Adobe After Effects Cs4 Classroom in a Book

I'm a Flash developer/animator and AE newcomer. After Effects is a very deep program, and this book covers a lot of it's capabilities. As someone just starting After Effects work, it's a great intro. I don't have any other books to compare it to, however (like I said, just starting out).One thing that does concern me a bit: while following lesson instructions you are asked to do some routine things that will make sense to someone used to working in Flash or a 3D animation program, and only a cursory explanation is given as to why you would do this. Mostly workflow and best practices kinds of stuff. While I did not have a problem with it due to related experience, I think someone just starting out cold might. That said, it is rare for me to be able to work through the entirety of a book of this type. It's nice to have different projects for each lesson; many books of this sort seem to create a movie project replete with every feature the program has to offer that you follow from beginning to end. This usually makes me lose interest -- especially if the project is incredibly lame. These projects are all pretty lame (visually lame - they are informative and useful) but you only have to deal with a particular project for a few hours and then it's off to new footage and assets.I haven't had any problems with any of the lessons or files, except:one JPG that was corrupted on Lesson 5 (there are more to choose from , not a show stopper).In lesson 8, Creating a Walk Cycle: One of the X positions on the graph on page 222 is incorrect -- it needs a "-" sign before the coordinate. I think it was for the torso at 1:00, but I can't recall for certain.In lesson 11, Positioning 3D Elements: the initial composition should be set to "square pixels" instead of the stated "D1/DV NTSC" in order for the steps provided for correct 3d positioning to work accurately on your monitor.Not huge errors for a book of this type, but I would have expected Adobe to hand this to a neophyte for testing -- these should have been caught easily by someone following the instructions.I have not had any crashes or hardware related problems. This is a demanding program, however. I'm using my work machine (Mac Pro tower, 8 cores, 6GB RAM, OS X Leopard), which is a behemoth. I don't know how my home machine would handle it, or the stability of the Vista or XP versions.

Hi, this book is really great, specially if you are a instructor, because its helps you a lot when you are teaching different students, gradually after each lesson students started to feel achieving a lot, and I was completely satisfied with the seller, as I got the book just right on time without any delay.regardsZeeshan J. Shah

I'm disappointed. I've read the entire book and everything did not work as advertised. I understand that After Effects is a very complex product. I think the book accomplished its mission, which was to provide an introduction to the product. I especially enjoyed the chapters on animating text, multimedia presentations, and layers. Also, the chapters on color correction, 3d effects, and particle systems were very good.But I had interesting problems along the way, to say the least. Chapter 3 crashed my machine repeatedly. I think the interaction between Adobe Bridge and After Effects was causing memory access violations and services started crashing. Then the blue screen occurred. This problem is reproducible. In Chapter 5 you create a PDF file with a movie in it, and configure the file for clip notes. That crashed Adobe Reader, even after I loaded the most recent version of that product. Chapter 7 does not perform exactly as the book's description. The mask hides the movie, and a white screen appears where the movie is supposed to appear. Even their AEP file in the End_Project_File directory is incorrect and shows a white screen where the movie is supposed to appear. And the movie in their Finished_Product is blank as well. And Chapter 9 crashed my machine with the blue screen.Four out of fourteen chapters caused problems on my machine, which is a pretty new machine (less than 1 year old). So I gave the book a 70% rating. I hate wasting time, especially considering that it takes alot of time just to figure out how these products work when they work properly. When they don't work as advertised, I end up wasting time trying to figure out if I've done something wrong.And even though I had problems using the book and the product, I have to say, "Is there anything better?" So it's not like you are wasting your money. Just make sure you hit Ctrl-S alot in the chapters I've identified.

This is book really helps you learn the tool sets that After Effects has to offer. It doesn't teach you how to do some specific cheesy effects like some of the other books on the market, instead it takes the approach that it'll teach what each tool can be used for and leave the creativity to you.It doesn't get into anything two advanced but if you are a first time After Effects user this is definitely a helpful purchase to understand the scope of the program.

I found this book to be very useful. The lessons were clear and not too difficult to follow. I particuarly enjoyed the distorting objects with the puppet pin tool lesson and also the building 3D objects/enviroments which opened up a whole area of After Effects that I have now explored in more depth. I used this book in conjunction with a beginners class in After Effects and found it a very good foundation.

just as described

I have never had a bad "Classroom in a book". Once the book and project "Hands On" are complete I have always had a working knowledge of the application. From that point it is practice practice practice.

So far so good. I enjoy the book so far but now need to find the download area for the project files?Is this a limitation of a Kindle purchase? $4 less but you have to "imagine" the project files that are used throughout the book?I love this digital book paradigm but if you are doing a classroom type book and it is based on following along with project files, those need to be available. The Kindle version noted using a supplied DVD, but where do we download these files?

Libro perfetto

Perfect learning material series.