In nuce: At this year’s Adobe Max creative conference, which began yesterday, 18 October, and will continue until tomorrow, 20 October, the software company Adobe has already made some exciting announcements – including the release of version 23.0 of After Effects. At the same time, the beta version of the software will be made available. On the other hand, the Substance 3D Collection will be expanded in terms of functionality. Among the innovations that are relevant for VFX artists are Substance 3D Modeler and Substance 3D Sampler. Adobe describes the Substance 3D Collection as a coherent ecosystem filled with applications and content relating to 3D design. The Substance 3D Collection is intended to simplify work on creative projects, particularly in conjunction with Photoshop and Illustrator.
New in After Effects: Selectable Track Mattes, new Animation Presets, and More
In toto – After Effects: Here are some of the most important new features of the new After Effects. The blog post by Senior Product Manager Eric Philpott provides a detailed overview.
- Revised workflow for matte layers, allowing each layer to be used as a track matte. The Track Matte drop-down menu is now located in the Timeline panel for this purpose. As just mentioned, this allows each layer to be defined as a track mat. The advantage of this is that instead of creating individual mattes for each layer, a single matte layer can now be assigned to several target layers. More information on how to select Track Matte Layers is available at helpx.adobe.com .
- Native, hardware-accelerated H.264 encoding has been added – can now be run directly in After Effects. This eliminates the need to use a media encoder.
- 50 new animation templates (presets) for motion graphics – this includes keyframes, effects and expressions. If, for example, an elaborate effect with specific settings for keyframes and expressions has been created, all these settings can be defined as a separate animation template. How exactly this works is also explained at helpx.adobe.com.
- Support for OpenColorIO colour management and the ACES colour space (Academy Color Encoding System). Further information on colour management and colour space is available at helpx.adobe.com .
- The workflow improvements mainly concern timeline navigation and the Composition Presets Lists.
- In After Effects Beta, users can import 3D models directly into After Effects. This works with the .obj, .gITF and .glb file formats, making the workaround of importing 3D models via a third-party plug-in a thing of the past.
In toto – Adobe Substance 3D Collection: Here are the two most important new features for VFX artists. The corresponding blog post by Adobe Group Manager Marc Hamaker provides further information. Incidentally, Digital Production reported on the release of the Substance 3D Collection on 24 June last year.
- The Substance 3D Modeler is being introduced. According to the developer, the creation of 3D objects with the Modeler is to be simplified, coming closer to the drawing of 2D images. The developer compares working with the 3D Modeler to clay, which artists can edit in a VR environment. On the one hand, 3D objects can be created using gesture control; on the other hand, it should be possible to quickly switch back and forth between the VR headset and desktop computer. Modelling in a VR environment should be particularly useful for defining the rough shape of a 3D object. With the subsequent further processing on the desktop PC, artists put the finishing touches to their creation.
- The functionality of the Substance 3D Sampler has been extended. According to Adobe’s blog, the sampler can now transfer series of images into a photorealistic 3D model or, for example, transfer a photograph into an HDR environment. This is made possible by AI-based and photogrammetry tools.
Click further: For an outlook on the future of After Effects, we recommend our advertorial in which we spoke to Adobe’s Principal Product Manager for Motion Graphics Victoria Nece at the IBC (International Broadcast Convention) about updates to After Effects.
Sources: cgchannel.com, helpx.adobe.com ( about the After Effects beta)
