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Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Lesson 19 from: Adobe After Effects Fundamentals

Philip Ebiner

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Lesson 19 from: Adobe After Effects Fundamentals

Philip Ebiner

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Lesson Info

19. Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Lessons

Class Trailer

Chapter 1: Introduction

1

Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates

06:22

Chapter 2: After Effects Basics

2

Understand the After Effects Workspace

05:39
3

Starting a New Composition

08:15
4

CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage

01:55
5

Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline

05:08
6

Using the Basic After Effects Tools

10:20
7

Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors

03:04
8

Working in the Timeline

10:59
9

Layer Properties

08:57
10

Quiz: After Effects Basics

Chapter 3: Animating with Keyframes

11

Animating in After Effects

07:35
12

Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations

05:17
13

Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral

04:21
14

Using the Graph Editor

05:32
15

Challenge - Bouncing Ball

01:01
16

Solution - Bouncing Ball

13:00
17

Quiz: Animating with Keyframes

Chapter 4: Shapes and Solid Layers

18

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

07:07
19

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

06:24
20

Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients

03:44
21

Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag

05:54
22

Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers

Chapter 5: Important After Effects Skills

23

Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear

08:37
24

Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers

05:34
25

Easily Reverse Complicated Animations

02:14
26

Playing with Time

05:54
27

Blend Modes

06:05
28

Stabilize Shaky Footage

04:04
29

CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts

00:46
30

CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time

03:36
31

CC 2019 Content Aware Fill

03:55
32

CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates

08:37
33

Quiz: Important After Effects Skills

Chapter 6: Motion Graphics Projects

34

Intro to Motion Graphics Projects

00:53
35

Clean Lower Third

09:22
36

Logo Reveal Animation Bumper

13:25
37

Colorful Transition

16:59
38

Text with Mask Path Animation

10:05
39

Text Bubble Animation

13:39
40

Weather App 1

16:41
41

Weather App 2

08:21
42

Weather App 3

06:59
43

Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects

Chapter 7: Flat Animation Challenge

44

Flat Animation Challenge

02:47
45

Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene

01:23
46

Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect

15:02

Chapter 8: Flat Animation Challenge

47

Removing Green Screen Background

06:46
48

Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground

07:55
49

Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool

06:26
50

Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect

06:07
51

Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge

Chapter 9: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

52

Intro to 3D

10:04
53

Swinging 3D Text Animation

12:11
54

Build Out Your 3D Composition

05:47
55

Animating Our 3D Scene

07:38
56

Create Stars in After Effects

05:11
57

Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

Chapter 10: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

58

Using the Rotoscope Tool

06:55
59

Cleaning Up Your Edges

07:21
60

Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation

07:33
61

Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

Chapter 11: Rotoscoping

62

Easy Screen Replacement with Masks

09:56
63

Replacing a Screen Version 2

13:49
64

Screen Replacement with Mocha

07:13
65

CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin

05:08
66

Quiz: Rotoscoping

Chapter 12: Screen Replacements

67

Using the Puppet Pin Tool

04:33
68

Animating Your Puppet Pins

03:04
69

Animated Blinking Eyes

08:21
70

Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds

07:10
71

CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool

02:08
72

Quiz: Screen Replacements

Chapter 13: Puppet Tool Animations

73

Applying Text Animation Presets

05:59
74

Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn

10:05
75

Radial and Linear Wipes

03:20
76

Color Correction in After Effects

03:33
77

CC 2019 Update - Selective Color Adjustments

03:25
78

Quiz: Puppet Tool Animations

Chapter 14: Motion Tracking

79

Motion Tracking Basics

09:51
80

Tracking Text and Visual Effects to Video Clip

06:21
81

Tracking Rotation and Scale

11:33
82

Adding Details to Our Text

04:04
83

Quiz: Motion Tracking

Chapter 15: Character Animations

84

Intro to Character Animations

01:31
85

Design Your Character

14:32
86

Rigging Your Character

02:50
87

Animating Our Character

09:55
88

Adding the Animated Background

09:12
89

Adding Details to Character Movement

06:46
90

Adding the Paper Cut Out Look

05:29
91

Quiz: Character Animations

Chapter 16: Exporting from After Effects

92

Exporting an H264 File from After Effects

07:03
93

Exporting from After Effects with a Transparent Background

04:03
94

Exporting from After Effects through Adobe Media Encoder

04:40
95

CC 2018 Update - Exporting an Animated GIF from Adobe Media Encoder

02:14
96

Create an Animated GIF from After Effects CC 2017

07:03

Chapter 17: After Effects Workflow & Tips

97

Audio Tips for After Effects

