Managing your layers is an important part of creating your composition.
As compositions become more complex you often see them broken into 'child' tasks creating a composition that will occupy a layer on a parent composition.
Sound complicated? After Effects makes it easy.
There are many features dedicated to managing your layers and they become more familiar with use.
In a default work setting you will see icons on the far left for visibility, audio, solo, and locking.
The 'eye' icon lets you turn a layer off and on.
This is very useful as your scene becomes a bit more crowed and you want to focus on different players.
The audio icon, a little speaker, simply indicates whether your layer has an audio component.
When you place video you've taken it is very likely it will also have an audio component.
Clicking beneath this icon turns your audio off and on.
The solo icon is a little round circle.
This will 'solo' your layer and that is turn off all other layers while this one plays.
This sounds pretty basic but when you have several components and need to focus on some fine tuning for one, not having to turn off all the others, being able to 'punch one button' and have it 'solo', is a great little feature.
In this same group you will see a padlock icon.
Choosing this 'locks' your layer.
With your layer locked you can't make any changes to, and that is, make any changes to it accidentally.
As you click and highlight and move things around, it is easy sometimes to choose the wrong element.
Locking a layer adds a bit of safety and ease in your selection process.
Your layers 'stack' and that is, every time you add a new layer, it will by default be added above the previous one.
What is inherent in After Effects 'stacking order' is visibility priority.
Say you have created a composition by simply dragging a video to your composition icon.
When you add new text, it will by default be placed above the video layer and you will see your new text.
Drag your text layer below the video and you will see that it disappears.
Layers and visibility is practically a topic by itself.
You will want to set priorities for different instances.
You will use partial shapes as mattes revealing part of your composition.
We have all seen commercials where a company icon or logo sails across the screen while revealing detail or activity enclosed in its shape.
This use of a shape matte is a very common application of layer visibility.
A very useful feature that isn't a default but quite easy to apply, is color coding your layers.
As you begin to fill your composition and look from left to right, from your source objects to the timeline duration on the right, it is very helpful to have separate colors highlight and identify your layers.
You can even be creative and have a blue layer associate with a water element, gray for buildings and so on.
Under the label icon, which looks just like a label you see colored squares.
When you click on this square, the color options are presented and you simply choose one.
Layer management offers an easy learning curve in After Effects and it is a 'self-nurturing' discipline.
The more you use it, the easier your job becomes and that's a pretty good incentive.
As compositions become more complex you often see them broken into 'child' tasks creating a composition that will occupy a layer on a parent composition.
Sound complicated? After Effects makes it easy.
There are many features dedicated to managing your layers and they become more familiar with use.
In a default work setting you will see icons on the far left for visibility, audio, solo, and locking.
The 'eye' icon lets you turn a layer off and on.
This is very useful as your scene becomes a bit more crowed and you want to focus on different players.
The audio icon, a little speaker, simply indicates whether your layer has an audio component.
When you place video you've taken it is very likely it will also have an audio component.
Clicking beneath this icon turns your audio off and on.
The solo icon is a little round circle.
This will 'solo' your layer and that is turn off all other layers while this one plays.
This sounds pretty basic but when you have several components and need to focus on some fine tuning for one, not having to turn off all the others, being able to 'punch one button' and have it 'solo', is a great little feature.
In this same group you will see a padlock icon.
Choosing this 'locks' your layer.
With your layer locked you can't make any changes to, and that is, make any changes to it accidentally.
As you click and highlight and move things around, it is easy sometimes to choose the wrong element.
Locking a layer adds a bit of safety and ease in your selection process.
Your layers 'stack' and that is, every time you add a new layer, it will by default be added above the previous one.
What is inherent in After Effects 'stacking order' is visibility priority.
Say you have created a composition by simply dragging a video to your composition icon.
When you add new text, it will by default be placed above the video layer and you will see your new text.
Drag your text layer below the video and you will see that it disappears.
Layers and visibility is practically a topic by itself.
You will want to set priorities for different instances.
You will use partial shapes as mattes revealing part of your composition.
We have all seen commercials where a company icon or logo sails across the screen while revealing detail or activity enclosed in its shape.
This use of a shape matte is a very common application of layer visibility.
A very useful feature that isn't a default but quite easy to apply, is color coding your layers.
As you begin to fill your composition and look from left to right, from your source objects to the timeline duration on the right, it is very helpful to have separate colors highlight and identify your layers.
You can even be creative and have a blue layer associate with a water element, gray for buildings and so on.
Under the label icon, which looks just like a label you see colored squares.
When you click on this square, the color options are presented and you simply choose one.
Layer management offers an easy learning curve in After Effects and it is a 'self-nurturing' discipline.
The more you use it, the easier your job becomes and that's a pretty good incentive.
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