chris

Might have to go pick up AE =D

Already have Flash ! but I am very bad at it. Lol

~chris

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Michae

http://www.videocopilot.net is a GREAT place to learn after effects. Great video tutorials, they have the shiny cool tutorials making tons of awesome stuff, and they have the basic "learn to use after effects" tutorials. The guy has a cool humour and a pleasent voice, so it's not a bad way to spend a couple of hours, just listening and looking.

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Warning: I might come across as a bitch, but Im really just trying to help.

filmmaker3000

After Effects is a program that has FULL control over every aspect of effects in a video. After Effects is used for Visual Effects for movies, commercials, logos, etc. After Effects is different then flash. Flash is more of its own program creator. As in, Flash is more for application creation, making games, flash based content and the use of integration of XML for live updates, etc.

LOL. In other words flash is more for the web. It uses a rendering process (i forget what) that makes the ending file size smaller. After Effects' render is advanced, and it renders each frame one by one. The end files are huge, causing a 10 second clip to be over 1 GB.

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sombra17

After Effects is like flash with steroids... jejeje

cam:)

That video was totally done on after effects the it’s a cool video have you seen the fight club one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuiKJ0rRTAoits it’s pretty awesome, as for after effects VS flash saying after effects is some video effects program is like saying flash is only a twining program

event.listener

I LOVE animating in After Effects and see very few advantages to Flash unless interactivity is involved. Even when there is, it's possible to create projects in AE and import them into Flash. Some of the greatest pros to AE, in my opinion...

Z-SPACE. After Effects allows you to position elements in 3-D space, opening huge animation possibilities (see the Simpsons Movie with the "swooping" crowd scenes...that's AE).

3-D LIGHTS. The subtle gradient in the text in that pulp fiction clip comes from 3-D lights on 3D text. Text capabilities in AE are thru the roof, too. i use lights a lot to add 3D quality or realistic, dynamic shadows to flat-color objects, especially text.

KEYFRAME CONTROL. no need to create a keyframe in your timeline...AE automatically creates a keyframe anytime a property is altered...beit scale, position, rotation, opacity, etc. the keyframes are also independent for each of these properties, whereas flash just has one set of keyframes for each layer...all in all the interface in AE is MUCH better for complex projects.

PARENTING. great for character animation...wrist bone connected to the arm bone, etc.

EXPRESSIONS. Similar to ActionScript, opens up a wealth of possibilities that I've barely scratched the surface of myself...including "wiggle" effect which automatically creates random changes in a property for super-realistic motion.

EFFECTS. many are cheesy but some are great, including virtually every image filter available in Photoshop.


So yeah...advantages to Flash? Vector illustration in-program and interactivity. But even with CS3, I still find the drawing tools in Flash to be extremely clunky. Anything more than simple vector graphics and I'm going to be working in Illustrator anyway, so I might as well use AE.

I strongly welcome any arguments for Flash...I stumbled on this site because I was looking for a good reason to use Flash—reading similar AE vs. Flash topics. its still an industry standard in many regards but I just can't make a good case for it.

btw feel free to check out my demo reel at www.andydv.com which i did most of in AE...im a recent graphic design grad. shamless.

event.listener

thats a bit of an exaggeration. AE does render frame-by-frame making for large render times even on quad-core processors...but there are plenty of compression codecs for outputting for the web, including FLVs and even SWF in CS3. Still not going to compare with the file size of Flash, but 1 GB for 10 seconds? maybe if its in full-screen HD...

Blip_Bleep

Hello all.... first post.

I'm a motion graphic designer using After Effects in conjuction with some other software at work. I've never really gotten into using flash, I do mainly broadcast graphics/animation. But I'm curious about using after effects for banner and skyscraper work on the web. So I'm coming from the other end of the spectrum, but the possibilities seem quite exciting. Coming from after effects to flash frustrated me and I lost hope! The time line and keyframing bugged me more than anything... but I guess it's just what you're used to.

As far as I understand it, flash would have much quicker loading times because of file size and the flash system. As in it uses very little raster graphics, whereas after effects is obviously all raster. Is this right? I haven't got much to compare it to since I'm not a flash user. I heard Photoshop CS4 has embellished on it's animation features again so you can keyframe much more, it's getting closer to after effects. From the little experience I have of flash the drawing tools seem basic, I'd probably import illustrator vector art. I heard of a program or plug in? Called papervision for flash which lets you manipulate stuff in 3d (or 2.5d) space a little like AE.

As for file size. Like even.listener says it depends on which codec you are using. If you're working for broadcast you need a lossless codec like uncompressed quicktime, or apple animation codec, avid codec, tiff/targ sequence and so on. These do give you big file sizes but if you are later converting to flv or swf or whatever then it doesn't matter. I haven't heard great things about the swf or flv export from after effects, I'd probably give adobe media encoder a shot, or maybe even quicktime pro.

So if anyone who uses AE for flash banner design is reading this it'd be good to know how feasible it is and if you ran into any problems!

cheers

dsauna

I'll definatelly have to go with, After Effects is used for motion graphics, while flash is use for web animations, and interactivity.

There are so many more things you can do with AE than flash when it comes to motion graphics.

DesignChick

I'm not sure but you should check out aeprojects.biz because they have some great templates that I have used on a lot of projects and they worked out really well...