02:19
98

Working with Premiere Pro

05:54
99

Quiz: After Effects Workflow & Tips

Chapter 18: Expressions

100

Expressions Basics

07:24
101

Animate a Flickering Light with Expressions

17:35
102

Quiz: Expressions

Chapter 19: Conclusion

103

Conclusion

00:44

Final Quiz

104

Final Quiz

Lesson Info

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

let's talk a bit more about shape layers. So I have this new composition. I'm gonna take my rectangle tool and I'll just create this rectangle in the middle, I can align it if I want align align, we've seen some of these options before, but if we drop down under contents and under rectangle, you can see that there's more intricate stroke and fill options. Here's where you can change the color. So if we want to change the color down here, we can and you can see that it's changing up here. Another thing you can do though is drop the opacity of this individual shape. So why would you do that if you want to create a more intricate shape, it might not make sense to have a bunch of different shape layers, but rather to create your entire shape right here, Under this one layer. Now I can go in with my rectangle tool, let me just click contents to get out of the rectangle one and say we want to create a house so we can add a door right here if we want, we can change the color of that door, We ...

could add a roof if we want and we can use the pen tool to do that because using the pen tool, we're still creating shapes in this layer and let's make sure that our opacity is up for these two. So let's go under the capacity for the roof. You know, this is just really quick stuff. It's not the best house ever, but you can see that now instead of having a bunch of different shape layers, we've created this basic house all within this one layer. And what does that mean? Well we can control it all at one time. We can make it grow or shrink. We can move it around, we can rotate it rather than rotating every single individual layer and repeating to move this entire house all at once. Another option that you'll see is the stroke option. And to really see this clearly. I'm going to delete this layer and then I'm just going to take my pen tool and then I'm just going to create a simple snake shape. So I'm just going to click click and I'm also going to drag while I click so that I get a curve in my shape so you can see that curve. If I didn't click and drag, I just get a straight shape with sharp edges. So I want to undo that. I'm just going to click click click now, you'll see that this doesn't look like a snake and that's because it's using a fill but it doesn't have a stroke. The stroke is what happens along the edge of your shape and you don't have to complete a shape if you don't want to. So if I want to I can go into the fill options and we could turn off our fill and now up here we can turn on our stroke. Okay, that's cool. But snakes or well if we wanted to create a snake, they don't have these sharp edges where their head or tail is, it's kind of rounded. So we can go into our contents down to our shape one and then into stroke one and we can change the end of this stroke. So that's where this line cap is. Change that from. But cap to round cap so you have now a rounded edge. What if we want a dotted line? We can do that with the stroke down here we have dashes, click the plus button to create dashes and then play with these dash settings to create larger or smaller dashes and you can see if there's they're really small then it ends up being coming one line. But if you want them smaller you just have to decrease the stroke with. Now you start to see the little dots so that's kind of cool too, click plus again and you can adjust the gap in between the dots and this could create some sort of neat animation if you want by animating, you can animate the offset. So let's click the stopwatch icon for the offset at zero seconds and then go up to 1.5 seconds and then just move it forward a little bit and now let's play through and you have this sort of motion going through Cool way to create sort of a wave effect. You can also animate the different points in a shape and that's the path. So let's close down stroke and bring open the path. So here, if we click the stopwatch next to path yeah, tells after effects that at this point we want all of these points that we've set. It's hard to see but we have 1234, we want them to be right there. Let's go forward to a little under a second. Now let's take these points and move them around. You'll notice that if I just click right now and drag one, the whole path moves. And that's because both the path one and path down here are selected just uncheck that and click path up here, you don't want this path selected. You want just this path once elected. Now we can move these points up and down. So now between here we have this motion and if we wanted to go back to where it was originally, let's just copy and paste this first key frame and now we have this sort of wave effect kind of weird, right? You can even go into this point right here, let's make sure we're just on path one select the point and we can play around with the way the curve works by choosing the handles for each point and extending them, rotating them, moving them around. Weird. Huh? So this is how you can create some really organic, intricate motion with after effects. And that's all just using a single shape layer a stroke, adding some dashes and using a path animation. In the next lesson, we're going to learn about layer styles.

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Practice Files

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