From the course: After Effects CC 2021: Character Animation Essential Training

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Precomposing

Precomposing - After Effects Tutorial

From the course: After Effects CC 2021: Character Animation Essential Training

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Precomposing

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- [Instructor] As we start to build up the complexity of our characters, there comes a point where it makes sense to group selected layers in the current composition and place them into their own composition. This is what's known as precomposing or precomping for short. It's a way of kind of working backwards and we'll see how this can benefit our animation workflow. Here in this comp, I've got a runner. And if I do a RAM preview here in this 25 frame composition, I've got a loop going on. But of course, he's only got one leg. And my thought here was why not take the yellow layers, all the layers that comprise his leg and simply duplicate it for the other side. But then that means introducing six more layers into my composition. Rather than doing that, we can be a lot more efficient in our organization by creating a precomp. With our layer selected, let's come up over here to layer and down below you'll find…

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