ABSTRACT
After Effects offers a set of paint tools for painting directly on layers. Individual brush, clone and eraser strokes can be edited and animated in the Timeline. Practice editing the user existing strokes by scrubbing the values in the Timeline, then creates additional strokes and practice renaming and reordering them. Erasing in After Effects is particularly stress-free because not only can the user erase any unwanted paint strokes, the user can also delete strokes created with the Eraser tool. The Paint on Transparent option can be found in both the Timeline and Effect Controls panel; it determines whether the underlying layer is opaque or transparent when composited over other layers. The Channels popup in the Paint panel determines whether Brush strokes affect the RGB plus Alpha channels, RGB only, or the Alpha channel only. The chapter explores the various methods for animating strokes, and walks the user step by step through automating a repair task using motion tracking and expressions.
