From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 02 Basic Animation
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Understanding the background color - After Effects Tutorial
From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 02 Basic Animation
Understanding the background color
I thought it would be helpful to explain the significance of the background color to After Effects. This composition has a black background color. The background color indicates which areas are transparent. You can also see which areas of the comp are transparent by selecting the alpha channel from the RGB channels pop-up. Any areas that are solid white are fully opaque. Any areas that are black indicate full transparency. Wherever you see shades of gray, you are looking at shades of transparency. I will toggle off the alpha channel and turn off the transparency grid. Now sometimes the black background color is not that useful. You can change it in CS5 under Composition settings; in CS4, Background Color is a menu item under Composition. So if I change the background color to white, I can clearly see the drop shadow effects on the video layers and the title. Just to make it clear that the background color is transparency, let me create a new solid layer. I will make this white, and…
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