How To Set Up A Color Control Panel When Creating After Effects Templates

How To Set Up A Color Control Panel When Creating After Effects Templates

on Jul 25th 2012 with 13 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: After Effects
  • Difficulty: Beginner
  • Run Time: 13:09 min

Final Product What You'll Be Creating

Download Source Files

Set up a script-based color control composition to make editing the color scheme of your project quick and easy! Effect instancing will be discussed and is a great way to improve your workflow. Let’s jump in!

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .mp4

File size: 56.1 MB

 
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I'm a freelance motion graphic designer who specializes in start up videos. I live in Northern Idaho so I'm pretty used to working remotely. I love the fact that I get to get up every day and play with After Effects!  

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  • http://www.creativedojo.net VinhSon Nguyen

    Great little tip here! I’m assuming if you want to only link to a certain parameter perhaps like a Lens Flare color alone, you’d need to manually modify the expression?

    • http://RemingtonM.com Remington
      Author

      I think so.. but I’m not positive. Typically with lens flares you wouldn’t be using enough to make it worth it, but if you were you could just set up a “Master Lens Flare” and have all of them linked to it. Same thing that I did with the drop shadow.

  • Poopia

    It’s pronounced “TOOTS”, which is short for Tutorial, pronounced “TOOTorial”.
    And it has always been for the last 30 years since the shortened form of this word became commonplace.

    TUT, like you and most of the other uneducated kids pronounce it, was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty.

    …don’t be idiot children when claiming to be professionals.

    And don’t site Wikipedia, we all know how accurate they are.

    • http://www.vimeo.com/everettoptions Adam Everett Miller

      Hey Poopia, my man… everybody knows it’s a tootorial, but I really don’t want to tell everybody that I run a website called toots… so we pronounce it tuts… it just sounds nicer. Don’t stress about it. :)

    • http://www.creativedojo.net VinhSon Nguyen

      Hey Poopia,

      No need for the abrupt remark, we’re not hurting anyone by saying “tut” :)
      I’ve done several courses for Tuts+ Premium and they even instructed us to pronounce it as “tut”, it doesn’t sound has awkward and as Adam mentioned, “toots” sounds a bit odd. It may also have something to do with how some people pronounce “tooturial” as “tuhtorial”for a quick slang. Besides, who speaks proper anyways ;)

    • http://www.youtube.com/getawayfilms Wayne Heywood

      Hey puppia,

      Before you spout off with your vast knowledge on the subject, while at the same time instructing people not to CITE wikipedia, do us all a favour and post the links that back you up on this ‘important’ topic!

  • oscand

    Nice interesting TUT !!

    Could we have the source files in CS5 or CS5.5

    Thanks

    • http://RemingtonM.com Remington

      Oh yeah, I never even thought about that. Let me see what I can do.

    • http://RemingtonM.com Remington

      I just sent a CS5.5 version to Adam. Check back soon and it should be updated :)

  • http://www.mamoworld.com Mathias Möhl

    Nice application of ft_Effect_instance!

    However, if you only need to link colors, I would rather user Chameleon:
    http://ae.tutsplus.com/tutorials/workflow/making-your-color-scheme-a-whole-lot-kuler/

    If the user of your template has Chameleon installed, he can use its interface to change the color scheme.
    If not, he can still change it easily by modifying the color picker effects on the Color Theme layer created by Chameleon.

    Chameleon is also more flexible. You can say something like “link to a 10% darkened version of color 1 of the color scheme” or “take the hue and saturation from color 2 of the color theme, but let me keyframe the lightness”

    • http://RemingtonM.com Remington

      Interesting, I’ll have to check that out! I’ve been using Kuler lately when I’m stuck on a color scheme in Illustrator, but I’ve never used it inside of After Effects. I’ll check out that tutorial later!

  • Tony

    Yes, I agree pronunciation is not a big in here. Even if it’s toots or tuts it doesn’t really matter. What matters most here is the people drop by in here gain a lot of knowledge. illustrator tutorials for beginners

  • http://www.zebravideo.ca video production toronto

    nice tut. was waiting for this one.thanks