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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Composition Layers

  • Composition Layers

    Posted by Bryant Vander weerd on March 4, 2009 at 3:24 am

    Tonight, I was helping a friend import some PSDs into After Effects because he was trying to learn AE by doing some animation. I imported it as a Composition-Cropped Layers. These files were pretty layer-intensive in PS, so after I imported them into AE, you can imagine the mess I had.

    I noticed that the layers that had things like drop shadows or outr glows applied didn’t import as a layer with a shadow – AE simply interpreted this glow and this shadow as a separate layer. So, in PS I had one layer with effects applied to it, whereas in AE I had 3 different layers – the actual image, and the glow, and the shadow.

    So… why does AE do that? Is there any way I can get it to just understand that the drop shadow is a part of the layer, and doesn’t need to clutter up my timeline with another layer?

    ——————————
    “I’ve always found it’s better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it…”

    Bryant Vander weerd replied 17 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Simon Bonner

    March 4, 2009 at 4:28 pm

    I guess it does that because glows, drop shadows etc are rendered differently in AE, so by importing them as separate layers the look of the image in PS is preserved. This is just a guess though.

    You can always use a precomp of the .psd, though. That would only be one layer in your final comp.

    Simon Bonner

    youtube.com/simonsaysfx

  • Bryant Vander weerd

    March 4, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Right – I still had the precomp when I imported the PSD into AE, but the idea was to move things around INSIDE the precomp. Rather than have an all new composition, I’d rather just mess with my elements in the comp it provided for me.

    One would think two sensible, compatible Adobe programs would work better than this. I suppose not. Thank you for the response!

    ——————————
    “I’ve always found it’s better to shoot something than it is to troubleshoot it…”

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