the golden age

These are happy times if you create animation on the desktop. Never in the history of our short-lived industry have individuals had so many options at their disposal. As a matter of fact, one has so many options that things can get out of control quickly. How many programs can one artist really be an expert at? How much time can an artist devote to mastering new tools? If your specialty is modeling or animation and you want to add a compositing tool to your toolbox this article can show you how to get the most bang for your buck without sacrificing months of your life on the learning curve.

don't buy toys
If your principle discipline is in a field other than motion graphics or composting my first advice is to do what you probably did the first time around when you bought animation software. Don't buy toys. There's consumer software, professional software, and the software that bills itself as professional, but isn't. Research your purchases through user groups and friends that already own the software. Read trade magazines but take everything they say with a grain of salt, including this one. In many cases product reviewers only have rudimentary experience with the software they are reviewing and may miss things that can frustrate you for months. Nothing beats first hand experience, demo the product if you can or at the very least talk to someone that has used it for the things you want to do. Remember that your livelihood depends on software working as promised, expect it to and be willing to pay for it.

safety in numbers
While safety in numbers isn't always true - the ongoing debate between UNIX, NT, Windows 95, and Mac OS come to mind. The larger the installed user base is for the software your want to buy the better. Why? The larger base means more R&D go into the product. It also means that third-party developers step in to fill in gaps in the software. This also means you can take a modular approach to your software. You can buy the compositing package first and then add modules for special effects like particles, lens flares, color correction, and bluescreen later.

don't gamble
Financial responsibilities and common sense are important. In most production environments compositing is a mission critical component of the production process, it is often unattended or unsupervised during the rendering process. You don't want to have a program that is in beta or is version 1.0 fulfilling this role. In addition, while you don't want toy software you also don't want to go overboard. If you regularly composite a few layers of 3D and add a few effects here and there you don't need a Flint or a Hal. There are affordable software-based compositing systems on all platforms that can produce professional quality work. The only penalty these solutions have is speed, they are much slower than their higher-priced brethren.

training
This is perhaps the most unappreciated and most important component of any software purchase. You are at an advantage in any field, when you are privy to the knowledge and wisdom of someone who knows a product or procedure inside and out. These people can't make you a better artist but they can make sure that you have mastered the tools that you will be using to articulate your vision. In many cases proper training can shave months off of a learning curve. In addition, training can expose you to different production philosophies and sensibilities that you might not discover on your own.

what to buy
While these guidelines apply to all software purchases the best compositing and motion graphics application that one can currently buy for the PC or Mac platform is Adobe After Effects. (www.Adobe.com) No other program has the user base, versatility, scalability, reliability, or affordabilty of After Effects.

The user base of After Effects is diverse and experienced and comes from a multitude of disciplines including print, video, animation, design, and multimedia. Versatility of the program abounds with third-party plug-ins for Ultimate, particle effects, color correction, film look, color correction, lens flares, and DVE. The scalabilty of the program is supported by a company called ICE (www.Iced.com) which makes a PCI acceleration board for After Effects that accelerates many time intensive filter processes making the software run comparably to some hardware based solutions! The reliability of After Effects is best-of-breed when compared to other programs in its market and when you consider that you can get the base version of After Effects for a street price of US $600 it represents a tremendous value. The production version of the software has street pricing of US $1400 and adds advanced motion tracking, scripting, and keying effects to the program. Finally, After Effects is a true cross-platform product with a shared code-base that works equally well in a MAC or an NT environment.

how to get good fast
In recent months After Effects users have been presented with a variety of options to improve their mastery of the program. In addition to the excellent documentation that comes with the program users have a multitude of choices when it comes to rapidly improving their skills.

First and foremost you should read the documentation cover to cover if you have time. This familiarizes you with all of the buttons and features of the programs. Secondly, remember all the keyboard shortcuts. This is the arduous part, like learning the tenses of a foreign language, but once you've done it you can make After Effects sing. If you like to learn things in a more project based fashion I would suggest picking up is Adobe After Effects 3.1: Classroom in a Book. (Hayden Books, ISBN: 15668303696) (US $36.00 through www.Amazon.com) This book is written by the Adobe Staff and a variety of very experienced After Effects artists. It is more project based than the manuals and teaches you in ten lessons about the features or After Effects and when you would use them. Another book worth looking into is Real World After Effects. (Peachpit Press, ISBN: 0201688395) (US $35.96 through www.Amazon.com) by Eric Reinfeld and Sherry London. This book goes into more detail on how to use other programs with After Effects and touches on some of the same things as Classroom in a Book.

Now if you need to get good really fast, in a matter of hours, the best solution is an instructional tape and CD-ROM series called Total AE. (www.TotalAE.com) This series covers all of the features of After Effects in 9 tapes and uses a project based format. The instructor on the tapes is Brian Maffitt, an accomplished After Effects artist who is also an excellent teacher. In this set of tapes Brian imparts wisdom that would take a decade to acquire on your own. The price of this collection ranges from US $400 to $600. (This depends on whether you order the tapes that cover the production bundle of Adobe After Effects) While this is an expensive solution I feel it is probably the most cost effective one in the long term. These tapes can get you up to speed in After Effects in about fourteen hours or hard work. When you consider what a day of your time is worth when your working on a 3D project the price of these tapes is not so out of line.

sharpening the saw
Now that you know everything about After Effects what should you do? Keep learning! Check out Adobe's web site from time to time and look at Digital Video Magazine. (www.DVlive.com) There are always monthly articles about After Effects. When your really advanced sign up for the AE Mailing List, a place where experts gather on a daily basis to help out their peers. (www.softmotion.com/pages/maillists.shtml)

wrapping it up
Compositing and motion graphics play an important and time saving role in the creation of 3D animation. Don't buy software that won't make the job easy and fun and remember that you don't need to sacrifice years of your life to master a computer program - just months maybe. Take care.

Copyright © 1998, Chris Bernard


Chris Bernard lives in Chicago and works as an animation and design director at an integrated marketing communications company. He can be reached at cb@avidgroup.com.

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