New text engine and OpenGL support bolster compositing program.

Adobe ticks off another version of its flagship digital effects compositing software, After Effects, by moving from 5.5 to 6.0. The update deepens several areas and tweaks other parts of this extensive program. Not accounting for some dramatic performance enhancements, the significance of the update may depend on how much time you spend working in areas such as vector-based painting and text animation, two of the expanded toolsets.

Here are some of Adobe After Effects 6.0's new text and paint tools. Lifted from Photoshop CS, the new options bring text and paint up front and make them usable on any layer.

Once you combine the power of the new text palette with the After Effects animation tools, the real fun kicks in. You can animate text along a path, but keep in mind a path could be just about anything. It could be a mask shape or a vector imported from Illustrator or Photoshop. Also, you can move beyond the standard After Effects tools such as position, scale, and rotation and include an Animator. An Animator is a set of parameters that add to the standard transform tools. Fill, stroke, tracking, anchor, and character offset can all be adjusted. A selector lets you animate specific individual letters, numbers, and symbols. It also allows you to select a range of characters to animate over time.

All this adds up to text that can move, spin, twirl, flip, and dance. There's strong potential here for some amazingly complex animation sequences. So be prepared to sit down and spend time with the new text tools, as this new, seemingly simple addition actually represents a deeply featured, complete rewrite of the internal text engine.

Another very important ingredient of After Effects 6.0 is the addition of OpenGL support. Typically when you worked in areas of the program such as 3D space, the software would display approximate representations — often low-res or wireframe — as you moved elements of your composition around. Now with support for OpenGL, along with new performance optimizations throughout the program, you can spin, twirl, and move things around in realtime and in hi-res.

I first saw this capability in New York during an Adobe workshop that provided a group of industry people a preview of the new Adobe Video Collection. I never knew I needed OpenGL support, but now I can't quite live without it. The feel of your composition elements moving and spinning in hi-res and in realtime makes the conceptualization and experimentation stages all the more enticing.

Of course you need good hardware, and Abode has a list of compatible video cards in the After Effects section of its website. At this point, it looks like the best option is the Nvidia GeForce3 Ti, as it is the only chipset on the list that supports After Effects light sources and shadows on both Mac and Windows.

Aside from the addition of OpenGL support, the display and the previewing of filters have been enhanced throughout the program. For example, try some of the blur effects, like Gaussian blur. Move the slider and zip, the image or clip is instantly blurred! Amazingly fast, so fast in fact that the Fast Blur command is going to be very lonely and underused from now on.

Also new is a redesigned vector-based paint engine, for creating and animating brush strokes. Once again “reimagined” from Photoshop, this paint toolset is familiar and instantly usable. Like the new text engine, paint is not buried in a parameter-based effect, it's up front with the rest of the toolset, allowing you to paint directly on any layer at any time. If you have never been much into painting in a compositing program, you owe it to yourself to dive into Adobe's vector paint options. They have many features for making the process easier, including interpolating strokes: create a beginning stroke and an end one, and let the program create all the strokes in between.

The new Scribble effect creates very cool scribble effects in, around, and on objects in your composition. Shown here is a small sample of the effect filters that ship with After Effects 6.0.

Keying plug-ins (greenscreen/bluescreen) have been available for a while now from third-party software sources, and After Effects has included basic keying options in previous versions. Now 6.0 offers a built-in keyer called Keylight from The Foundry. Keylight, which has won a technical Academy Award, is pretty easy to use and rocks for hard-to-key areas such as reflections and semi-transparent areas. Many built-in tools let you tweak and modify keyed areas, with built-in spill suppressant as well as parameters for erode, soften, and de-spot. Other improvements to the program include a rewritten motion tracker and stabilizer with dramatically increased tracking speed. A new scripting option creates automated commands to be carried out in sequence. Finally, tighter integration with Adobe Premiere Pro means you can now import an entire project from Premiere Pro into After Effects.

This update can be deceiving. If you look at Adobe's website, the basic overview depicts this as a pretty standard update, with marginal tweaks and some new bonus features. However, once you start to explore the new options, like the text and paint engines, you'll see that they offer an amazing wealth of options. I think for current users it's a done deal. Most current After Effects users will upgrade, and most will be dazzled by the new power. Be prepared for somewhat of a learning curve — you'll be spending lots of time with the new tools. For me, the faster performance of filters and the realtime manipulation of objects in 3D space via OpenGL really open up my creative options. No one wants to stare at render bars and wireframe previews, and Adobe has worked hard to push these things into the past.

For new users, After Effects is still the same great compositing program it has always been — this is not a total rewrite (as Premiere Pro is). There are, however, enough features to allow creative desktop compositors to achieve just about anything they can envision.