Use a variety of Flash and After Effects filters to create content that makes the viewer wonder “Is it Flash or is it video?” From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics As a
Trang 1In this book, you’ll learn how to:
Integrate After Effects text effects in Flash
Create Flash content that interacts with After Effects content
Use the 3D features of After Effects in Flash
Use a variety of masking techniques in After Effects and Flash to add “wow” to
your work
Use a variety of Flash and After Effects filters to create content that makes the
viewer wonder “Is it Flash or is it video?”
From After Effects to Flash: Poetry in Motion Graphics
As a Flash 8 designer, you have discovered the power of the video tools in the
application The new filters and effects and ActionScript classes allow you to
create a variety of stunning visual effects in Flash What you probably haven’t
discovered is how easy it is empower your video hundreds of times more by
combining the many effects and tools in After Effects 7 Professional with Flash!
This book, the first to explore the potential power and creativity boost that can be
unleashed when After Effects and Flash are used together, is designed to get you up
to speed with working in these two applications while hitting you with some creative
innovation You will discover how effectively you can use After Effects to create video
and animation effects that were either extremely difficult or impossible to achieve
in Flash
By the end of this book, you will have created a variety of projects ranging from text
effects, masks, and alpha channel video to 3D effects and audio visualization All are
designed to show you the potential available to you with these two powerhouse
applications, and, more importantly, to expand the arsenal of creative motion graphics
tools at your disposal
Trang 2From After Effects to Flash
Poetry in Motion Graphics
Tom Green and Tiago Dias
Trang 3From After Effects to Flash:
Poetry in Motion Graphics
Copyright © 2006 by Tom Green and Tiago Dias All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.
ISBN-13 (pbk): 978-1-59059-748-4 ISBN-10 (pbk): 1-59059-748-6 Printed and bound in the United States of America 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Trademarked names may appear in this book Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence
of a trademarked name, we use the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark
owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.
Distributed to the book trade worldwide by Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., 233 Spring Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10013 Phone 1-800-SPRINGER, fax 201-348-4505, e-mail orders-ny@springer-sbm.com,
or visit www.springeronline.com.
For information on translations, please contact Apress directly at 2560 Ninth Street, Suite 219, Berkeley, CA
94710 Phone 510-549-5930, fax 510-549-5939, e-mail info@apress.com, or visit www.apress.com The information in this book is distributed on an “as is” basis, without warranty Although every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the authors nor Apress shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or
indirectly by the information contained in this work.
The source code for this book is freely available to readers at www.friendsofed.com
in the Downloads section.
Jim Sumser, Keir Thomas,
Trang 4To William Hanna, Dean of the School of Media Studies at the Humber Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto, who shares my passion for digital media and has supported me every step of the way.
Thanks, William.
—Tom
To my girlfriend, Anjanee, who supported me throughout the writing
of this book, and learned to accept my working moods.
