? No, but it's a lot easier.

It is. I mean, you'll see like expert level users, like not bothering to reveal them because they understand conceptually, like you move to a new place. It's going to change the number.

You're going to get a new key frame, but it's easier. So then when you start to see them, so that's why it tells you, use you. Okay.

10 frames, 10 frames, 10 frames, 10 frames, 10 frames completion to zero. Technically, by the way, it's completed around 72%, but whatever. Okay.

Completion to zero. Okay. And so that happens.

That's not good. It's finished before the logo shows up. Okay.

So for the record, I'm going to deselect all my layers. I'm going to press U again to reveal all the key frames. This should start there.

Okay. 15 frames. Draggy, draggy, draggy.

It moves the key frames over left bracket. The one next to P slides, the layer over key phrase will over trimming that double arrow would not move the key frames. You need to move the key frames basically.

Okay. So it's either drag the layer over or use the, use the keyboard tracker, save my work. So it doesn't crash or the crashes.

Now I have a staggered animation. One thing happens. Second thing happens.

Third thing happens. There's a bit of overlap in it. Cause that looks nicer.

Okay. It's called like secondary motion because if everything happens at the same time, it's hard to follow. If everything happens sequentially, it's boring.

So a little like overlapping of the animations and primary and secondary animation tends to look nicer. Okay. You want to do a different timing? It's fine.

No big deal.