From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 04 Layer Control

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Understanding the importance of layer order

Understanding the importance of layer order - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 04 Layer Control

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Understanding the importance of layer order

There's one more trick I would like to show you with Sequence Layers. The order that you select layers affects the order of the final sequence. Your sequence is going to start at the beginning of the first layer you select. So I am going to select Tulip_1 first. Then I can hold Command on Mac, or Control on Windows to add layers to my selection in whatever order I want. After Effects will remember this. So I'll do 6, 2, 5, 3 and 4. Right-click, Keyframe Assistant > Sequence Layers, Overlap. Go for my 1 second overlap again. Dissolve Front Layer. Click OK. And now you'll see that my layers have been arranged in the order I clicked. 1, 6, 2, 5, 3 and 4. And if I press "T", to reveal their opacities, you'll see that it is always the layer on top that is doing the fading. It remembers what order the layers were stacked and sets the Opacity keyframes accordingly. It'ss a nice little trick.

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