Cover -- Table of Contents -- Introduction -- How to Use This Book -- PART 1 Animation Techniques -- Chapter 1 After Effects 101 -- Chapter 2 Creating a Composition -- Creating a new composition -- A tour of the Comp and Timeline panels -- Adding layers to a comp; the Layer panel -- Managing multiple comps -- Navigating in space -- Solid Layers -- Resolution and Quality -- Navigating and zooming in time; the Work Area -- Safe areas, rulers, grids, and guides -- Frame rate; displaying time -- Channel switches; color picker; background color; alpha appearance -- Preview Possibilities sidebar (Interactive and RAM previews; OpenGL) -- Chapter 3 Basic Animation -- Position, including spatial keyframes and motion paths; keyframe types -- Keyframe navigation; editing values numerically -- Opacity values and keyframing -- Scale values and keyframing -- Rotation values and keyframing; 3D Orientation -- Working with the Anchor Point -- Transitions, arcs, and orbits -- Motion control moves -- Keyboard shortcuts; keyframe tips -- Quality issues; subpixel positioning; resampling -- Chapter 4 Keyframe Velocity -- Easy Ease; Auto Bezier keyframes -- Working with the Graph Editor; Value Graphs -- Velocity (Speed) Graphs -- Coordinating multiple values; keyboard shortcuts -- Position graphs; graph gotchas -- Hold interpolation -- Roving keyframes -- Chapter 5 Animation Assistance -- Keyframe tips and tricks; copying, nudging, and scaling motion paths -- Motion Sketch and The Smoother keyframe assistants -- Auto-Orient Rotation -- The Wiggler keyframe assistant -- Time-Reverse and Exponential Scale keyframe assistants -- PART 2 Layer Management -- Chapter 6 The Layer Essentials -- Selecting and moving layers -- Duplicating, soloing, renaming, and replacing layers -- Comp and layer markers -- Snapshots; align and distribute; edit original; color-coding layers -- Beswitched sidebar (layer property switches in the Timeline panel) -- Chapter 7 Trimming -- Trimming in and out points; slip editing -- Sequence Layers keyframe assistant; trimming by work area -- Splitting layers -- Overlay and Ripple Insert Edits -- Chapter 8 Motion Blur and More -- Applying motion blur; Samples Per Frame and Adaptive Samples -- Shutter Angle and Phase; blur and masks; Render Settings -- Echo-style effects; Cycore time effects -- PART 3 Modes, Masks, & Mattes -- Chapter 9 Blending Modes -- Blending modes explained; applying blending modes -- Overview and example of each mode -- Chapter 10 All About Masking -- Masking basics; creating simple masks; shortcuts -- Transforming masks; selecting mask points and segments -- Mask Feather, Mask Expansion, and Mask Opacity -- Creating and editing Bezier and RotoBezier masks -- Animating masks; mask tips and gotchas -- Inverting masks; mask seams -- Managing multiple masks -- Auto-trace -- Rotoscoping advice; panning layers inside masks -- Masks and effects; interchanging masks with other paths; Illustrator paths -- Smart Mask Interpolation keyframe assistant -- Chapter 11 All About Track Ma.