Using Animation Presets

By Conrad Chavez and Joe Dockery
May 21, 2019

📄 Contents

␡

Starting the Project
Previewing and Applying an Effects Preset
Animating Text
Trimming Footage
Practicing with Effects Presets
Animating Text Along a Path

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This chapter is from the book 

Learn Adobe After Effects CC for Visual Effects and Motion Graphics

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Previewing and Applying an Effects Preset

ACA Objective 4.6

One of the types of effects available to you in After Effects is the background preset, which does what it says: It applies an effect that’s set up to be used as a background for a composition.

You’ve already learned how to quickly locate an effect in the Effects & Presets panel by typing the effect name into the search field in that panel. But how would you know which background effect you want if you don’t know what they look like? To help you with this, After Effects can use Bridge as a visual browser for certain types of effects.

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EFFECTS PRESET AND AN EFFECT?

You’ve applied effects earlier in this book. Now you’re working on something called an effects preset. What’s the difference? When you apply an effects preset, it can contain multiple effects that already use specific settings and may be a combination of effects that produce a specific result. That potential complexity is a big reason why it’s so important and useful to be able to browse effects presets visually in Bridge.

To browse background effects visually:

In After Effects, choose Browse Presets from the Effects & Presets panel menu (Figure 3.2).

Figure 3.2 Choosing Browse Presets

Choosing Browse Presets switches to Bridge and takes you straight to the Presets folder for After Effects, which exists on your desktop along with other support files that were installed with After Effects.

NOTE

If Bridge doesn’t properly play back After Effects presets, make sure Bridge is up to date. You can do this by using the same Creative Cloud desktop application that you used to install After Effects and Bridge.
Double-click the Backgrounds folder to open it.

Inside the Backgrounds folder are thumbnail images of the various background effects that are available. Now you can browse them visually.
Select one of the effects presets.

ENHANCED BROWSING WITH ADOBE BRIDGE

At first glance, Adobe Bridge may appear to simply duplicate browsing files on your Windows or macOS desktop. But the desktop is often inadequate for browsing visual or dynamic media, because desktop folder windows are typically limited to showing filenames and static thumbnail images. Adobe provides the Bridge application as a way of more effectively browsing items such as graphics files, video files, and some types of effects.

In this lesson, you learn how you can see animated previews of effects presets in Bridge. You can also use Bridge to play a selected video file.

When you select some document types saved by other Adobe applications, you can take advantage of similar enhanced browsing in the Metadata panel. For example, selecting a video file displays some of its properties, and selecting an Adobe Illustrator file lists the color plates and swatches in use in that file.
If the Preview panel isn’t visible, click its tab to bring it forward; it may be grouped with the Publish panel. If you can’t see the Preview panel, it may be grouped with the Publish panel. Click the Preview panel. If you can’t even see the Preview panel tab, choose Window > Preview.

The Preview panel should show a preview of the selected effects preset (Figure 3.3). You can use the controller in the Preview panel to start, stop, scrub, and loop the preview.

Figure 3.3 Browsing presets visually in Adobe Bridge

TIP

If double-clicking an effects preset in Bridge doesn’t automatically apply it to the selected layer in After Effects, try selecting the effects preset in Bridge before double-clicking it. If that doesn’t work, apply the effects preset from the Effects & Presets panel in After Effects.
Double-click the selected effects preset, and switch back to After Effects. The effects preset should be applied to the solid layer that was selected when you chose the Browse Presets command in the Effects & Presets panel.
Use the Preview panel to play back the composition so that you can see how the animated background looks in the composition.

This workflow is a variation on the standard effects workflow you read about in “Applying an Effect to a Layer,” in Chapter 2. In that section, you learned how to apply an effect from the Effects & Presets panel and how to edit and animate the properties of that effect in the Effect Controls panel (or the Timeline panel). The variation here is that you use Adobe Bridge as a visual browser for effects presets.

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