Welcome to this new section of the After effects Course this section is diving deeper into shapes and solids in the past sections. We've looked at shapes and that was when we used our shape tool up here and we created shapes. So you can see that we create shapes down here. Solids are a little bit different and they have different properties and you can do different things with them to create a solid. Go up to layer new and solid. Also, just take note while we're here that this is a cool way to create some different types of layers, such as a light layer or a camera. These are things were beginning to in the future. So if I choose solid, it brings up this window where we can choose our solid settings, you can give it a name, you can also change the color and this is going to be a full frame sort of color or shape. It typically matches your comp size or you can just click this button to make at the comp size, then click OK, when you do that, it automatically pops up in your timeline and ...

it also pops up in this folder over here, which is a different kind of cool thing compared to your shape layers. Because if you want to reuse these solids in different compositions, you can actually do that right from your project bin rather than recreating it as a shape layer. Alright, so let me actually rename these just so you know, this is solid, this is shape. So we also learned that with the shape layers that if you double click the rectangle tool it creates the shape layer, that's the full size of your composition. So actually I'm going to delete this original shape we created now called this one shape. Because you might be wondering, okay, we have a shape and a solid. What's the difference if I turn off and on the shape you're like, it basically does the same thing. Right, Well they do play different purposes. One of the reasons why I like using solids is that sometimes when you apply different effects to a layer, if you want it to be applied to the entire composition, you might need to use a solid layer, something we'll get into in the future as well. Another thing is that the way that you create masks. So with a shape, you can't really create a mask. If I take my, for example, star tool and I want to create a star mask with from the shape. It doesn't do it, it just creates another shape. Yes, I can turn off the rectangle and now I have a star but it's a little different than creating a mask with a solid. If I do that with a solid, let's turn off our shape and let's take our polygon tool and I have my solid layer selected and I create a mask. You can see that I create this shape. But what's actually happening is it's just sort of a cutout within the salt layer. Think of it as if you've ever baked cookies and you've rolled out your dough and then you get those little cookie cutters and you like stamp it onto your dough. It's basically stamping this shape onto it. But everything outside of it is still there and we can actually delete this mask if we want to undo it or if you see now we have this mask within our layer, we can invert it. So just by clicking this invert button, now we have this solid layer with this cutout beneath it. And let me just show you how that works by bringing in our kangaroo photo and that's in the background. Let me just make sure it's the right size, turning off the solid scaling down our kangaroo. Let's turn back on our solid. So now we have this mask and we can take this mask, we can move it around. And there's also different options within the mass properties that you don't get with a shape layer, such as if you see when I drop this down, you have feathering and you also have mask expansion which expands the mass. Using the same sort of shape that you created it with earlier. This is a great way to create a quick vignette in after effects. Let me delete this solid to create a quick vignette just press command y which is your new solid button or control y if you're on a pc make it black click OK And then click. Ok Now we have this solid that's the same size as our composition. And if we want to perfectly oval than yet, choose the lips tool, double click, which creates this oval mask, we'll need to invert it. So we're getting closer now it's just sort of this frame and then we can use feathering to feather out the edges. So we get more of a vignette and then depending if you want it brighter or darker, you can decrease the opacity of the mask itself or you can decrease the opacity of this entire layer. It's the same thing you're doing. But see this opacity is just for this mask. But if you bring up the transform properties of this entire layer, you also get the opacity of the layer. So let me just turn this on or off. It's a quick way to create that vignette and adding vignettes is a cool style. Don't go overboard with it. I know some people tend to add vignettes to everything they do but it is a nice sort of cinematic style and then of course we can animate all of these properties as well. If we want it to expand out, we can set a key frame for the mask expansion as it is. Then we can go back in time and then we can shrink our mask expansion. Let's actually make our opacity. 100 So we can see what's happening. I'm just drinking it all the way until it's completely gone. -528 Pixels. Now let's play through this And then you have this nice sort of reveal, nice sort of reveal one quick last thing. This doesn't have to do with vignettes or solid layers. But one way to create a more sort of dynamic look with photos is what's called the ken burns effect where your photos sort of subtly grow or shrink or move from side to side and you can do that with an easy position or scale animation. So I'm going to with my kangaroo, bring up scale Set a key frame for 49%. Put that at the beginning. Now set another key frame for let's just do 53%,, put that later on and now we can play through this. It's a little fast. So I'm just going to extend that a little bit. That's a nice little opening animation with the vignette and that's done with the salt layer and then a little scale animation. Cool. So that's a bit about solid layers. In the next lesson, we're going to be going back to shape layers because there's more things that you can do with shape layers that we definitely need to cover

