Digital Home Thoughts: Total Training for After Effects 6.0 Reviewed

Project Work
There is no doubt in my mind that learning is best retained when reinforced with practical work. Total Training's products come with project discs to allow you to work alongside the video as it plays, and this one is no different.

One thing I think that Total Training need to do, though, is to include AE project files for the finished result as well as the starting point. That way, if you struggle to match what Brian or Steve are showing you, you can always open up their version and try to compare it with yours to see where you are going wrong.

Another reason why I think finished project files would be a good idea is related to the use of Adobe Illustrator by the presenters. Steve, in particular, uses Illustrator a lot to bring elements like paths into AE. Unfortunately, if you haven't got Illustrator (and I don't), it means that there will be some part of the presentations that you cannot work along with.

If you have read my review of After Effects, the videos were all made by my own fair hand from projects covered in the Total Training product. To further whet your appetite, here are some more.


Figure 1: Demonstration of Wave World & Caustics. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (4.5MB)


Figure 2: Demonstration of Shatter. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (14MB)


Figure 3: Motion tracking. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (16MB)

Just a quick point here - motion tracking is only available in the Professional version of AE, not the Standard version. This video clip actually has two motion tracked objects - one obvious and one, perhaps, not quite so obvious.

The final example I'm including also requires After Effects Professional, which is why the tools used to produce this video weren't discussed in my review. To begin with, have a look at Figure 4. If you click on this to play the movie, you'll see an animation that has been created in LightWave.


Figure 4: A 3D animation created in LightWave. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (6MB)

Now click on Figure 5 to play the next movie. I'm not going to spoil the surprise, but suffice to say that this was created using the video generated by LightWave plus just two stock footage files from ArtBeats. The ease with which this movie was created is down to two things - LightWave's ability to export it's footage in Rich Pixel Format (which preserves the Z position for each frame) and After Effect's Depth Matte and ID Matte effects.


Figure 5: Robot in distress. Click on the image to play the QuickTime movie (7MB)

If you have any problems playing the clips, try it with one at a time (if you try to play too many, IE has a per-site limit and it may time out waiting for the previous downloads to finish) and try saving it to disc first. You will, of course, need QuickTime in order to play them :wink:.

Conclusions
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Total Training for After Effects is excellent value for money. You can return to it time and time again as you need to hone your skills on a particular aspect of using AE. Both Brian and Steve really know their stuff and they truly manage to convey it to the watcher.

If you are serious about wanting to use After Effects in an efficient and effective manner, go out and buy this now.