From after effects to flash poetry in motion graphics - part 3 ppsx

When you click a category, another window (as shown in Figure 3-4) will open. Inside this

window are examples of each preset animation. Each animation has the effect applied to

the name of the effect. In this way, if you are at all curious about what an animation looks

like—Helicopter, for example, really doesn’t tell you much—you can select its category and

see whether the motion or animation effect is what you were expecting.

Figure 3-4. You can preview each animation preset.

Using an animation preset

So much for the overview; let’s put some text in motion.

1. Open After Effects and, when the After Effects interface appears, either select

Composition ➤ New Composition or click the New Composition button in the Project

window to open the Composition Settings dialog box.

2. In the Composition Settings dialog box (see Figure 3-5) use the following settings:

Composition Name: Use your name.

Width: 320

Height: 240

FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS

80

7486CH03.qxd 11/10/06 9:50 AM Page 80

Pixel Aspect Ratio: Square Pixels

Frame Rate: 24

Duration: 0:00:10:00

When finished, click OK to close the dialog box. The new Comp will appear in the

Project panel.

Figure 3-5. The composition settings that will be used to put your name

in motion

3. Click the Text tool and click once in the Comp window. Enter your name.

4. Select Window ➤ Character to open the Character panel. Select your name and

change the font and point size used for your name. We chose 40-point Arial Black,

but feel free to use any font.

5. With your name selected, click the Fill Color chip in the Character panel once to

open the Color Picker (see Figure 3-6). Change the color at the bottom of the Color

Picker to #FFFF00, which is a web-safe yellow. Click OK to close the Color Picker.

Instead of clicking the Text tool in the Comp window, you could also insert a Text layer

by selecting Layer ➤ New ➤ Text. You can then enter the text directly into the new Text

MOTION GRAPHICS AND THE PRESET TEXT EFFECTS IN AFTER EFFECTS

81

3

7486CH03.qxd 11/10/06 9:50 AM Page 81

Figure 3-6. The After Effects Color Picker is the same one used by Photoshop.

As you have seen in this step, you get to choose from among three color spaces—HSB,

RGB, and hexadecimal—when adding or changing the color of selected objects. These

three spaces make sense because the display medium is the computer screen.

6. If it isn’t already open, open the Effects & Presets panel by selecting Window ➤

Effects & Presets.

7. Twirl down Animation Presets. And then twirl down the Text and Animate In folders.

As of version 6.5 of After Effects, Adobe moved its Color Picker to one familiar to prac￾tically anybody in the digital media industry: the Photoshop Color Picker. You can enter

color values directly into any of the fields, and the selected color will change. The two

color swatches are the new color (top) and the original color (bottom).

If you just can’t wrap your head around the Photoshop Color Picker, you can change to

your System Color Picker by select Edit ➤ Preferences ➤ General and selecting Use

System Color Picker.

FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS

82

7486CH03.qxd 11/10/06 9:50 AM Page 82

8. Select the Center Spiral preset (see Figure 3-7) and drag it on top of your name.

Figure 3-7. Drag and drop a preset onto a piece of text, and the text is swirling

and twirling.

9. Click the Play button in the Time Controls panel, and your name will come swirling

onto the screen.

As you can see, with little or no effort on your part, you can create an animated text effect

that can be done in Flash only if you are prepared to invest a serious amount of time and

aggravation to the project. The really neat thing about these presets is they can be readily

exported to Flash . . . as vectors. Here’s how:

1. Twirl down Text on the main timeline in order to see the keyframes. You may notice

the animation occurs in less than three seconds.

2. Zoom in on the timeline and drag the timeline’s Work End handle to the 3-second

mark on the timeline as shown in Figure 3-8.

Figure 3-8.

Trimming a comp starts with reducing the

length of the work area.

MOTION GRAPHICS AND THE PRESET TEXT EFFECTS IN AFTER EFFECTS

83

3

7486CH03.qxd 11/10/06 9:50 AM Page 83

3. Select Composition ➤ Trim comp to work area. When you created the comp, you

specified a duration of 10 seconds. Requiring a user to twiddle his or her thumbs

for 7 seconds while staring at stationary text is not a best practice. By pulling the

timeline’s Work End handle to the 3-second mark and then trimming the Comp to

that duration, you remove the section where the text just sits there.

4. Select File ➤ Export ➤ Macromedia Flash (SWF). The first thing you will be asked to

do is to save the SWF file. Save it to the Exercise folder in the Chapter 3 code

download.

5. When you click OK to save the SWF file, the SWF Settings dialog box (see Figure 3-9)

will open. Don’t worry about the JPG settings; just select Ignore from the

Unsupported Features pull-down menu.

Figure 3-9. The most critical step of the process is telling

the SWF file to ignore any unsupported features.

This dialog box is the key to successfully moving the animation from After Effects to Flash.

By selecting Ignore from the Unsupported Features pull-down, any vectors in the project

will not get flattened into bitmaps, which is a good thing because Flash is a vector-based

application. This means the text, which is nothing more than vector artwork, moves into

Flash in its common vector format.

FROM AFTER EFFECTS TO FLASH: POETRY IN MOTION GRAPHICS

84

7486CH03.qxd 11/10/06 9:50 AM Page 84