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Practice Files

buy this class

$00

Buy Class

Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

79.7K Students

99% Recommend this Class

00 Student Work

0 Video lessons in HD
00h 00m of class content
Exclusive bonus content
Lifetime access, anywhere, anytime
Streaming access on desktop and mobile browsers
Download and offline access with class purchase
Offline sync with our iPhone & iPad apps
100% satisfaction guarantee

Philip Ebiner

Professional video & course creator, photographer & teacher to 1mil+ students; 10+ years experience with 1000+ videos.

2,000+ classes ranging from fundamentals to advanced techniques.

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Lesson Info

18. Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Lessons

Class Updates & My Favorite CC 2020 Updates

Understand the After Effects Workspace

Starting a New Composition

CC 2018 Update - Starting a New Composition from Footage

Adding Media to Your Project and the Timeline

Using the Basic After Effects Tools

Create a Perfect Circle, Alignment, and Shape Colors

Working in the Timeline

Layer Properties

Quiz: After Effects Basics

Animating in After Effects

Position, Scale, and Rotation Animations

Tips to Make Your Animations Look More Nautral

Using the Graph Editor

Challenge - Bouncing Ball

Solution - Bouncing Ball

Quiz: Animating with Keyframes

Working with Solid Layers and the Ken Burns Effects

Working with Shape Layers, Strokes, and Paths

Adding Layer Styles like Drop Shadow, Bevel, and Gradients

Shape Effects - Trim Path Animations, Wiggle, and Zig Zag

Quiz: Shapes and Solid Layers

Track Matte Animations - Make Layers Appear and Disappear

Using Pre-Compositions to Group Layers

Easily Reverse Complicated Animations

Playing with Time

Blend Modes

Stabilize Shaky Footage

CC 2018 Update - Previewing and Favoriting Fonts

CC 2019 Update - Responsive Design Time

CC 2019 Content Aware Fill

CC 2019 Create Motion Graphic Templates

Quiz: Important After Effects Skills

Intro to Motion Graphics Projects

Clean Lower Third

Logo Reveal Animation Bumper

Colorful Transition

Text with Mask Path Animation

Text Bubble Animation

Weather App 1

Weather App 2

Weather App 3

Quiz: Motion Graphics Projects

Flat Animation Challenge

Phil Designs his Flat Animation Scene

Animating Fireworks with the Repeater Effect

Removing Green Screen Background

Adding a Background that Matches the Foreground

Adding Motion to a Still Image with the Puppet Tool

Adding Movement with the Ripple Effect

Quiz: Flat Animation Challenge

Intro to 3D

Swinging 3D Text Animation

Build Out Your 3D Composition

Animating Our 3D Scene

Create Stars in After Effects

Quiz: Green Screen (Chromakeying)

Using the Rotoscope Tool

Cleaning Up Your Edges

Finishing Our Rotobrush Animation

Quiz: 3D Animations and the Camera Tool

Easy Screen Replacement with Masks

Replacing a Screen Version 2

Screen Replacement with Mocha

CC 2019 Update - Native Mocha AE Plugin

Quiz: Rotoscoping

Using the Puppet Pin Tool

Animating Your Puppet Pins

Animated Blinking Eyes

Adding Perspective with Animated Clouds

CC 2018 Update - Advanced Puppet Pin Tool

Quiz: Screen Replacements

Applying Text Animation Presets

Create a Page Turn Effect with CC Page Turn