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Ive lost my timeline in After Effects
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Course info
Overview
- This course is for absolute beginners
- You'll need a copy of Adobe After Effects CC 2015 or above. A free 30 day trial can be download from Adobe here.
- Create beautiful motion graphics
- Animate compelling infographics
- Choose the correct video settings.
- You’ll learn how to exporting your video easily.
- You’ll be able to create slick type animations.
- Rendering your video for Youtube & Vimeo.
- Create titles for interviews.
- Add music to your motion graphics.
- Trim & editing video.
- Add watermarking your video.
- Fixing shaky footage.
- Color correct & fix any bad footage.
- Add a vignette to your video.
- Learn how to use your skills from Illustrator & Photoshop
- How to use green screen footage
- How to mask like a pro.
- How to animate infographics like bar graphs, line graphs & pie charts.
- How to use camera to make 3D type.
- Animating static images using parallax
- Plus basic character animation.
- + More…
- This course is for people who want to start earning money as a motion graphics designer.
- This course is for beginners wanting to learn to use After Effects for motion graphics and infographics.
- No previous After Effects or animation skills are necessary.
- This course is NOT for people who have a good understanding of After Effects already. This is for new people only.
Course duration 5 hours+ your study.
Daniel Walter Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
I discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
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Transcript
Help, I'm lost in after effects. That happens quite a bit when I'm teaching and there's pretty much one main culprit. So if you're new to after effects you'll get lost this one way probably loads to get started with. So lets cover it now.
Essentially it is I can see my Bring Your Own Laptop here and people like to double click things and if I double click this, it’s gone where did it go? I've got my animation still there, my timelines still there, if I play it, I can only see these little guys here and this weird little timeline. So I can only see parts of it. You might have done something separately, you might’ve double clicked on the text and you can only see the text. All it is is that you can see here, here is my composition; we've jumped into this isolation mode. We jumped into, we double clicked the layer and we’ve gone into that layer just by itself just to see alone and just by himself. Which is kind of handy, its never handy actually, just a bit of a pain. Especially for my students that are new, it just means we’re back at square one here, stop lets double click the text, ill be on the key frame here if I double click the text, double clicking the text doesn’t work, it just starts editing the text but if you double click the background or some sort of layer that you’ve got or type what it'll do is it'll jump in here.
That’s how you get unlost by just jumping back to that tab. Hopefully that helps, if it doesn’t help, drop me a comment below, say I've got some other thing that I've got lost in and I will help you. Screen shot would be super helpful so I can know what you're looking at but dump it into the forum below or the comments and I will try and dig you out from where you are. Alright, that’s it for getting lost in After Effects.
Why can I only see one layer in After Effects?
You may have double-clicked a layer and opened it in the Layer panel instead of your Composition panel. Your animation and timeline are still there, but you are looking at one layer on its own. Click your composition’s tab above the preview to return to the complete animation.
Lost in After Effects? How to Get Back to Your Composition
Key takeaways
Recognise the accidental double-click that makes your composition seem to disappear.
Return to the full animation by selecting the Composition tab.
Understand why double-clicking text behaves differently.
Know what to include when asking for help with a different problem.
The usual culprit: double-clicking a layer
Feeling lost in After Effects is very common when you are getting started. I run into this quite a bit when teaching, and one innocent habit causes a lot of the confusion: double-clicking things.
You have your animation open, everything looks fine, and then you double-click the background or another layer. Suddenly, part of the design seems to have vanished. Your main timeline is still there, but the preview no longer shows the complete animation.
In this example, the composition has white “BYOL” text over a green animated background. After double-clicking the background layer, only the green background and its little moving particles appear. There is also a separate time strip beneath that preview, which can make it feel as though you have ended up in a strange new timeline.
You have changed the panel you are looking at, not lost your animation. After Effects has opened that layer on its own.
The background appears on its own while the main timeline remains below.
How to get back to the full composition
Think of the Layer panel as a kind of isolation view: it lets you inspect one layer without the rest of the composition around it. That can have its uses, but when you open it accidentally as a beginner, it is mostly a nuisance.
The way back is simple:
Stop playback if the animation is running.
Look at the tabs above the preview. Find the tab for your composition rather than the individual layer.
Click the Composition tab. You will return to the combined design.
In our example, switching back brings the “BYOL” text and the green background together again. There is no need to rebuild the animation. You just need to get back to the right tab.
Back in the Composition panel, the text and background appear together again.
Double-clicking text is different
There is a small but important distinction here. Double-clicking the text in the composition enters text editing rather than opening the same isolated layer view.
So, if you double-click the text and it becomes editable, that is not the same problem. The background-layer example is the useful one to remember: an accidental double-click can take you away from the complete composition and into a panel showing only that layer.
Still lost? Share what you can see
If returning to the Composition tab does not solve it, you may be dealing with something different. Describe the problem in a help forum or comment, and include a screenshot of your After Effects workspace.
A screenshot is particularly helpful because it shows which panels and tabs are open. It is much easier to work out where you have ended up when the person helping can see what you are looking at.
Key terms
Composition: The combined animation made from your layers. The Composition panel shows those elements together.
Layer panel: A panel that displays an individual layer on its own. Opening it can make other elements seem missing even though they remain in the composition.
Timeline: The panel where your animation’s layers and timing are shown. In this example, the main timeline remains visible even after the preview switches to an individual layer.
FAQs
Has my animation disappeared after double-clicking a layer?
Not in this situation. You have opened the layer on its own, while the composition and its timeline remain there. Click the Composition tab to see the complete animation again.
Why does double-clicking text let me edit it?
Double-clicking text in the composition enters text editing. That behaves differently from double-clicking the background layer in this example, which opens the individual layer view.
What should I include when asking for After Effects help?
Include a description of what happened and a screenshot of your workspace. The screenshot helps someone identify the panels and tabs you have open.
Written by Daniel Walter Scott — Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
