After Effects 5.(Adobe Systems graphics software)(Software Review)(Evaluation)

Adobe adds 3D to the mix

Adobe Systems' After Effects has become the de facto standard for motion graphics and desktop compositing. Version 5 offers a significant number of advances that keep it ahead of the game and continue to make it an excellent package at any price.

The software is available for both the Mac and PC platforms. As with any compositing application, a fast hard disk and lots of memory are a plus. The software is also multi-threaded, which means those with multiple processors will get an added boost in speed.

After Effects now supports full 16-bit images, which opens up the package to feature film production. In addition, it can import and export industry-standard Cineon and RLA files. On the PC, After Effects now offers full support for DV-based codecs, much like Adobe Premiere 6.

The biggest new feature, however, is that After Effects 5 has gone 3D. Having 3D in a compositor can be a real lifesaver, as it enables you to easily animate the layers of your composite forward and backward along the Z axis. This means that artists no longer have to "cheat" the third dimension. For instance, in a 2D package, if you want an object to move toward the camera, you need to scale it larger to give the audience the illusion that it's moving forward. In a 3D compositor, you simply move it forward along the Z axis, and the software takes care of the rest. For perspective effects, you rotate rather than skew the layer.

When tweaking a composite in 3D, sometimes it helps to be able to look at the shot from a different angle. To facilitate this, After Effects has incorporated orthographic views into the interface. Only one view can be active at a time, however, which makes it hard to tweak your composite. It would be much more useful to be able to move a layer in the top viewport, for example, while seeing the results in a second camera viewport.

Another advantage to 3D is the ability to have multiple cameras and lights in a scene. Cameras allow you another way of moving through the composite. Lights give you the ability to highlight an area of the scene, and colored lights let you tint it. Lights also can cast shadows, which is great for compositing animation with live action. And speaking of shadows, After Effects now supports alpha channels when creating shadows, which allows for accurate shadows on top of composited layers.