95 Producing Motion Menus in After Effects

#95 Producing Motion Menus in After Effects

The coolest motion menus are those that seamlessly animate into the actual menu that viewers use to view your content. Fortunately, the integration between Encore DVD and After Effects make these very simple to create. Here's the workflow.

Set the Loop Point

Though your viewers may not be able to see your buttons or their final placement (depending upon the type of animation you produced), the clickable subpictures will remain active unless you deactivate them, which means viewers can click the buttons even if they can't see them. To deactivate your buttons while the animation is playing, check out #96.

1.	In Encore DVD's Project panel, select the menu you want to animate.
2.	Choose Menu > Create After Effects Composition. Encore DVD will prompt you to save the menu before opening After Effects. Type the desired name and location and click Save. After Effects will run and load the menu as a composition with nested compositions for each button (Figure 95a). Figure 95a. Here's the menu composition in After Effects. With the current-time indicator about halfway through the composition, the buttons are at about 50% opacity, on their trip from 0% to 100% opacity.
3.	In the After Effects Project panel, double-click the menu composition to open it on the timeline.
4.	Set an ending keyframe (see #43) for each menu parameter that you plan to animate, which will ensure that the final frame of the animation matches perfectly with the original menu. For example, this 15-second menu will fade the buttons in from 0% to 100% opacity. Accordingly, the first step is to set the opacity value for all buttons at 100% on the final frame of the composition. Edit the Menu in After Effects To make further changes in the After Effects composition, select it the Project panel and choose Edit > Edit Original. Note that if you change the original menu file upon which you based the composition in Encore DVD or Photoshop, After Effects won't automatically update the project, which may result in the last frame of your After Effects composition not matching the menu. You may have to start over in After Effects to ensure that the transition between the final frame of the animation and actual menu is seamless.
5.	Create the target animation. In the example, this means inserting a keyframe for each button at the start of the composition and adjusting the opacity to 0%.
6.	Save the composition in After Effects.
7.	In Encore DVD, click File > Adobe Dynamic Link > Import After Effects Composition. Encore DVD will open the Import Composition dialog. Navigate to and insert the main composition into Encore DVD (see #20).
8.	Click the original Menu to make it active; then open the Properties panel (Figure 92a) and click the Motion tab.
9.	In the Motion tab, drag the pick whip from the left of the Video settings to the imported After Effects composition. Release the pick whip once Encore DVD highlights the target composition (Figure 95b). Figure 95b. Use the pick whip to select the After Effects composition as the video background for the menu.
10.	Click the Layers tab for the menu, and deselect the Eye icons next to all visible layers in the menu to make them transparent (Figure 95c). Figure 95c. Click the eye icons next to all visible layers in the Encore DVD menu to make them transparent (since they'll show through in the After Effects animation). Note This will hide the buttons that will show through from the After Effects composition, but retain the subpictures, so viewers can still click to activate the button.