From the course: Prototyping Microinteractions with After Effects

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Creating a precomp

Creating a precomp

From the course: Prototyping Microinteractions with After Effects

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Creating a precomp

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- [Instructor] In the previous exercise, we prototyped a cursor and simply duplicated the cursor layer, then moved it to where we needed it. What if you need to use that same cursor in multiple places throughout the UI? And then along the way decide it needs to be changed? Well your solution is to go through all your cursor layers and make the change, or there's an easier way and this is where a precomposition becomes invaluable. The best way of thinking of a precomposition is it is a reusable symbol. You make your change to the symbol and that change ripples through all instances of that precomposition on the timeline. So let's see how that works and to get yourself started, open the precomposed file found in your chapter download. And when it opens, you'll notice we have a layer here for the cursor, right here. And that is the layer we're going to use and it's just a simple tap, as you can see if I scrub across it just does that. So what we're going to do is take this cursor layer…

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