After Effects - Nulls and Parenting For Those Wayword Children

Using nulls to apply expressions can be a great way to apply a 'hands off' method of using

expressions to direct your object while leaving the child object free. This gives you

flexibility and freedom as you apply the expressions and greater control with the null

object. Why not apply these same expressions to the primary object? why bring a null into

the picture?

One of the best ways of viewing the use of a Null is that it gives you the ability to

control/impart certain like characteristics to child objects while keeping their

independence from one another. You might want them to share a path but scale differently or

vice versa. Using a Null will let you do this.

I want to set up a dog chasing a cat. This is a cute animation with the animals emotions

glowing, their relative size expanding with their emotions but their position is *very much*

connected, the dog is chasing the Cat!

We can tie both to a Null to create this linked position while leaving them free .... to

express their own emotions.

Parenting is a simple concept whose application draws explicitly from the terminology. As

you design a relationship, simply ask yourself, which object drives? which object controls

the flow you want to combine. Motion is an obvious application. Maybe you have an animated

character riding in an automobile. Clearly the automobile drives! (forgive me). You place

your character animation on a separate layer, or bring in the composition with him, and

simply 'pick whip' the parent characteristic from the animation to the automobile.

The parent column may not be displayed by default. Within the time line panel resource

columns, right click to display the columns for resources available, choose parent if it is

not currently displayed.

I can't verify 'we reduce the Math' using parenting but intuition would say so with fewer

parameters to compute and keep up with and dependencies driving relationships, there must be

some relief on our processing resources.

This can help with our hi def/avchd renderings where the sheer amount of extra information

can add quite a bit to our render time and anything that contributes to the work load helps.

I've found with my Canon vixia, using parent, expressions, and all the short cuts After

Effects offers makes a real contribution to the rendering process time. There is another

issue with the avchd hi def format and that is, it challenges your PC resources. Depending

on your memory and processor capability, the review can appear jerky and staggered.

Parenting won't cure this but of the many resources and techniques which contribute to the

consistency and fluid appearance of your composition, this is an easy one keep in your tool

box.

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Adobe After Effects is my application of choice; it seems to have endless possibilities. I

use Premiere Pro for video, Flash for final Web compatible movie.

Full Moons, Dogcreek, and running down the road. I have an eclectic collection, my

infatuation with Tennessee nature and wildlife, animation, special effects, with a little

music sprinkled on top.

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