Every week, Frame.io Insider asks certainly one of our skilled contributors to share a tip, instrument, or approach that they use on a regular basis and couldn’t stay with out. This week, Laurence Grayson shares 5 strategies for sooner After Effects previews.
Checking your work in After Effects can chew by time, significantly for those who’re engaged on a posh multi-layered setup with a bunch of heavyweight results in play. Fortunately, there are a number of methods to hurry up renders and previews to get the job finished sooner.
Preview Presets
It may sound apparent, however the first place to begin is the After Effects Preview panel (toggle with Cmd+3). Hitting the Spacebar ends in the default conduct, however you may regulate parameters to fit your wants (and your pc’s energy). These embrace body charge, preview decision, play from, and vary.
What’s straightforward to miss is that there are a complete of seven keyboard shortcuts you should utilize to set off a preview. So, somewhat than altering these parameters each time, you may arrange a spread of preview presets and choose no matter works finest. You’ll discover these below the Shortcut dropdown within the Preview panel.
Set Work Area
On a associated observe, the Work Area Bar sits on the high of your timeline and you’ll shortly set the beginning and finish factors of it with the B and N keyboard shortcuts. Or you may drag the blue handles at both finish, your name. Now you may restrict your previews to this vary within the Preview controls panel.
Disable Layers / Label Group
If you’ve been utilizing After Effects’ color-coded labels to outline asset teams that match your explicit workflow (which I’d strongly suggest), then you should utilize the Select Label Group perform to modify off a bunch’s visibility.
Click on the colour of the group you need to change off, select Select Label Group from the pop-up, after which you may click on on the visibility toggle (eye icon) within the layer stack. Follow the identical process to toggle all of them again on if you’re finished.
Disable Effects
Some results are extra processor-hungry than others—Camera Lens Blur is one which springs to thoughts. So for those who’ve acquired one thing that isn’t important for a specific render, change it off within the Effect Controls panel (F3) till it’s time to toggle it again on once more.
Region of curiosity
If you don’t need to disable results or layers and solely must examine a particular space of the body, the Region of Interest is your best choice. Look beneath the video body within the Composition panel and also you’ll discover the Region of Interest button. Click on this and the button will tackle a blue spotlight.
You can now draw a field on the preview that may primarily create an instantaneous masks, permitting you to render solely that particular half if you hit the preview shortcut.
