I’ve been working with the Adobe motion graphics animation program After Effects for a number of years with good success. However, each project takes a good amount of time due to the deep cavern of possibilities AE has to offer. It’s really easy to loose 3-6 hours watching tutorials and practicing animation techniques and applying new skills to video projects.
Every once in a while I find a great video to help me make graphics quicker and this video is one of them. (if you’re new to After Effects or want to learn the basics. I would recommend visiting VideoCopilot.net and go through of their “Basic Training” videos).
Here’s the list of topics from the video description:
20 Useful Tricks in After Effects You May Not Know About by Sergei Prokhnevskiy. For more tutorials visit ukramedia.com.
1. Keyframe Velocity (CTRL+SHIFT+K)
2. Mini-Flowchart (TAB)
3. Align Tools
4. Replacing Images
5. System Color Picker
6. Render Presets
7. Cycle Mask Colors
8. Math
9. Gradient Overlays
10. Reverse Keyframes
11. Expressions to Keyframes
12. Splitting Layers (CTRL+SHIFT+D)
13. Guide Layers
14. Moving Masks (Space bar)
15. Creating a Motion Path from a Mask
16. Scaling Multiple Keyframes (Alt+Click and drag)
17. Copying Paths from Illustrator
18. Maximize Frame with a Shortcut (~)
19. Rendering Comps Out of Media Encoder (CTRL+ALT+M)
20. Close Panel and Frame with a Shortcut (CTRL+W, CTRL+ALT+W)
I hope you find at least one of these tips, tricks and shortcuts helpful in your future After Effects projects.
Have a fantastic Day!
Jake Wattenphul 