Filed under: Adobe After Effects
I downloaded the preview version of After Effects CS3 yesterday and spent a couple hours playing around with the new tools and features. I think Adobe has added some great tools to After Effects and I can’t wait for all the new CS3 releases. I wanted to share a couple quick impressions of my favorite new features in Adobe AE CS3.
My favorite new feature, surprisingly, is the new shapes layer. I know when I first read about it, I was like, “Meh, who cares about shape layers, I can just make a shape with a mask”, but after playing with it I can honestly say, that this is the feature I will use the most often. Basically you can now create a shape layer with embedded effects for stroke, fill, gradients, pucker/bloat, repeater, rounded corners, twist, wiggle, etc and they can all be stacked for endless variety. You can animate any of the properties and change blending modes of individual effects. It has an amazing amount of depth and reminds me of the new text animation engine that was introduced back in AE6. To the right you can see a simple star with several shape effects applied that I created in about 2 minutes.
The next feature that really caught my eye was the ability to create layer styles directly in After Effects, just like Photoshop. Everything from drop shadows, bevels, gradients, glows, strokes, etc. The only layer style missing from Photoshop is Pattern Overlay, although there may be a way to accomplish the same thing. And, of course, you can import PSD files with all the Layer Styles intact and then edit them further in AE.
The third feature that will really help get your creative juices flowing is the new Brainstorm function which allows you to easily preview variations on your animation. Simply select all the properties you would like variations on and After Effecs will randomly generate different versions of those properties. This will work wonders when you get stuck or just need some variations on a certain element. To the left you can see the Brainstorm window with variations on the star animation I created with the shape layer.
The most fun feature is the new Puppet Tool, which easily allows you to give a layer control points to move and distort an image like a puppet. It works brilliantly and has more depth and complexity than I initially thought it would. Even my six-year old son had a blast making an image of Buzz Lightyear dance around the composition.
There is another feature that I was really looking forward to that involves importing Photoshop’s Vanishing Point data as a 3D model into After Effects, but I don’t have Photoshop CS3 yet, so I’ll have to wait to give that a try. That should be really cool and I look forward to trying all of the new CS3 software and experience how Adobe continues to raise the bar with their applications.
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