—Tiago
Trang 6CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
About the Authors xiii
About the Technical Reviewer xiv
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1: From Concept to Final Product in After Effects 7 1
Chapter 2: From Final Product to Upload in Flash Professional 8 33
Chapter 3: Motion Graphics and the Preset Text Effects in After Effects 77
Chapter 4: Creating Alpha Channel Video for Flash 117
Chapter 5: Creating Text Animations for Flash 153
Chapter 6: Creating Special Effects 191
Chapter 7: Playing with Text 229
Chapter 8: Meet the Parents 275
Chapter 9: The Video Behind the Mask 309
Chapter 10: Track Mattes Are Your Friend 355
Chapter 11: Adding a Third Dimension 395
Chapter 12: Audio, the Red-Headed Kid in a Family of Blondes 437
Index 465
Trang 8About the Authors xiii
About the Technical Reviewer xiv
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction xvii
Chapter 1: From Concept to Final Product in After Effects 7 1
The After Effects workspace 3
Creating an After Effects project 5
Creating a Composition 5
Importing media into a project 7
Layers and timelines 9
Adding and manipulating timeline objects 10
Applying a transfer mode 13
Creating and using solid layers 14
Transforming and manipulating video clips 16
Animating text in After Effects 18
Adding audio to your project 24
Rendering the project: the end game 24
Summary 30
Chapter 2: From Final Product to Upload in Flash Professional 8 33
A brief word on streaming 34
The importance of data rate 35
Keyframes and streaming 37
Frame size 38
Creating the FLV file using the Flash 8 Video Encoder 39
Trang 9Playing an FLV file in Flash Professional 8 44
Using the Flash 8 FLVPlayback component 45
Targeting video for Flash 7 or lower 49
Using the FLVPlayback Custom UI components 50
Creating a custom video player 53
Streaming video into a video object 54
Using ActionScript to play a video 56
Creating buttons to control video playback 58
Turning the audio on and off 62
Showing the user the loading progress of an FLV file 66
Publishing your video player 69
Summary 73
Chapter 3: Motion Graphics and the Preset Text Effects in After Effects 77
Text animation presets 79
Using an animation preset 80
Importing an After Effects SWF animation into Flash 85
Combining animation presets to create Flash animations 87
Creating a rich media Flash Video with animated text 89
Importing and manipulating Illustrator images in After Effects 90
Combining animation effects 94
Creating the FLV file 98
Creating a motion graphics banner ad 99
Applying effects to images 101
After Effects motion graphics used as loaders for Flash movies 104
A frame-based loader 107
A clip event used as a loader 108
Using a movie clip and a ProgressBar component 110
Summary 114
Chapter 4: Creating Alpha Channel Video for Flash 117
Keying video in After Effects 120
Using the Keylight filter 123
Creating the video 126
Creating an alpha channel FLV file 127
Adding and using alpha channel video in Flash 130
Create an iPod-style video 135
Trimming Flash video and using cue points to trigger Flash events 139
Adding cue points and trimming video 141
Was that a cue point I just heard? 146
Using ActionScript to add cue points 148
Summary 149
C O N T E N T S
viii 44ad2f5fdfad12a87511fc691c15a532
Trang 10Chapter 5: Creating Text Animations for Flash 153
Closed captioning video 154
Playing with text 158
Lens flare 161
A photo gallery intro 165
Creating the FLV file 171
Creating an animated poem 172
Synching animation to sound in After Effects 174
Creating a gradient background 176
“Toning down” a lens flare 177
Creating a sine wave animation 178
Blinking and melting text 182
Creating pulsing circles 184
Highlighting text 186
Summary 187
Chapter 6: Creating Special Effects 191
Doing the drop shadow dance 192
Applying a drop shadow in Flash 193
Applying a filter and blend using ActionScript 195
Getting creative with a drop shadow in Flash 198
Creating fire and smoke 200
Entering the inferno 205
Beware of the Blob 210
Lights and flares 216
Assembling the project 219
Some final “jazz” 221
A halftime break 222
Summary 226
Chapter 7: Playing with Text 229
