Staying organized when you're working on compositions is critical, especially in an
application such as this, where you're going to bring in so many different types
of assets from movies to still images to audio to logos, I mean it can really,
really get crazy. So what I want to talk about here is how to use folders. As
you see over here in our project panel we have a little folder icon and we can
click on it to create a new folder and it's already highlighted so we can just
type something. So I'll go ahead and just type assets. Then I hit Return to
accept that. Now as you see when I have assets selected I can click on the new
folder icon again and it will create a new leaf in this tree here. So I can say,
movies for example and once again I can click on assets, click on a new folder
and I can say something like, stills. So as long as I go back to the main folder
I can always create children of that folder and I can collapse it by clicking or
twirling the arrow. If I want to create a brand new branch I can click away from
it like so and now I have a new folder, and once again I can do the same thing,
click on that folder and add new folders within that folder. Or if this folder
is selected click on it again and I keep creating a new branch and I collapse
that one and collapse that one. I can also get rid of these guys by clicking on
it like so and clicking on the garbage can and I'll get a warning that tells me
it has other things contained in it. Another cool thing about After Effects when
you're dealing with folders is that when you import files you don't have to
import you know one at a time. I can click on this folder here that has these
files in it and click import folder. It brings the whole folder in with the name
and images that were contained within it. So, you can organize your file
structure elsewhere and then bring that folder in, in one fell swoop. If I want
to put this vice folder in the assets folder, I click and I drag and I drop it
right on in there and now it's a part of this assets folder. And if I want to
take it out, just click and drag it away and it becomes a part of its own branch
again. So folders are a very important, in my opinion assets when working with
After Effects because you can keep yourself organized and never have to worry
about where a particular asset is. Once again by the way if for example I
imported this folder and on my hard drive I relocated this real folder here,
After Effects will ask for the location of the folder because it won't know that
you've moved it. It will know that you move it, but not where. So keep that in
mind, try to find one place on your computer that you're going to work with and
try to stay in that region because you can accidentally miss the connection
between your assets by moving them around on your computer.
Adobe After Effects CS3
Dwayne Ferguson
US$ 99.95
7 hours - 125 Movies
Win Vista XP 2000,ME. Mac OS X
Ground / 2 day / Next Day
33843
731 In Stock
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