2.1 How to Use After Effects Slideshow Templates

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the modern animated slideshow transitions course. In this lesson, we'll go through how to download, set up, and use the transition template videos available in Envato Elements. The templates available on this website are very quick and easy way to add these popular animations to your projects. To get them, first you need to sign up to Envato Elements and create an account. So let's head over to the front page of this website by typing in elements.envato.com. Envato Elements is a subscription service for designers, web developers, or anything in between. It includes an extensive library of different resources such as graphic assets, fonts, stock images, audio, and of course, videos. Signing up is a straightforward process, which can start by clicking on the top right button here. And then once you've done that, click on the drop down menu here. And this is where we can see all the different categories Envato Elements has for you to download. Find and select video templates, like so. And then in the search bar here, we're going to type in transitions, Like so, and then click on the search button. In results page, this is where we can see all the different types of video templates related to transitions, which can view and download. Scroll down and let's go ahead and see if we can find the one that we're looking for called 50 Essential Transitions. Hover over the thumbnail to preview it or click the download button on the bottom right of the thumbnail here to get the file. We can also click into the thumbnail, like so, to view a high resolution preview of the video that we want to download, cool. So once you've done that, all we have to do from here is click on the download button and then head into After Effects where we can begin to work on them. Now that we're inside After Effects and that we've opened up the file, the first thing that we want to do is import the footage into the project. For this, we'll use two examples from Envato Elements. Now to import our footage, just go to File > Import > File. We want to navigate to the folder containing our footage. And then let's go ahead and select the footage that we want and then click Import. Once it's in the project, you'll find the file located here in the project panel. This means that we can now access them to be used for our slide animations. Now, let's go ahead and create a new composition by going to Composition > New Composition. And from here we want to change the width to 1920 by 1080, and this will allow us to use the same aspect ratio of our examples here. And then once you've done that, maybe keep the duration at ten seconds and then click OK. And this will open up our new composition, called Comp 1, excellent. Now, let's go ahead and navigate to either the HD folder here, or the 4k folder depending on what resolution you need. Now, we've just gone ahead and created a HD composition. So let's select HD. Open up the HD folder. And now you can see that we can choose what type of transitions that we want. So we've got bar transitions, circle transitions, linear and triangle transitions. Cool, now let's go ahead and use the bar transitions for an example. So let's open up this. And we can actually go ahead and open up these compositions just to see what they look like. So just scrubbing backwards and forwards in rectangle 01, you can see what that one looks like. And then rectangle 02 if we double-click to open that, you can see what that looks like as well. Cool, so that's an easy way to view what these transitions are like. And to use these transitions just going back to our example comp here, all you have to do is simply click and drag the transition into our composition, like so, excellent. Now, what you want to do from here is we want to now add our footage to the composition as well. So click and drag the footage, and make sure it's underneath our transition. And then now if I scrub backwards and forwards in our timeline, you can see how the transition is now working with our footage. Excellent, now if you've got a second footage, all you have to do is click and drag the second footage here, like so. And we want to time the second footage so that it's at the halfway point of our transition. So just find the halfway point of the transition where it's filling up the screen. And let's go ahead and move our footage, like so, so that it covers that point here. And then as the transition moves out like that, you'll see our second footage now reveals itself. Awesome, and we can also repeat this for different transitions as well. So if you decided that you wanted to use the circle transitions, for example, open up the circle transition. Let's go ahead and remove the rectangle transition here. And let's drag one of these circle transitions here on top of our footage. And all you have to do is make sure that your footage is below the transition for it to work. Excellent, again, making sure that our secondary footage is at the halfway point of our transition just so that it works. Now including more transitions into our composition is really easy. All you need to do is navigate to what transition you want. So say, for example, one of these linear transitions. Click and drag into your comp, like so. Move it forward in the timeline and then just time it so that it's exactly where the next transition is going to be, like so. And then just making sure that the third footage is at the halfway point of the transition. I'm just going to duplicate one of these footages here, like so, just as an example, move it in the correct place so that the transition reveals the footage correctly. And this is easily repeatable as well. So let's go ahead and add a third transition here. So one of these triangular transitions, place it on top, move it forward in the timeframe, in the timeline where you want it to be. And again, just at the halfway point of the transition where it's filling the screen, create or drag your fourth footage. I'm just duplicating one here, just as an example. Bring it up in our layer order just to keep things nice and tidy. And there we have the reveal. Awesome, so now we've got four or three transitions in one comp, like so. Excellent, so that's it for this lesson. In the next lesson, we'll learn how to create one of these transitions from scratch. See you all there.