Reviewing the After Effects and Flash text tools 230
Exploding Flash text 232
Exploding text in After Effects 234
Ending a video with a bang 237
Names just flapping in the wind 238
The infamous “exploding P” 241
Something’s fishy with Illustrator 248
Not all SWF files are created equally 258
Mixing Flash and After Effects 262
Summary 271
C O N T E N T S
ix
Trang 11Chapter 8: Meet the Parents 275
Parenting 101 276
Parenting 201 279
The words on the rim go around and around 285
Rotating the word 286
Rendering the video and using it in Flash 292
A “down-and-dirty” poster frame 294
Animating Photoshop layers: Can you dig it? 297
When null is more than nothing 303
Summary 305
Chapter 9: The Video Behind the Mask 309
A basic After Effects mask 310
A basic Flash mask 312
Using text masks in After Effects 316
Cropping an FLV video in the Flash 8 Video Encoder 323
Creating a text mask in Flash 325
Illustrator masks to Flash 326
A gradient mask for a Flash video 327
“Getting fluid” in Piccadilly Circus 330
What about you? 336
Taking video for a spin 338
Happy birthday, Flash 341
Creating an exploding rune 345
Synchronizing Flash content to an FLV file 349
Summary 351
Chapter 10: Track Mattes Are Your Friend 355
Track mattes 101 356
Lighting it up with a Luma Matte 362
Beam up the seal 365
Who is that lady in the mirror? 371
Reflections in Flash 373
Deep under the sea, a blob is waiting 378
Another spotlight effect 382
Creating wavy text 383
Text with balls 385
Blinking text 387
Bring in the blobs 389
Summary 391
C O N T E N T S
x
Trang 12Chapter 11: Adding a Third Dimension 395
Creating a 3D button animation for Flash 398
Rotoscoping a video 404
Viewing 3D layers 407
We have our lights How about a camera? 412
Video in a box 417
Putting a camera in orbit 419
Preparing for parenthood 420
Finishing up 422
Live from your computer it’s the Fake TV Late Show! 423
Playing with a camera 427
Making the movie Flash Friendly 431
Summary 433
Chapter 12: Audio, the Red-Headed Kid in a Family of Blondes 437
The basics of audio in After Effects 438
Flash and audio 441
An audio controller 442
A video sound controller 446
Sound visualization in After Effects 449
Have you ever seen the northern lights, Jimmy? 453
Building a boom box 455
There is a new club in town 457
Doing the audio “thing” 459
Streaming audio and video in Flash 461
Summary 462
Index 465
C O N T E N T S
xi
Trang 14ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Tom Green is currently professor of Interactive Media in the
School of Media Studies at Humber College Institute ofTechnology & Advanced Learning in Toronto, Canada He haswritten seven books on Macromedia technologies, and many arti-
cles for numerous magazines and websites, including the MX
Developer’s Journal, Community MX, Digital Web Magazine, and Computer Arts He has spoken at over 20 conferences interna-
tionally, including Adobe Max, NAB, FITC, MX North, DigitalDesign World, TODCON, and SparkEurope You can contact Tom
at tom@tomontheweb.ca
Tiago Dias started to get into Flash around the time of Flash 3,
after seeing his first Flash site He started off by doing freelancework on the side from his day job as a network/systems engineer
On the motion graphics side of things, he got a lot of AfterEffects and Premiere experience at multimedia school in Zurich.From those humble beginnings, he now works as a video pro-ducer and Flash developer at a corporate television and newsproduction company based in London with subsidiaries aroundthe world—this is Tiago’s ideal job, as it combines two of hisfavorite technologies!
In his free time, he writes tutorials on Flash and After Effects for various communities, tries
to go snowboarding every time the sun is shining in the Swiss Alps, or hops on a plane to visitnew countries He currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland
Trang 15ABOUT THE TECHNICAL REVIEWER
Charles E Brown is one of the most noted authors and teachers
in the computer industry today His first two books, Beginner
Dreamweaver MX and Fireworks MX Zero to Hero, have received
critical acclaim He has also been a Fireworks MX contributor for
the MX Developer’s Journal.
