Now, we have gone over the Comp window. Now, below it is the Timeline window, the Timeline window again, it opens up with every composition you make, you will get a Comp window and a Timeline window. It's important to note that the Comp window shows your animation what your final is going to look like. Timeline pulls all of the data that controls the animation in the Comp window. First let's check out a new composition.
We can double-click it here in the Project pane. Number one, Tape Worm Trouble, this isn't a real tape worm, just a piece of twine that's been scanned as a Photoshop document and used here in this Comp called Tape Worm Trouble. Timeline tells us a couple of things. Here it tells us the name of the composition and the frame rate. It also tells us where the playhead is parked at the current time.
Across to the right we have several different icons, the first of which is brand-new to After Effects CS3. By clicking on this icon, I can navigate directly to any other animation that this composition is used. Here I can see that this composition is used not only in the Hideous Twine animation, but also in the blank composition we created at the beginning of this lesson.
We will navigate off of this so we don't navigate to one of those other compositions. If this composition is only used once in another comp, clicking on this icon will bring you immediately to that composition. The next two icons are Draft Modes. It's important to leave the first one turned on. We have got a Shy, Frame Blending, Motion Blur and again new to After Effects CS3 another icon, which we'll talk about a little bit later. This one is called Brainstorm. The last icon in this list is the Graph which allows us to see different keyframes; we'll get to those later on in the series.
Down below, we have several different columns in our Timeline. The first is a visibility column of sorts, it allows us to either see the video, hear the audio, solo the layer or lock the layer. We'll take a look at these individually a little bit later. Here we have seen this one before, this is the Label icon, again by right-clicking on your mouse or Ctrl+Clicking on a Mac, you can bring up the different label groups and apply different color to each of the layers.
The next column is the Layer Index, the number of the layer. Here, we have got only one layer and its layer number one. The layer name is the name of the layer. We can change this layer name by clicking on it using the Return key on the keyboard, then typing in the new name. Using Return or Enter on the number pad will accept the name, however sometimes you want to see the source name. You can do this by simply clicking on the words Layer Name. By clicking on this column, you will change it from Layer Name to Source Name. Here, we can see the original name of the source we used in this composition.
The next column is kind of a dual column. We have got both switches and modes hidden in one column. We'll get into what both of these are a little bit later, but you should note that this is actually two columns in one. At the bottom, we have got a button that allows us to toggle from our Modes to Switches or back from Switches to Modes. An easier way of switching back and forth between these two is to simply use the F4 key.
The last default column is the Parent column. Again, we will get into parenting a little bit later on, but you would probably see this in your Timeline. If you don't want to see one of these columns, all you have to do is right-click or Ctrl+Click on a Mac to bring up this contextual menu and you can hide or activate any one of these columns by turning on the checkmark or deactivating it by turning the checkmark off.
We will hide the Parent column by clicking Hide This. This gives us a lot more room for our Timeline area. To take a look at a few more options inside the Timeline, let's go ahead and open up a new composition. This composition is called 04 Time2Anime. Double-clicking on this composition opens it up.
Next, we'll drag Tape Worm Trouble down below layer 3 and above layer 4. We will add a small effect here in the Effects pulldown. Go to Channel and Invert the channels. We'll open up Scale by typing S on the keyboard and change the value for X by unchecking the link and changing the value to -100.
Here, you can see that Switches and Modes are in two separate columns. If you don't want this, you can simply hold the Ctrl key down on the Mac or simply right-click and hide this column. Once you hide this column, you will see that After Effects puts the Switches and Modes button down at the bottom of that Switches and Modes column. Here in Switches, you can see we have new icons for this layer. First is the Shy icon, next we have an icon for Collapse Transformations or Continuous Rasteration, which we'll get to a little bit later.
We have a Quality checkbox as well as an Effects checkbox, which shows that there is an effect on this layer. We have the ability to Motion Blur, use this layer as an Adjustment or even turn this into a 3D layer. By clicking on the button at the bottom of this column, I am now in the Modes column. Here, I am going to simply change this from a Normal mode to an Add mode. Here I can see I have Modes, Transparencies and Track Matte options.
