Composition basics

About compositions

A composition is the framework for a movie. Each composition has its own timeline. A
typical composition includes multiple layers that represent components such as video and
audio footage items, animated text and vector graphics, still images, and lights. You add a
footage item to a composition by creating a layer for which the footage item is the source.
You then arrange layers within a composition in space and time, and composite using
transparency features to determine which parts of underlying layers show through the layers
stacked on top of them.

A composition in After Effects is similar to a movie clip in Flash Professional or a sequence

in Premiere Pro.

You render a composition to create the frames of a final output movie, which is encoded and
exported to any number of formats.

Simple projects may include only one composition; complex projects may include hundreds
of compositions to organize large amounts of footage or many effects.

In some places in the After Effects user interface, composition is abbreviated as comp.

Each composition has an entry in the Project panel. Double-click a composition entry in the
Project panel to open the composition in its own Timeline panel. To select a composition in
the Project panel, right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) in the Composition panel
or Timeline panel for the composition and choose Reveal Composition In Project from the
context menu.

Use the Composition panel to preview a composition and modify its contents manually. The
Composition panel contains the composition frame and a pasteboard area outside the frame
that you can use to move layers into and out of the composition frame. The offstage extents
of layers—the portions not in the composition frame—are shown as rectangular outlines.
Only the area inside the composition frame is rendered for previews and final output.

The composition frame in the Composition panel in After Effects is similar to the Stage in
Flash Professional.

When working with a complex project, you may find it easiest to organize the project by
nesting compositions—putting one or more compositions into another composition. You can
create a composition from any number of layers by precomposing them. If you are finished
modifying some layers of your composition, you can precompose those layers and then pre-
render the precomposition, replacing it with a rendered movie.

You can navigate within a hierarchy of nested compositions using the Composition Navigator
and Composition Mini-Flowchart.

Use the Flowchart panel to see the structure of a complex composition or network of
compositions.
Timeline button

Click this button at the bottom of the Composition panel to activate the Timeline panel for
the current composition.

Press the backslash (\) key to switch activation between the Composition panel and Timeline
panel for the current composition.

Comp button

Click this button in the upper-right corner of the Timeline panel to activate the
Composition panel for the current composition.

Flowchart button

Click this button at the bottom of the Composition panel to activate the Flowchart panel
for the current composition.

Create a composition

You can change composition settings at any time. However, it’s best to specify settings such
as frame aspect ratio and frame size when you create the composition, with your final output
in mind. Because After Effects bases certain calculations on these composition settings,
changing them late in your workflow can affect your final output.

Note: You can override some composition settings when rendering to final output. For
example, you can use different frame sizes for the same movie.

When you create a composition without changing settings in the Composition Settings dialog
box, the new composition uses the settings from the previous time that composition settings
were set.

Note: New compositions do not inherit the previous Preserve Frame Rate When Nested Or In
Render Queue and Preserve Resolution When Nested settings.

Create a composition and manually set composition settings

 Choose Composition > New Composition, or press Ctrl+N (Windows) or

Command+N (Mac OS).

Create a composition from a single footage item

 Drag the footage item to the Create A New Composition button at the bottom of the
Project panel or choose File > New Comp From Selection.

Composition settings, including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio,
are automatically set to match the characteristics of the footage item.
Create a single composition from multiple footage items

1. Select footage items in the Project panel.

2. Drag the selected footage items to the Create A New Composition button at the
bottom of the Project panel, or choose File > New Comp From Selection.
3. Select Single Composition and other settings in the New Composition From Selection
dialog box:

Use Dimensions From

Choose the footage item from which the new composition gets composition settings,
including frame size (width and height) and pixel aspect ratio.

Still Duration

The duration for the still images being added.

Add To Render Queue

Add the new composition to the render queue.

Sequence Layers, Overlap, Duration, and Transition

Arrange the layers in a sequence, optionally overlap them in time, set the duration of
the transitions, and choose a transition type.

Create multiple compositions from multiple footage items

1. Select footage items in the Project panel.

2. Drag the selected footage items to the Create A New Composition button at the
bottom of the Project panel, or choose File > New Comp From Selection.
3. Select Multiple Compositions and other settings in the New Composition From
Selection dialog box:

Still Duration

The duration of the compositions created from still images.

Add To Render Queue

Add the new compositions to the render queue.

Duplicate a composition

1. Select the composition in the Project panel.

2. Choose Edit > Duplicate or press Ctrl+D (Windows) or Command+D (Mac OS).
Timeline panel

Each composition has its own Timeline panel. You use the Timeline panel to perform many
tasks, such as animating layer properties, arranging layers in time, and setting blending
modes. The layers at the bottom of the layer stacking order in the Timeline panel are rendered
first and—in the case of 2D image layers— appear farthest back in the Composition panel
and in the final composite.

To cycle forward through Timeline panels, press Alt+Shift+period (.) (Windows) or

Option+Shift+period (.) (Mac OS). To cycle backward through Timeline panels, press
Alt+Shift+comma (,) (Windows) or Option+Shift+comma (,) (Mac OS).

The current time for a composition is indicated by the current-time indicator (CTI), the
vertical red line in the time graph. The current time for a composition also appears in the
current time display in the upper-left corner of the Timeline panel..

