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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Editing: How can I see through a comp?

  • Editing: How can I see through a comp?

    Posted by Doland Ruiz on May 3, 2013 at 5:31 pm

    I’m not even sure if I’m phrasing this right, but I have a nested comp, and I double click to edit the comp and animate stuff inside. But I can’t see where these animated flying objects will end up in the parent comp.

    With Flash, if you go into a symbol, you can still see the outer timeline so you know where you are. Any way to do that in AE?

    Let me know if I’m speaking jibberish.

    – doland

    Jussi Knaapi replied 9 years, 3 months ago 5 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • John Cuevas

    May 3, 2013 at 6:36 pm

    What you are asking about is commonly refered to as Edit This Look At That(ETLAT) and the easiest way to set that up, IMO, is to click on your Comp Window and then press “cntl+alt+shift+N” this will open up side by side windows. Now you can use the pulldown to set one of them to your precomp and one to your final comp. Use the locks to make sure they don’t switch and you can move the objects in your precomp and see the updates int he final.

    Johnny Cuevas, Editor
    Thinkck.com

    “I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
    —THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.

  • Todd Kopriva

    May 3, 2013 at 8:10 pm

    There’s more information about what Johnny is talking about here.

    ———————————————————————————————————
    Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
    After Effects quality engineering
    After Effects team blog
    ———————————————————————————————————

  • Gerald Hapeman

    May 7, 2013 at 4:39 am

    Thank you bud… I did figure it out and much appreciate your timely reply…!

  • Doland Ruiz

    June 19, 2013 at 7:56 pm

    Forgot to come back and say thanks, so thanks! This solution will do and I have used it extensively since then. But AE would be so much better if it did what I described tho! 😛

  • Doland Ruiz

    June 19, 2013 at 10:25 pm

    Forgot to come back and say thanks, so thanks! This solution will do and I have used it extensively since then. But AE would be so much better if it did what I described tho! 😛

  • Jussi Knaapi

    January 14, 2017 at 12:54 pm

    I also took an benefit to get this info, thanks.
    However, it would be way better if we could draw a composition directly on top of underlaying video. Side by side opening are ok, but not as handy as possible.

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