After Effects CS6 Tutorial - 88 - How to Preserve Underlying Transparency Video Lecture | Adobe After Effects CS6: Complete Course from Novice to Pro - IT & Software

hey everybody hope you're having a good
day this is buddy Blackford I'm going to
go over what this little T checkbox
means and it stands for preserve
underlying transparency I'm going to
show you how it works I'm going to show
you how it doesn't work so let's get on
with it it should be a quick tutorial
and it should be awesome and it'll be
it'll come in handy actually if you want
to like learn to use it correctly so
we've got I made this text here and if
you check out the text you can check out
its alpha by clicking on this button
here and see that it has an alpha so
that's something that we need you can't
use the preserve underlying transparency
if you don't have alphas because alphas
are pretty much the basis of
transparency so we've got our text here
that I put down and what this button
does is anything that's above it will go
kind of like go back to the background
and use the Alpha to just of this
anything below it to cut out itself and
it'll just show up within the text so
I'll show you real quick if I bring down
just some video footage and I'll just
move on I'll just move this like
somewhere to here or something like that
and then I go to click on the preserve
transparency button you can see what it
does now so that's simple enough this
also works with shape layers so if I go
to create a shape here and oops whoa
what the hell did I just make there and
I didn't want it to be this big so I'm
just gonna go down a little bit and
that's fine I just wanted to show you a
shape and I take this shape layer and I
bring it below the footage that has the
preserve underlying transparency checked
it's going to show up through there
pretty much anything that has an alpha
that you can use we'll do this now a
simple trick that it's not a trick it's
as simple like I would call it like I
got yeah I guess like you're working and
you're like why isn't this working if
you have a piece of footage that is that
has no alpha at all which I'll show you
like this solid right here it has no
alpha it's just all white so when I try
when I try to use the underlying
transparency there it's not gonna work
because that white alpha there it's
going to encompass the whole entire
thing so now everything that was in
white is going to show up so the whole
the whole video footage is going to show
up so if I uncheck or uncheck the
visibility here it'll work so you don't
want to have anything that takes alpha
takes up the whole entire thing there so
you may be wondering how this can be
used in a real project so I'm gonna show
you real quick how something like this
might be useful so I'm gonna delete out
the shape layer don't need that and I'm
just gonna keep the text I'm gonna
delete out this the video footage
because I don't need that you can I'm
gonna move the solid up there and you
can use things like salads and stuff
like that to also preserve transparency
so if I turn that on its gonna work like
that
now I'm gonna unhide the visible or hide
the visibility for a second and change
up this to like something like this red
and I'm gonna change the solid settings
here so that the solid is more of a
white color
now I'm gonna turn the salad back on so
I can see and just create something like
a square going across here like this and
I'll go and I'll feather this out
something like that
and now I'll throw on the preserve
transparency and I've got like this just
color like coming through now you kind
of you you can see how you can use that
to make different types of effects and
everything like that I mean I could move
this over to the middle or whatever I
wanted to do here or I could animate it
moving across like this to give like a
highlighting effect as you can see there
like that'd be that'd be cool looking
and you may be wondering how am I
supposed to use this if I can't put a
background underneath so the way that
you do that is you need to pre compose
these layers so I'm gonna put in a
background real quick it's just going to
be a regular solid and we'll make it
like a black background or something and
that's gonna be our background now
everything's all screwed up but the way
to make this work is to pre compose
these layers that you have the that you
want the transparency to work on so make
sure you have both the layers clicked
come up to layer and come to pre compose
and move all attributes into the new
composition and hit OK and now since
everything is just working in this pre
comp here and doesn't have any
background underneath it it's going to
work correctly in in a composition where
there is a background so in your pre
comp is where you're gonna want to maybe
animate this going across and then it'll
anything within this pre comp will
happen within in the same timeframes
that the within this other composition
hopefully that makes sense to you guys
well that's the end of the tutorial
there I'm pretty basic on how to use
this button if you're ever wondering
what it was for or anything like that
now you know so go ahead and put it to
use in one of your projects everybody I
hope you're having a good day and I look
forward to seeing your comments on the
next tutorial have a good one