From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 02 Basic Animation
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Adding more layers - After Effects Tutorial
From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 02 Basic Animation
Adding more layers
Now, let's add the background layer to our comp. We're going to use Landscape.mov. I notice if I add it to the composition and drop it, it will snap to the edges, but it will also appear as layer 1, upskewing the title. Of course, this is easy to fix. I can just drag it below the title in the Timeline and now it appears as the background layer. But let me show you how to do this directly. I'll delete the layer, and this time I'll drag Landscape.mov directly to the left-hand side of the Timeline panel. When we use this method a layer will begin at zero and will also automatically be centered in the comp. And I'd like to reduce the opacity of this layer so the top is not quite so dark. So I'll press T for Opacity and then scrub the value, let's say 50%. That should work. Another thing I'd like to do with the background is turn on Lock switch. That means that I can't accidentally select the background when I want to select the title. It also means I can't edit any of the values. So if…
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