Animating a Chariot Using Nesting - Adobe After Effects Tutorial

Jacquelin Vanderwood August 1, 2004   1 In this lesson I want to show you the wrong way and the right to animate. As we go along you'll learn a lot of important information about animation. You'll also learn about Nesting and it's importance. I first started by creating two separate pieces for the chariot, the wagon part of it and the part that connects to the horses. I imported them into After Effects after I deleted the white backgrounds in Photoshop. I imported them in one full piece each.   2 Here's a closer look at the wheel. Notice how it has a highlight that runs around the wheel. In reality this highlight would be stationary no matter if the wheel runs forward or backward.   3 Here I've hidden the wheel so that you can see the highlight better. So we have two layers, the wheel and the highlight. That is how it should be imported.   4 For the wheel layer, hit R to open Rotation and set a keyframe.   5 Hit the End key and set the rotation to 10.   6 To preview in RAM only the wheel, click on the Region of Interest button. Drag around the wheel.   7 Set to Best Quality.   8 Hit the RAM preview key which is 0 (zero).   9 Press Control+Shift+B to change the background color. Use the Eyedropper and select a color that is lighter. Toggle off the Region of Interest button to view the whole scene in that color.   10 To duplicate both of the wheel layers, use Shift and select and then press Control+D. To bring these two layers together, hit Control+Shift+] or Control+Shift+[ to bring them to the front or the back.   11 Move it into position.   12 Right-click on one the timeline title areas and select Panels. Now select Parent to bring that up.   13 At this point we want to parent everything to the chariot using the pickwhip. Why do we do that? If we animate the chariot moving and this is not done, then the only thing moving in the scene will be the chariot body and not the wheels, etc.   14 So now we can select the body of the chariot and scale it. Let's scale it and move it off screen. Make sure you are at the first keyframe. Hit the End key and move the chariot to the right pressing the Shift key so that it stays level. Hit the Home key and press the Spacebar to watch the animation.   15 At this point if you want to add Transparency to the piece, you would literally have to select each layer and apply the Transparency to it. To fix that, uncheck Position for the animation. Go back to keyframe one and select Control+A to select all of the layers. Now press Alt+T. A keyframe has now been set for Transparency for all the layers.   16 At this point right-click on one of the values for Opacity and choose Edit value and change to 50%. Make sure the layers are selected. This sets a second keyframe for Transparency. Now as we watch the animation about half way through the first and second keyframe we notice that we are seeing the other parts of the chariot coming into view. We don't want this. Press Control+Z to undo the Opacity keyframes.   17 Select the body of the Chariot. Apply a Drop Shadow located under Perspective to the body. Drag the Distance of the shadow out. Also increase the Softness. Also increase Opacity to about 70%.   18 Select chariot layer and copy the Drop Shadow. Select the bar, and one wheel and highlight layer. Press Control+V to copy. If you press the Spacebar now you'll discover that the Drop Shadow rotates with the wheels. You don't want that.  There is a better method. Delete all of the effects and delete the wheel layers. We're starting over. Click on the Photoshop layer that you imported to open. It will be imported in layers. Click on the wheel layer and set a rotation like we did in step 4 and 5.   19 Instead of bringing in the separate layers of the wheel this time, we'll bring in the wheel psd file we just animated. Go back to the chariot compositon and drag in the wheel psd animation file on to the chariot. Copy the layer and send it to the back. Try reducing it slightly. Hit the Spacebar and watch the wheels rotate. You can at this point open up the wheel psd file and make changes that will reflect into the current composition.   20 Select the composition now and drop it onto the New Composition button to create a complete composition. Now you only have one layer. Apply the Drop Shadow to the piece. At this point you can scale the piece, or do anything you want and not have any problems. Go ahead and set up the Position keyframes again and watch the animation by pressing the spacebar.   Copyright 1998-2004, Jacquelin Vanderwood, All Rights Reserved