Importing Basics in After Effects

Don't know how to get your other files into Adobe After Effects? Watch this tutorial from Noble Desktop to learn how!

#mograph #motiongraphics #mographtuts #aetuts #aftereffects #nobledesktop

Importing Video Files

1. Go up to FIle > Import. The hotkey is Cmnd-I (Mac) / Ctrl-I (PC).
2. In the File Explorer window, select any video footage.
3. Under Import Options, select Footage. This option flattens all layers, bringing the file into one solid piece. Incidentally, this is the only import option available for video files.

Importing Illustrator/Photoshop Files

1. Repeat step one of the previous section.
2. Select any Illustrator or Photoshop file within File Explorer.
3. Under Import Options, choose Composition - Retain Layer Sizes. Doing this brings the file in with all its separate layers, allowing After Effects to animate each layer separately.

Using Imported Files

1. Locate the Project Panel on the left-hand side of the interface to use these imported files.
2. To use within an already created Composition, click and drag the file name from the Project Panel into the Composition window.
3. To create a new Composition from the imported files, click and drag the file name down to the small picture icon, located at the bottom of the Project Panel.
4. To animate any imported file with layers, double-click on the file name to go inside the file. The individual layers will be visible there, ready to be animated.

Video Transcription

You guys, I'm going to be showing you today how to import files into Adobe after effects. So all we're going to be doing in this tutorial is bringing in files from a computer into after effects project over here. So I'm going to be showing you how to drag and drop the footage and images into our project after they're imported.

While AfterEffects does have the ability to create your own shapes, it mostly is an animation program. By the way, we're going to be making a quick shape tool tutorial for After Effects that's upcoming. So stay tuned. But yeah, like, like I was saying, After Effects, you can make your own shapes, but it mostly is an animation program and a compositing program.

Therefore you're going to be really importing stuff to be animated rather than creating it in the program itself. So knowing how to bring in outside files is super important. So as for this tutorial, I'm going to be dropping in some video footage I got from Pixabay.com and some Illustrator file I have, but you can do this on your own with any of your own personal files.

Still images and video honestly get imported in the same way. So the first thing that I'm going to show you is to know how to manually import stuff. Going to head up here to file import. I can do one file multiple files, there's libraries and that kind of thing. But for purposes of this tutorial, just pay attention to really the first one.

Multiple files is what it sounds like. It's asking for more than one, but it operates pretty much the same way as this this procedure. I'm showing you right now. So it's going to take you to this navigator over here, this file explorer. And if you're not already within a folder that has your files in it, you're going to be navigating through your computer.

If you're familiar with this, you know, as is typical, looking for a file. I actually opened up to the folder that I'm looking for, so I'm going to be clicking on my bear footage over here and it's going to import as footage. So when you're importing a video, you only have one option over here and that's footage. So really not much to say over here and you're just going to hit import.

So now I'm going to show you how to use a hockey. So on my keyboard I'm going to hit control. I have you have Immaculate Command I and that brings up the window again. And this time I'm going to be using a illustrator file. So let me go scrolling up for my illustrator file. It should be up here using a I files.

We have a whole tutorial on that. So yeah, definitely check that out. If you use Illustrator a lot you had in that tutorial how to import your illustrator files into after effects to like animate them. So I'm going to head into here and amusement park rides now over here under import ads for footage. It gives me a couple of different options.

I'm going to be hitting composition and really between footage and composition. Those are the main two options you're going to be choosing composition, retain layer sizes is for more niche projects. But again, I want to keep this tutorial simple so you can just remember video comes in as footage and other files can come in as composition. And the difference between those two is footage keeps it as one flat layer.

You could also pull out a single layer from an illustrator or Photoshop file. Alternatively, using that option, the second option over here composition keeps the layers so they can be animated individually because an after effects if you're importing something completely flat, the program is not going to understand what you want to move and what you want to stay still.

It doesn't work like that. It's a layer based program. So I'm going to add composition. So then I import and now you're saying, well, where are my projects, where my files. So they've gone in here, the project panel over here and for the beer the beer video, I'm going to click and drag it. Just put it right over there and there's my beer footage.

If I move my play head over here, that blue triangle, I can see that I've got my beer moving around in my project. And as for the amusement park rides, so I can double click in there, because if it has all the layers retained, it allows me to access those layers simply by getting into the project itself. So you can see I've got all my layers over here.

Alternatively, I can take this bear footage over here, drag it on top of this little guy, this little make new composition icon, the little picture thing over here. And it makes a new comp window to the size of that video. By the way, one last thing, you can just drag files into the product panel right there from your desktop, but doing that is just going to keep their default settings for whatever file type they are.

But yeah, that's about the size of it. That's how you import files and after effects. You can bring in video footage, Photoshop files. Like I mentioned, we have a whole series of tutorials on that illustrator files, music file, static images, lots of stuff. So yeah, this has been surprising for mobile desktop.