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Edit Review: Adobe After Effects CS3

Sep 1, 2007 12:00 PM, Reviewer: Franklin McMahon

Industry-standard compositor packs new power.

After Effects (AE) joins Adobe Creative Suite 3 with this new revision — essentially version 8.0. As usual, new features and improvements abound, and we'll decide if the upgrade is worth it, or if it's safe to stick with your current version. For those of you considering the Adobe CS3 Production Premium suite or the Master Collection, AE 8.0 might just be a bonus. But as Adobe enhances the integration among the products in its suites, you'll want to at least make yourself familiar with what's arguably the most popular motion-graphics program out there.

One major new feature is the Puppet tool, which lets you easily animate a shape or layer just by adding “pins” to your figure and then moving them around. It sounds like a fast way to animate characters, but it's important to understand how this tool works so you can decide if it will benefit you. Basically, it's a mesh tool. The mesh is created the first time you click on an object, which lays down the first pin. With each successive pin, the mesh gets a little more complex, so that you can move the pins, and the shape or object moves along with it. The tool isn't based on hierarchical joints as you may assume, so I'm not sure the term “puppet” is the best description. I liken it to digital clay. The mesh is created on the fly, and moving points can provide you with unexpected results unless you add several, and they are pretty specific about where you put things.

You'll also realize that the Puppet tool only works on your current frame — using it with the existing Motion Sketch tool allows you to create full animations over time. Also, here's a trick you might otherwise miss: If you hold down the control key and move the pins on the mesh, After Effects will snap into record mode and track the motion while it lays down keyframes, which you can then go back and alter. I found this method more intuitive, because I could always hit undo if I did not like the motion I just created. If I was happy with it, I could always twirl down the object's timeline and zoom in to tweak the keyframes manually.

Moving away from digital characters and puppets, the real fun kicks in when you start to apply the Puppet tool to elements such as organic shapes and text. Text animation gets really swirly and crazy, and organic shapes suddenly take on a life of their own. I think the Puppet tool is great for broad-stroke styling, but for more precise moves, there are better tools in AE for the job. But you are guaranteed to have a blast playing around with the Puppet tool.

Brainstorm is a new addition that lets you take a layer, shape, text, or animation, and randomize its parameters within nine smaller screens. You choose the parameters you want to shake up and then mix. For example, take a colored text animation that you want to consider with different hues applied. Just jump into the Brainstorm screen and click Randomize a few times, and you'll see nine variations. The previews even animate if you are brainstorming some motion paths.

I actually used Brainstorm for a couple of client projects in the past few weeks, creating animated intros and trying different looks. I found that if I kept the randomization down pretty low (it's adjustable from 1 to 100), the Brainstorm tool actually gave me a nice palette of variations that were different enough but not too off the path of what I was trying to create for the client. If the randomization was set too high, it would swing too wildly in different directions. Initially, I thought the tool was a neat little trick that I would not use too much (it reminds me of the Photoshop Adjustments > Variation tool that I already don't really use), but Brainstorm has grown on me. It's quite cool if you are stuck in a creative logjam and need some quick inspiration.

Shape Layers are an important addition to After Effects CS3 because a chunk of the Adobe Illustrator (AI) CS3 engine has been brought into AE, deploying a range of vector tools that previously were not available. Most of us create our vector and AI files outside of After Effects and just import them. The interplay between the Adobe programs has always made this fairly painless. The problem arises when you need to do slight alterations, or perhaps if you just want to create some basic vector shapes in AE but don't want to boot up Illustrator. Now you have a nice range of basic tools to create and alter Illustrator-style vector shapes in AE on a separate layer. As expected, all work losslessly, so you can resize up and down and not lose any detail.

With Shape Layers, AE CS3 offers many built-in shape presets, and each of these has several parameters that can be tweaked. In addition, there are vector effects to round, repeat, zigzag, trim, pucker, and bloat these shapes, offering literally thousands of combinations. Text can be turned into a Shape Layer as well, so all of these effects and animated options can be applied to your titles. Add gradients, strokes, fills, and more standard vector options, and you've got a powerful feature set that might just keep you from jumping into Illustrator.

Adobe rounds out the new package with many smaller new additions and features, such as improved Photoshop integration, better Flash export, per-character 3D text animations, color management, and Clip Notes.

3D text continues to evolve, and it's certainly nice to be able to animate on a character basis now. There are also lots of new animated text presets, which can be previewed easily and applied via Adobe Bridge, the separate program for viewing the assets of your digital content collection. Bridge still seems a bit disconnected to me, but the ability to preview effects before applying them is very handy. It would be nice if Bridge were the program's actual file requestor, meaning you would jump into it from within the program. However, the interplay is still tight considering it is a separate program.

Color management is long overdue in After Effects. Now, as animations and other projects hit so many traditional and new-media platforms, it's very handy to be able to sync After Effects CS3's color to that of your other Adobe programs — as well as to the color of your own Mac or PC system. You can even do output simulations to see what your project will look like under alternative color spaces.

Clip Notes came to Adobe Premiere Pro a revision ago, and now it's introduced to AE CS3. Clip Notes basically lets you export your timeline as an embedded or streamed video clip that's wrapped in a PDF document. The producer and client can review the clip and add comments as the file is sent back and forth. This could be a powerful way to communicate about project elements over the Web, and the files can be squashed down to very email-friendly sizes. No more FedExing tapes or discs. Clip Notes is immediate and interactive.

Always on the next wave, Adobe has included Device Central CS3 with this new version of AE. Device Central allows you to preview your final projects for smaller screens, such as those found on PlayStation Portables, iPods, and cellphones.

Adobe After Effects CS3 has a lot of very cool features, and — just as important — the program now takes full advantage of multicore processors with this new version (make sure you toggle it on in the Preferences). AE continues to be a rock-solid program with a delightfully customizable interface. Of course, you'll want to upgrade to CS3, but I don't think it's absolutely mission-critical. Nothing completely blew me away — no paradigm shifts here. Maybe I am just so spoiled with the wealth of After Effects'existing features — it would take a decade to explore and then fully exploit them.

I do think the new Shape Layers and 3D text options are important enough to make you grab this update. (And of course, AE's new support for multicore hardware is key for the program's performance.) I also think the combo of color management, Clip Notes, and Device Central signal the dawning of a new After Effects era, one that will bring the program into new markets and bring in media artists who are looking beyond title sequences and standard composites.

If you are new to the program, it's simply the industry standard for desktop compositing. The new CS3 version, like just about every other version of After Effects before it, does not disappoint.

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bottomline

Company: Adobe
www.adobe.com

Product: After Effects CS3

Assets: Improved Photoshop integration, better Flash export, per-character 3D text animations, color management, takes advantage of multicore processors.

Caveats: None

Demographic: Anyone doing compositing.

PRICE: $999 (FULL); $299 (UPGRADE)

© 2008 Penton Media, Inc.