by Ben Bardens

Materials for This Lesson | Complete Tutorial

Adobe After Effects has long stood proud as the most widely used desktop compositing tool, but often overlooked is the fact that it does not really stand alone — Adobe Photoshop always waits quietly in the wings, ready to fill in the gaps. AE users have relied on Photoshop for the myriad of paint-related tasks that come up when working with video — touching up spots on individual frames, cloning out product labels, adding highlights and tones and creating hand-rendered graphic elements and text effects. But with the introduction of version 6, AE takes a huge step away from being dependent on Photoshop. In this article, we’ll introduce the new expanded tool palette and go through a simple tutorial that shows how to use the new paint tools in the program.

The Tool Palette

When you open AE 6.0 for the first time, the most obvious difference is that where there used to be a small toolbox, there is now an expanded palette. This new palette behaves just like those in all the other Adobe programs: double-click on its tab to collapse or expand the palette, click and drag on the tab to group the palette with others, and use the Tab key on your keyboard to show or hide all palettes.

The tools in the new AE palette are split into three groups: the six on the left are the familiar tools that have been part of the program for years — Move, Rotate, Camera, Hand, Zoom and Pan-Behind. (Note to Adobe: please change the name of the Pan-Behind tool to Anchor Point tool!) The three tools on the right aren’t exactly tools — they simply control the directional axis mode when you work with 3D layers. The new additions are found in the middle group of tools; from left to right, top to bottom, they are the Paint, Clone, Eraser, Rectangular Mask, Type and Pen tools. Only the Mask and Pen tools are carryovers from the last version of the application.

Clicking on any of the four new tools will bring up additional palettes. These include the Paint and Brush Tips palettes, which contain the available options for the Paint, Clone and Eraser tools, and the Character and Paragraph palettes, which like those in other Adobe programs, contain the options available for the Type tool (Figure 1). At the bottom of the tool palette is a bar with a button to toggle the palettes open and closed, and a check box that lets you choose whether you want the menus to open automatically whenever you click on a tool.

Figure 1. Clicking on the four new tools brings up additional palettes: the Paint palette and Brush Tips palettes contain options for the Paint, Clone and Eraser tools, and the Character and Paragraph palettes contain the options available for the Type tool.

Using these new tools couldn’t be more intuitive. Just like in Photoshop, you simply select the tool you wish to use, specify settings in the related palette and then apply the tool to your footage. However, there is a difference between how you apply the Paint tools and the Type tool: the Paint tools must be applied to an existing layer by painting in the Layer window. The Type tool, on the other hand, can be applied directly in the Composition window, because it creates its own layer once applied. The real power with these new tools comes in your ability to set keyframes for any of their related properties, which opens up many possibilities for solving problems and creating dynamic effects.

In the following tutorial, we’ll use the Clone tool to remove a piece of rubbish from the clip and then use the Paint and Type tools to add some animated text. Before continuing, you’ll need to download the materials from the Guild website at www.editorsguild.com/AfterEffects.html, and you will need to have a copy of After Effects 6.0, either the Standard or Production bundle.

Tutorial

After downloading the materials, check inside the folder and examine the item called “herekitty.mov,” which will be our source file for this exercise. It’s a five-second QuickTime movie at 15 frames per second with a resolution of 320 x 240. Lossy compression has been applied to the clip to allow for Internet download, so the image quality is quite poor, but it will be sufficient for the purposes of this demo. The clip has already been time remapped to the desired length. (See July/August 2003 for a tutorial on that technique.)

