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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Cropping a layer/animation for export.

  • Cropping a layer/animation for export.

    Posted by Kyle Tobias on February 10, 2012 at 11:23 pm

    Ok first of all Hi I’m new :D.

    Secondly I know this work flow is probably all backwards but ..meh it’s they way that makes sense to me.

    In short I have a Photoshop file with layers I have imported into AE and then am slowly animating each layer and passing it back out to flash for the final animation (I cant export as one big animation as I run each layer at different lengths to sort of randomise the final animation….).

    Anyway the issue I have is I have is Flash is crashing under the load, importing each animated piece in as XFL (as PNG sequence to maintain the transparency).

    I cant export as FLV in the export to XFL options as then everything has a white layer round it and is not transparent where needed.

    My thought is…..

    Is there a way to crop the animations, each piece sits in a HUGE PNG picture with 80% of it being transparent and the animation is normally only in one small part of that huge image..it would save a huge load off Flash if I could crop down to capture only the rough area that is being animated in….

    Any help please..

    Sorry thats so damned long but I hope I got enough detail in there.

    Kyle

    :S

    Noob to the max :D.

    Kyle Tobias replied 14 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Evan Abrams

    February 11, 2012 at 12:52 pm

    IF you were to export your frames as cropped PNGs as the size of the content changed so would the size of the image so some frames would be maybe 500*500, but some would be 600*300 or however that goes. the result of that is that when you view them or use them as a sequence their reference points would all be skewed and you would get some funky placement issues with each frame being out of alignment with where it should be.

    Evan Abrams
    http://www.evanabrams.com
    http://www.youtube.com/ECAbrams
    http://www.Twitter.com/ECAbrams

  • Kyle Tobias

    February 11, 2012 at 7:05 pm

    Yeah that figures..

    How about setting a crop that encompases All of the movement in an animation.

    As each piece is say in a 200×200 box of a 1080×800 ish overal image..

    Is that possible or can a mask be used ?

  • Evan Abrams

    February 12, 2012 at 4:07 am

    You can do that. Or precompose and re-size to 200×200. Masking has little impact on frame size on export.

    Evan Abrams
    http://www.evanabrams.com
    http://www.youtube.com/ECAbrams
    http://www.Twitter.com/ECAbrams

  • Kyle Tobias

    February 12, 2012 at 8:46 am

    Thanks :), so masking is a nono.

    Being a complete idiot.. a greatful one though, re compose (where would the settings be for that roughly, I’m happy to mess things up and load again).

    I take it you are on about reducing the empty space by resixing the individual layer in AE ?

    Thanks again :).

  • Evan Abrams

    February 12, 2012 at 4:41 pm

    Not so much.

    Select the layer and go int the top menu layer>Pre-compose. Or Command+shift+c, then change the settings of that comp to be smaller and export that out.

    Or duplicate the comp you animated things in, re-size that in its composition settings and poke out the eyes of everything you don’t need before exporting?

    Evan Abrams
    http://www.evanabrams.com
    http://www.youtube.com/ECAbrams
    http://www.Twitter.com/ECAbrams

  • Kyle Tobias

    February 12, 2012 at 6:46 pm

    Thanks so much I will give that a go a tad later 🙂

  • Kyle Tobias

    February 15, 2012 at 11:08 pm

    Worked a treat just resizing the composition and centering the content of the layer I’m working with :D.

    Thanks.

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