Adobe After Effects

Pre-Composing

Something you’ll hear referenced a lot in this book is pre-composing, or pre-comping layers. This is the means of taking several layers and collapsing them into their own composition. As a result, you’ll be left with a composition within a composition. There are a few main benefits to this:

• Fewer layers in your timeline can lead to a cleaner look, which is easier to navigate.
• Editing a single precomp is much easier than managing multiple layers. Transform and effect layers as one.
• You can reuse precomps multiple times throughout your project. Updating repeated text throughout a project is a hassle; updating a single precomp that contains the text and is sprinkled throughout is much easier.

Creating a Precomp

To create a precomp ...