Getting Started

	1.	Create a new project (File>New>New Project) and import the “herekitty.mov” footage item into the Project window (File>Import>File).
	2.	Create a new composition that matches the frame size and duration of the source clip by dragging the “herekitty.mov” icon from within the Project window onto the new composition button at the bottom of the window.
Using the Clone Tool to Remove Trash from the Footage In the grass, there is a crushed soda can, which we will paint out using the Clone tool.
Figure 2. It is easiest to paint out the soda can if you sample (Option-click or Alt-click) above the can to paint out its top half, then sample again below the can to paint out its lower half.
	3.	In the Timeline window, double-click the “herekitty.mov” layer to open it up in its Layer window. Notice that the Layer window opens up tabbed together with the Comp window — this is a change from previous versions, where the Layer window would open separately.
	4.	Select the Clone tool from the tool palette. The Paint and Brush Tip palettes will appear.
	5.	In the Paint palette, leave the settings at their defaults, making sure that the Align option is checked.
	6.	Choose a brush size from the pop-up. I used a brush size of 21 pixels.
	7.	Back in the Layer window, position the cursor in the area of the frame from which you want to sample. Because the cat gets up and walks out of frame to the left, I found it easiest to sample from directly below and directly above the soda can.
	8.	Just like the Clone tool in Photoshop, the Clone tool in AE copies pixels from one area of the image and applies them to another. To choose the area from which you want to sample, hold down the Option key (or Alt in Windows) and click. Then move the cursor to the part of the soda can that you want to cover with the sampled pixels. Click and drag to paint. Because the Align option is checked in the Paint palette, the area being sampled will move from your initial sample point in the same direction that you are painting. Paint out the soda can, trying to do so in as few strokes as possible. It will be easiest if you sample above the can and make a couple of strokes to paint out the top half of the can, then sample again below the can (Option-click or Alt-click) and add a few more strokes to paint out the lower half (Figure 2).
	9.	Back in the Timeline, make sure the “herekitty.mov” layer is selected and push the P key twice in rapid succession to display the Paint group under the layer name. Within this group, you’ll see a Paint-on-Transparent option (currently turned off), followed by a series of clone groups — there is one clone group for each stroke that you made with the tool. (Turning on the Paint-on-Transparent option allows you to view just the paint strokes, without the underlying layer.)
	10.	Click on the name of one of the clone groups, such as Clone 1. Look back in the Layer window, and you’ll see a faint gray anchor point and path, which together represent the stroke. In the Timeline, click the little arrow to the left of the clone group to expand its properties. You’ll see a Shape property, along with two subgroups: Stroke Options and Transform. The transform subgroup contains the familiar AE transformation properties —Position, Scale, Rotation and Anchor Point — which allow you to transform the individual stroke. The Stroke Options subgroup contains many more properties that allow you to keyframe things like the size and angle of the brush tip. Because this is a fairly simple cloning example, we won’t set any keyframes for the Stroke Option properties.
	11.	Check your animation by scrubbing the blue time marker along the timeline. Make sure that the soda can does not reappear later in the comp, or that parts of the cat do not appear on screen twice due to the cat walking across the point from which your Clone tool is sampling. If you want to redo your Clone tool strokes, you can delete individual strokes by selecting them in the Timeline and hitting Delete. You can delete all the strokes by selecting the paint group and hitting Delete.
	12.	Redo the clone strokes as necessary until you get a good result where the can is effectively removed from the clip without affecting the cat’s action. Collapse all the layer properties and save your work, if you haven’t already.
Using the Paint Tool to Create a Handwriting Effect
	13.	Select the Paint tool from within the tool palette. In the Paint palette, select a color and a brush size. I used a brush size of 13 and chose a pink color.
	14	Change the current time to 2:04, and then in the Layer window, click and write the words “here kitty.” As with the Clone tool, try and use as few strokes as possible by writing in one smooth continuous motion. In my example, it took me four separate strokes — the last two strokes were crossing the “t’s” and dotting the “i”.
	15.	Select the layer in the Timeline and hit the P key twice rapidly on the keyboard to display the paint group again. The clone groups are still there, plus now there will be some brush groups as well, again depending on how many strokes you took (Figure 3).
	16.	Look to the right of the brush groups under the Timeline. Because you made your strokes where the time equals 2:04, that’s where the gray bars that represent the duration of the strokes start (Figure 3).
	17.	Select Brush 1 and expand its Stroke Options subgroup. To create the effect that the words are being written on the screen over time, we’ll set keyframes for the property called End.
	18.	With the current time still at 2:04, click the little stopwatch to the left of the End attribute to initialize keyframing. Scrub or type the value for the property to 0%. In the Layer window, the first stroke will disappear. Move the time marker forward approximately one second, and then scrub or type the value back to 100%. Drag the time marker between the two keyframes to preview the result. The first stroke (which should be the word “here”) should reveal itself as the marker moves from the first keyframe to the second.
	19.	Move the time marker about three frames after the last keyframe that you just set. Select the next Brush group and repeat the procedure to create the write-on effect.
	20.	Repeat Steps 16-18 for each Brush group, except for the one that is the dot on the “i”. For that one, drag the in-point handle on the gray bar to a few frames after the last stroke has finished animating. This will make the dot appear on screen after the rest of the words have finished animating.
	21.	Preview and save your work. As before, if you need to redo some of the strokes you can simply select and delete them in the timeline and then redraw them by following Step 13 above.

When you are finished with the handwriting effect, collapse the properties for the “herekitty.mov” layer in the Timeline, and then close the layer window by clicking the tiny box on the right of its tab in the Comp window.

Using the Type Tool to Add Text

For our last step, we’ll use the new Type tool to add the word “Productions” at the bottom of the frame.

	22.	In the Timeline, place the current time marker at 4:00 and then select the Type tool from the tool palette.
	23.	In the Character palette that appears, specify a font size of 18 pixels and check the Faux Bold button towards the bottom left corner of the palette. Click the color swatch to specify a new color (I used a shade of yellow) and click OK.
Using the Clone Tool to Remove Trash from the Footage In the grass, there is a crushed soda can, which we will paint out using the Clone tool.
	24.	In the Comp window, position the cursor at the bottom center of the frame. Click and type the word “Productions,” all in caps. To get out of the type field, push the Enter key on your keyboard.
	25.	In the Timeline, you will see a new type layer, indicated by the T icon next to the layer name. Click the arrow to the left of the layer name to expand its properties.
	26.	From the Animation menu at the top of the screen, select Animate Text>Position.
	27.	In the Timeline window, a new attribute called Animator 1 appears under the type layer. Drag its Position property’s Y value to the right, so that the word “Productions” moves off the bottom of the screen.
	28.	Expand the Animator 1 attribute called Range Selector 1 and click the stopwatch for Start. Leave its value at 0%.
	29.	Move the current time marker forward to about 4:15 and change the Start value to 100%. AE will automatically set your second keyframe.
	30.	Preview your animation. The letters will all fly up from the bottom of the screen with staggered timing to form the word “Productions”.
	31.	Preview and save your work. If you need to edit the text, double-click it in the Comp window to get the text entry field. If you need to delete the animation, select the Animator 1 property in the timeline and hit Delete.

Obviously, we’ve only scratched the surface of what can be done with the new Paint, Clone and Type tools in After Effects version 6.0. There are plenty of other exciting new features and user interface enhancements too, but these paint and type features alone make AE 6.0 a significant and worthwhile upgrade.