Snow falling and chimney smoke rising... Feb 10, 2010

Snow falling and chimney smoke rising - Feb 10, 2010 After Effects lesson...

Here is the only footage used as a layer in the above AE comp.

The solid layer and the particle playground, cc snow and fast blur effects applied to it all come from within After Effects.
The perspective group Bevel Edges is done to the WinterDayInMarch.jpg footage is of course AE.
The text layer and the animation preset applied to it also is created entirely within Adobe AE.
The above illustrates nested COMPS. If the beveled edges comp with its snowfall and chimney smoke was was not used as a layer nested inside of another comp, the SMOKE and the SNOWFALL would be showing up around the 25 pixel width border!
The original JPG footage is exactly 500 by 379 pixels. The comp it created by dropping the footage on the create new comp icon of course is exactly the same size.
The new comp that the JPG comp and all of its effects became a layer in was created as size 550 by 429 (or 550 by 430) and it looked like adding 50 to the width and the length would be about right. What two things were accomplished? No snowflakes on the border! Drop Shadow effect has some background off the layer it is applied to so it can be seen!
The 25 pixel wide border around the nested comp layer allowed for a PERSPECTIVE group effect called DROP SHADOW.
The smoke effect uses After Effects wiggle() as an Expression to simulate air currents and wind effecting smoke's direction.
Using Flash to make an application interactive so the user can start or stop the snowing or other special effects. Snowfall started or stopped by an INVISIBLE button. ActionScript 3.0 and symbols example. Recall that Flash is to Symbols as After Effects is to Layers.