NESTING COMPOSITIONS
AN INTRODUCTION TO HOW NESTING WORKS IN AFTER EFFECTS
by ben g unguren
 
 
 
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So far we have nested the BIG EUROPE COMP in the France composition, which allows us to animate all the layers in the BIG EUROPE COMP together. Now we will go back into the original nested composition and adjust things in there. Go nesting!
 
ADJUSTING THE NESTED COMPOSITION

  • Go back into the BIG EUROPE COMP composition:



  • At 0 seconds, set the opacity of the top three layers to 0%


select all your layers and press the 't' key to show just the opacity attribute

  • Use keyframes to animate the europeCOUNTRIES layer so that it fades up to 100% opacity after about 1 and a half seconds:

  • Switch back to the France composition and see what that did:


pretty cool, n'est-ce pas? (188 KB)

Now go back into the BIG EUROPE COMP composition and set some more keyframes!

  • Around where europeCOUNTRIES is fully opaque, fade in the franceONLY layer over about one second.

  • Once franceONLY's opacity is 100%, keyframe its scale so it grows a bit, say, to 125% or so....


to see the scale atttribute along with opacity, select the layer, then hold SHIFT and press the 's' key


the BIG EUROPE COMP composition now does something like this (280 KB)

  • Finally, as the franceONLY layer is growing, fade in the franceTEXT layer, animating its position, rotation, and/or scale to taste.

  • Go back into the France composition and see how it looks:


(280 KB)

At this point, I am pretty happy with the animation, except that I want the move in on europe to end at the same time the nested animation ends.

  • In my BIG EUROPE COMP composition, the word FRANCE stops moving at about four and a half seconds. Therefore, I will adjust my keyframes in the France composition to match accordingly:


(280 KB)

  • If you want to do a little more tweeking, try going into the BIG EUROPE COMP composition and adding a drop shadow effect to the franceONLY and franceTEXT layers:



  • Animate the Drop Shadows' distance attribute as the layers "grow"


Ooh, la, la! (428 KB)
END OF TUTORIAL
 copyright © 2003, ben unguren
used by permission