Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book
Review by John Foley

I have used Abobe After Effects since version 4.5 and upgrading to version 7.0 was my next goal to see what new features Adobe has included in this latest version.
I find that the Classroom In A Book is one good way to learn the tools provided by After Effects and here is the review of that book. It introduces you to the basics of the User Interface and the many windows and operations that comprise Adobe After Effects.

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom In A Book – ISBN 0321385497

Every lesson includes the assets to complete that lesson and a QuickTime movie of each finished project.

The latest version of the CIB includes 12 Lessons or Chapters. The lessons are as follows:

Lesson 1 – Getting to know the Workflow

The lesson starts by familiarizing you with the new look of the User Interface of AE 7.0. Most of the tools and windows are very similar to AE 6.5, but appear more unified. Creating Composites and animating their moves with Key Frames is standard fare for any After Effects Composer. Layers are also essential to any composition and After Effects makes full use of their properties.

Lesson 2 – Creating a Basic Animation using Effects and Presets

Lesson 2 introduces you to the Bridge, which was introduced in Adobe CS a few months ago. The Bridge is one way of accessing your computer files that Adobe believes is useful. The lesson simply uses .jpg files and animates them to make a television intro project.

Lesson 3 – Animating Text

This lesson goes WILD, animating text. The lesson takes you step by step through animating Photoshop generated images, adding text and keyframing text movements to create a title slide.

Lesson 4 – Animating a Multimedia Presentation

The next lesson builds on the text animation skills you gained in lesson 3 and utilizes Photoshop stills and QuickTime movies to build a resume for a graphic artist.

Lesson 5 – Animating Layers

The Animating Layers lesson takes you into detailed animation of a fixed scene where the window to the outside world is changing over time. Clouds, Birds and shadows are animated to simulate real time passage.

Lesson 6 – Working with Masks

Working with masks is where you start to integrate stills and video together to create realistic spots for television news introductions. This lesson gets into basic 3D moves to align video to a fixed surface plane and then enhances the video image.

Lesson 7 – Keying

The keying lesson shows off After Effects keying tools. There is more than one way to key a performer shot in front of a Green Screen and this lesson takes you through the steps to pull a clean key.

Lesson 8 – Performing Color Correction

The Color Correction lesson uses Masks to color correct different parts of a video individually. This allows you to replace the background and clean up dingy colors in the foreground. It introduces you to the Paint tools and enables you to remove an object, frame by frame from a video sequence.

Lesson 9 – Building and Animating a 3D Object

Lesson 9 gets into the 3D capabilities of After Effects 7.0. While the exercise is interesting, it would be wise to build 3D models in a true modeling programs as After Effects is capable of simple modeling but very time consuming keyframing is necessary.

Lesson 10 – Using 3D Effects

Using 3D Effects builds on the last lesson and continues a project that uses Camera views and lights to simulate camera perspective moves in 3D space. Once again, a doable task but extremely time intensive utilizing keyframing.

Lesson 11 – Advanced Editing Techniques

The Advanced Editing lesson focuses on some of the more important features of After Effects and video with Motion Stabilization and Motion Tracking as well as Particle creation and TimeWarp - time modification to video content.

Lesson 12 – Rendering and Outputting

Last but not Least is the Rendering and choosing final Output formats for video or web.
Using After Effects for integrating still and motion video together, I found the text keyframing lessons tedious and the 3D lessons were just read and type in the –x and –y numbers to build 3D objects. I doubt that I could immediately build a 3D cube and animate it in space from memory. I really enjoyed the keying and motion tracking and stabilization lessons, as they are very relevant to my daily workflow.

Adobe After Effects 7.0 Classroom in a Book is a good way to get familiar with the workflows to create different projects in After Effects 7.0.

John Foley is a member of the Nashville Apple Pro Video Group.