In addition to his busy writing schedule, he has conducted frequentseminars for the PC Learning Center (www.pclearningcenter.com)
on such topics as Java programming, the Macromedia Studio MXenvironment, and the Microsoft Office environment
Charles is also a noted classical organist, pianist, and guitarist, and studied with such notables
as Vladimir Horowitz, Virgil Fox, and Igor Stravinsky It was because of his association withStravinsky that he got to meet, and develop a friendship with, famed artist Pablo Picasso.Charles can be contacted through his website at www.charlesebrown.net
Trang 16The Internet is an odd place People can meet and develop close working relationships withothers they have never met in person This is exactly how I wound up with my coauthor TiagoDias As is so typical of the Internet, Tiago and I live at opposite sides of the planet, and yet
we have worked so well together on this book you would think we share an office Not badfor two guys who have never met There isn’t one project in this book where I explained myidea to Tiago and he didn’t bring it to life in a way that went far beyond what I consideredpossible It looks like he and I are in this for the long haul, and I couldn’t be happier
I would also be remiss in not acknowledging a couple of people from the Adobe crew whohelped make this book possible by answering questions and generally steering us in the rightdirection First up is Steve Kilisky, the After Effects product manager who essentially told me
I was crazy if I didn’t do the book when I first blew the idea by him at Adobe Max in 2005.The other individual is Scott Fegette, community manager at Adobe, who never failed toanswer a question or tell me if I was way off base when I breezed an idea by him Thanks guys
I would also like to thank Shawn Pucknell, who gave me several opportunities to stand up infront of my peers at the Toronto Flash User Group, FlashinTO, which he founded, in order todemonstrate much of what Tiago and I were discovering as we wrote this book I would alsolike to thank him for taking a risk and inviting me to the “belly of the beast”—Los Angeles—
to do a session on After Effects for Flash designers at FITC Hollywood It proved that Tiagoand I were on the right track
Naturally, my editor at friends of ED, Chris Mills, has had a major positive influence on thisbook It took him less than a week to approve the concept when I first approached him with
my idea, and he has been riding herd on this merry band of explorers ever since Along theway, Chris and I have developed a solid professional relationship, but most important of all,
we have become good friends
Finally, the task of writing these things means I hole myself up in my office, and becomemoody and generally difficult to live with as I mull over what to do next or how to explain atechnique It takes a very unique individual to put up with it, let alone understand why, and
my wife, life partner, and best friend for over 30 years, Keltie, somehow puts up with it
Tom Green
Trang 17When Tom contacted me a few months ago asking me to coauthor his newest book, I justhad one thing to say to him, and that was a clear “Yes, Tom.” So Tom, a big thank you forgiving me the opportunity to be part of it—it was a lot of fun working with you eventhough both of us live on opposite sides of the planet!
I would like to thank Claudio Cappellari from Toscano Records in Zurich, who createdthree awesome custom-made soundtracks for this book It was quite an experience work-ing together with a musician to create a custom track, which matched my imagination andfulfilled my wishes
I would like to thank Chris Mills at friends of ED and David and Andy for being good dies and always giving me great feedback on all of the projects I created for the book.Finally, a big thanks has to go to my family and my girlfriend who accepted my regular
bud-“no time” moods Thanks guys!
Tiago Dias
A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
xvi
Trang 18The concept for this book, like most book ideas I develop, was more accidental than
delib-erate I was approaching the last chapter of my previous book for friends of ED—Foundation
Flash 8 Video—and was getting nervous The plan for the chapter was to explore preparing
and deploying Flash video for mobile devices What was making me nervous was the FlashLite 2 Player was still in beta and Macromedia, now Adobe, wasn’t giving us any sort of idea
of when it would be ready for the market In the midst of this “nervousness,” my doorbellrang It was the man from UPS, and he was delivering a copy of the Adobe Creative SuiteProduction Studio Premium
What immediately caught my attention was that Flash Professional 8 was included with thebundle It made sense because the ability to create and work with Flash video was a majorfeature of the application Then the idea hit me: kill the mobile chapter, and instead do a fewexercises that demonstrated how Adobe After Effects content can be used in Flash movies Iwill admit I played it safe with that chapter, but the ability to include some of the AfterEffects in Flash content started rattling around my subconscious I found the whole conceptextremely intriguing and, without the pressure of a book deadline, took a few weeks toexplore what I could do
I also took some time to see what others in the Flash community were up to, and, as it turnsout, After Effects was not on most of the Flash community’s radar Most of the people Italked to were intrigued with the stuff they could do with code or were simply trying to get
a Flash video to properly stream I then started talking to the guys at Adobe, and, as it turnsout, they were also intrigued with the potential of how Flash and After Effects could playwith each other and what they could do to bring the two applications closer to each other Iwas told, “Let us know what you find out.” The next step in the process was to start nosingaround the After Effects community They too found the concept intriguing, but eithertended to view Flash as nothing more than another output format or simply didn’t have thetime to “learn another goddamn application.”