The left side of the Timeline panel consists of columns of controls for layers. The right side
of the Timeline panel—the time graph—contains a time ruler, markers, keyframes,
expressions, duration bars for layers (in layer bar mode), and the Graph Editor (in Graph
Editor mode).

A. Current-time display B. Current-time indicator (CTI) C. Time ruler D. Layer switches E.

Time graph

Press the backslash (\) key to switch activation between the Composition panel and Timeline
panel for the current composition.

Composition settings

You can enter composition settings manually, or you can use composition settings presets to
automatically set frame size (width and height), pixel aspect ratio, and frame rate for many
common output formats. You can also create and save your own custom composition settings
presets for later use. Resolution, Start Timecode (or Start Frame), Duration, and Advanced
composition settings are not saved with composition settings presets.

Note: The limit for composition duration is three hours. You can use footage items longer
than three hours, but time after three hours does not display correctly. The maximum
composition size is 30,000x30,000 pixels. A 30,000x30,000 8-bpc image requires
approximately 3.5 GB; your maximum composition size may be less, depending on your
operating system and available RAM.
Working with composition settings

 To open the Composition Settings dialog box to change composition settings, do one
of the following:
o Select a composition in the Project panel or activate the Timeline or
Composition panel for a composition, and choose Composition > Composition
Settings, or press Ctrl+K (Windows) or Command+K (Mac OS).
o Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) a composition in the Project
panel or Composition panel (not on a layer), and choose Composition Settings
from the context menu.
 To save a custom composition settings preset, set Width, Height, Pixel Aspect Ratio,
and Frame Rate values in the Composition Settings dialog box, and then click the
Save button .
 To delete a composition settings preset, choose it from the Preset menu in the
Composition Settings dialog box, and click the Delete button .
 To restore default composition settings presets, Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click
(Mac OS) the Delete button or the Save button in the Composition Settings
dialog box.

Note: You cannot move custom composition settings presets from one system to another, as
they are embedded into the preferences file.

 To scale an entire composition, choose File > Scripts > Scale Composition.jsx.

Note: Ensure all layers are unlocked in the selected composition or the script will fail.

Basic composition settings

Start Timecode or Start Frame

Timecode or frame number assigned to the first frame of the composition. This value does
not affect rendering; it merely specifies where to start counting from.

Background Color

Use the color swatch or eyedropper to pick a composition background color.

note: When you add one composition to another (nesting), the background color of the
containing composition is preserved, and the background of the nested composition becomes
transparent. To preserve the background color of the nested composition, create a solid-color
layer to use as a background layer in the nested composition.

Advanced composition settings

After Effects includes an updated advanced section to allow for ray-traced 3D renderer
options. The 3D renderer plug-in has been renamed as, "Renderer" for these choices because
you are choosing one renderer or another for a composition.

To choose a composition type, select one of the following from the Renderer menu:
  Classic 3D
 Ray-traced 3D

Click the Options button to launch the Ray-traced 3D Renderer Options dialog box. You can
also Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the Current Renderer Indicator
button in the upper-right of the Composition panel to launch the dialog box.

Here you can choose:

 Ray-tracing quality: Click the Ray-tracing quality setting to change it according to

your workflow.
o Higher values for ray-tracing quality decrease noise but greatly increase render
time.
o Ray-tracing quality controls the number of rays fired per pixel (for example, a
value of 4 fires 16 or 4x4 rays, and 8 fires 64 rays).
o A larger number produces a more accurate pixel at the expense of computation
time.
o A value of 1 will provide better performance, but there won't be any reflection
blur (for example, it is always sharp), soft shadow, depth of field, or motion
blur.

Increasing the Ray-tracing Quality value will not increase the sharpness. Instead it decreases
the noise inherent in point sampling. You should use the lowest value that produces an
acceptable amount of noise or no noise.

 Anti-aliasing Filter: Controls the method of averaging the fired rays for a pixel.
None fires all rays within the bounds of a pixel, whereas the others spreads the grid of
fired rays partially across adjacent pixels to produce a better average. Box, Tent, and
Cubic (which is not bicubic) are listed in the order of better quality.
o None
o Box
o Tent
o Cubic

The anti-aliasing filter controls the amount of blurriness. None gives the sharpest result but
the edges of the projection catcher may look aliased, with Box blur, Triangle, and Cubic
giving blurrier results.

Note: Ray-traced 3D layers use Ray-tracing Quality to control the appearance of motion blur.

Depth of field calculations in Ray-traced 3D are more accurate than they are in Classic 3D
(and previously in Advanced 3D).

Anchor

Click an arrow button to anchor layers to a corner or edge of the composition as it is resized.
Composition thumbnail images

You can choose which frame of a composition to show as a thumbnail image (poster frame)
for the composition in the Project panel. By default, the thumbnail image is the first frame of
the composition, with transparent portions shown as black.

 To set the thumbnail image for a composition, move the current-time indicator to the
desired frame of the composition in the Timeline panel, and choose Composition >
Set Poster Time.
 To add a transparency grid to the thumbnail view, choose Thumbnail Transparency
Grid from the Project panel menu.
 To hide the thumbnail images in the Project panel, choose Edit > Preferences >
Display (Windows) or After Effects > Preferences > Display (Mac OS) and select
Disable Thumbnails In Project Panel.