save my small effects for reuse

[Steve Roberts]

1. Look in the Help under “alpha channel” or “transparency”.

2. Either make a small project and import it when you need it or save the effect as a Preset (check the Help).

3. Make a small project and import it when you need it.

[Walter Soyka]

[Steve Roberts] “Make a small project…”

To add to Steve’s suggestion of making a small project, you could alternately make a project small with Reduce project.

You might also consider collecting files and reducing to gather all your media files into one place for easier reuse and transport.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Joseph W. bourke]

Gerardo –

Here’s where the much maligned Adobe Bridge can come into play to help you organize your elements. My last job entailed an entire “toolkit” of elements which were used, re-used, re-purposed, and catalogued using Bridge. I would create and render off from AE all of my master elements, and create categories in Bridge with names like “background”, “flare”, “logo”, anything which described a group of elements which I could then filter out in Bridge, find easily, and use.

Between that and the Collect Files option, I was able to manage literally hundreds of elements for opens, promos, bumps, rejoins, and other broadcast news pieces. Bridge is your friend – the hard part is coming up with a naming convention that will make it easy to get your hands on the elements. Once you find the elements you need in Bridge, minimize it, and drag and drop into AE. It makes life a lot easier!

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Gerardo Flores]

Joe
thank you for your tips

do you have any way to see in adobe bridge the pre-visualization
of what it is inside of one after effects project??

do you use any specific steps before to save any presets???
I mean this it is important if I want to save for example
all the effects that one single layer have …

thank you guys for all this knowledge that you share with us

learning after effects

[Walter Soyka]

[Gerardo Flores] “do you have any way to see in adobe bridge the pre-visualization
of what it is inside of one after effects project??”

If I understood Joe’s post correctly, he renders elements out to movie files and uses Bridge to preview them.

[Gerardo Flores] “do you use any specific steps before to save any presets???
I mean this it is important if I want to save for example
all the effects that one single layer have …”

See Save an animation preset in the help. You just select the properties you want to save (making sure that properties you don’t want to save are deselected).

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Joseph W. bourke]

Gerardo –

Walter got it right – I pre-render my layer(s) which I intend to reuse, then categorize them carefully in Bridge. This allows me to sort or filter any elements I may need in the future. I don’t know of any way to see inside of an AE project for effects, etc., short of opening the project.

What Walter suggests, saving your commonly used effects, is a good idea. I do this all the time. There’s no reason to recreate a lens flare which comes up from zero opacity, moves left to right, and then fades out, when you can save all of the effect settings, and even the opacity/intensity keyframes as a preset. I would suggest both pre-rendering elements which will be reused, AND saving any regularly used effects as presets. Once again, naming conventions become critical. It’s a lot easier to figure out what an effect named “Flare_Blue_Fade_R_to_L” is than “My_Lens_Flare_1”. The more you can prepare for the next rush job, the better.

Joe Bourke
Creative Director / Multimedia Specialist
B&S Exhibits and Multimedia
bs-exhibits.com

[Gerardo Flores]

Steve; Walter ; Joseph

THANK YOU A LOT

I think the info from this post will be the more used in the next months
THATS GREAT … i exited thinking how much time and how fast I cant work now

Information like this for autodidactic user as I am are pure GOLD

Thank you again

Gerardo

learning after effects