What I learned from all of this is that both the “Flashies” and the After Effects guys wereintrigued with the concept, but there was really nothing out there to get them started orinterested The entire field was wide open and unexplored This explains why this book uses
a “dragon hunt” as its theme This also explains the opening paragraphs of Chapter 1:
Trang 19“We are going to start our journey through After Effects and Flash by launching a search for dragons There is a historical myth that assumes English mapmakers in the 1500s, not knowing what lay in the Arctic, would add the legend ‘Here be dragons’ to their maps We say ‘myth’ because the only known reference to that phrase is on the Lenox Globe, which can be found in the New York Public Library Still, the phrase has stuck and makes for a rather great jumping-off point for our exploration of the unknown.
“In many respects, the workflow and relationship of Flash and After Effects is uncharted and out there in ‘Dragon Country.’”
The purpose of this book, therefore, is not to be the definitive work of its kind when itcomes to the relationship between After Effects and Flash Professional 8 It is too early forthat one The purpose of this book is to show you some of the things Tiago and I have dis-covered as we journeyed through Dragon Country and to encourage you to undertake yourown dragon hunt If you do, you will discover what Tiago and I did: that this is fun stuff
Book structure and flow
The book starts by introducing you to using After Effects to create a project destined forFlash in Chapter 1 Chapter 2 walks you through what you need to know to move an AfterEffects project through the Flash Video Encoder and to play the video in Flash using theFLVPlayback component, and shows you how to build a custom video player By the end ofthese two chapters, you will have discovered the workflow between these two applications
is more efficient and simple than you may have first thought
Once you understand the workflow, we walk you through some examples to show youhow text-based motion graphics effects (Chapter 3) in many cases can be more easily done
in After Effects than in Flash We show you how to import the animations into Flash andmanipulate them in Flash movie clips, and we even show you how to create a banner adfor playback through Flash
Chapter 4 shows you the ability of After Effects to create alpha channel video Once youunderstand that, we then show you how to have the video interact with Flash content onthe stage through the use of ActionScript The chapter also answers a very common ques-tion: “How do they create those iPod ads?”
With alpha channel video out of the way, we then dig deeper into working with text andshow you how to use Flash cue points and XML to provide closed-caption video; and then
we really start to roll by blurring text in Flash and After Effects, adding lens flares in AfterEffects, having text on the Flash stage interact with a lens flare created in After Effects, andshowing how you can work with Illustrator CS 2, Flash, and After Effects to create a ratherfascinating text mask Chapter 5 concludes with the production of an animated poem thatuses audio and a variety of text effects to create an amazing motion graphics project.The midpoint of the book, Chapter 6, is where we explore a variety of special effects youcan create, from drop shadows to explosions, and how to mix and match them in AfterEffects and Flash This is also the point where we challenge you to stop looking at video asvideo and instead regard it as “content.” To do this we involve you in a Flash/After Effects
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xviii
Trang 20challenge by asking a simple question: “What is Flash content and what is After Effects onthe Flash stage?” This is an important question because the answer has rather interestingimplications for the future of Flash video.
The balance of the book stays with that question and shows you how to create stunningvisual effects that use content from a variety of sources, such as exploding text, lettersshaped like fish swishing their tails, and text created in After Effects interacting with textcreated in Flash We also look at the use of 3D in After Effects for your Flash projects, theuse of parenting relationships in After Effects to create complex animations that can beused in Flash, audio visualization, Flash content interacting with blobs of goo, and bendingvideo around geometric shapes in Piccadilly Circus
All of these projects are designed not to show off but to get you to understand that AfterEffects and Flash together form a content creation powerhouse and, more importantly,how they can combine to expand your creative horizons and skill set
As I am writing this, I am in a hotel room 15 floors above the Las Vegas Strip preparing to
do a couple of sessions at Adobe Max designed to get the Flash and After Effects usercommunities to join me on the same dragon hunt to which you have been invited Itshould be fun, but that isn’t what has me “cranked.” I can hardly wait until this time nextyear and the year after to see what Adobe, you, and your fellow explorers have discovered
That is the real payoff
Tom Green
Layout conventions
To keep this book as clear and easy to follow as possible, the following text conventionsare used throughout:
Important words or concepts are normally highlighted on the first appearance in bold type.
