A lot of films, TV shows, and commercials use After Effects as their go-to motion graphics, visual effects, and compositing platform. In some workdlows, its okay to render your final out of After Effects, but personally I find that workflow too limiting. After all, how often is an edit really “locked” when your client, producer, director, etc. say that it is? And to start tweaking an editor or worse have to play back edit changes from After Effects, isn’t ideal to say the least.
In these two videos, we go over a new After Effects workflow using our conform tool reLink reTooled. This workflow gives you the power to render and replace your offline clips with your online or composited shots from After Effects, while still keeping your timeline in a flexible NLE environment instead of locked inside of After Effects. We are featuring two videos, but really the topic is the same. The link at the top of the post will show you the quick version, because we know not everyone has the attention span or time for a 20 minute tutorial (I can’t lie, I am often one of those people). However, if you are interested and want all of the detailed information, it is best to watch the full length demonstration below.
In this video, we show you the workflow between After Effects and Premiere Pro or FCP7. That said, this workflow could be from Nuke, Fusioon, Smoke, Resolve, or any other app as long as you maintain some important pieces of information about your clip, like the file name or partial file name and the timecode.
We also use the example of doing work to every shot in your film. However, you could just as easily separate the shots that need compositing to a different track on your timeline and make your xmls only reference these shots. You’ll see how using reLink reTooled you can keep the speed changes, edit points, and overall editing decisions in your NLE while just handling the effects work in After Effects. I think you’ll find the workflow to be fairly straight forward and a huge timesaver over having to tweak an edit in After Effects or realign your clips manually in your NLE.