Code is presented in fixed-width font
New or changed code is normally presented in bold fixed-width font.
Menu commands are written in the form Menu ➤Submenu ➤Submenu.Where we want to draw your attention to something, we’ve highlighted it like this:
Sometimes code won’t fit on a single line in a book Where this happens, we use an arrow
like this: ➥.
This is a very, very long section of code that should be written all ➥
on the same line without a break
Ahem, don’t say we didn’t warn you.
I N T R O D U C T I O N
xix
Trang 221 FROM CONCEPT TO FINAL PRODUCT
IN AFTER EFFECTS 7
Trang 23F R O M A F T E R E F F E C T S T O F L A S H : P O E T R Y I N M O T I O N G R A P H I C S
2
We are going to start our journey through After Effects and Flash by launching a search fordragons There is a historical myth that assumes English mapmakers in the 1500s, notknowing what lay in the Arctic, would add the legend “Here be dragons” to their maps Wesay “myth” because the only known reference to that phrase is on the Lenox Globe, whichcan be found in the New York Public Library Still, the phrase has stuck and makes for arather great jumping-off point for our exploration of the unknown
In many respects, the workflow and relationship of Flash and After Effects is unchartedand out there in “Dragon Country.”
Until the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe in 2005, Flash and After Effects lived inseparate worlds and solitudes Adobe was quite succinct in their motivation behind theacquisition of Macromedia When asked for the reasoning, those involved in the acquisi-tion, both at Adobe and Macromedia, summed it up in one word: “Flash.”
Though Flash 8 covers a lot of web ground, the most groundbreaking aspect of Flash 8 wasthe inclusion of a number of serious video tools designed for the creation and deployment
of video on the Web Within hours of the completion of the Adobe/Macromedia deal,Adobe released updated versions of its media creation and editing tools, and among themwas a new version of Adobe After Effects 7, which pushed the application into new terri-tory With Flash Professional 8 and After Effects 7 under the same roof, we have beenhanded two tools that were absolutely made for each other and will inevitably also bedrawn closer to each other over the next few years
Just to give you an idea of how these two applications integrate, consider the following:You can export an After Effects Composition directly into the Flash 8 VideoEncoder
Alpha channel use in video is now available in Flash and After Effects and contains
a range of “industrial-strength” keying tools
Vector animations, created in After Effects, can be directly imported into Flashmovie clips and manipulated in Flash
Motion graphics created in After Effects can be easily and seamlessly incorporatedinto Flash movies, thanks to the FLVPlayback component
After Effects offers the Flash designer access to a full complement of powerfulfilters and graphic effects, including 3D, that are simply unavailable in FlashProfessional 8
The neat thing about these points is they just scratch the surface of what you can do withthese tools In many respects, these five points are the land masses on those early Englishmaps, and the time has arrived to see whether there really are dragons out there Let’s godragon hunting
Trang 24F R O M C O N C E P T T O F I N A L P R O D U C T I N A F T E R E F F E C T S 7
3
1
The After Effects workspace
If you have used After Effects prior to this release, you are in for a rather pleasant surprisewhen you open After Effects One of the more common complaints about the application,until this release, was the cluttered workspace Palettes would sit on top of palettes, and
many After Effects developers referred to this condition as paletosis Now all of the palettes, which are now referred to as panels, as shown in Figure 1-1, dock with each
other, and they can be moved around and collapsed to meet your unique needs
Figure 1-1 The After Effects 7 workspace is a much tidier place these days.
As you can see, each of the panels is now tabbed This means you can bring the panel you
need into focus by simply clicking a panel tab You can also change the order of the panels
We aren’t going to get into customizing the workspace, adding or subtracting panels,
or a long discussion on what each panel does We are assuming that you know the real basic stuff already, and are at the stage where you are itching to be creative!
Many After Effects users will use a dual-monitor setup for their work The main screen will be reserved for the Projectand Compositionpanels while the timeline and other panels will be moved to the second monitor.
Trang 25in the grouping by simply clicking the gripper—the dots beside the panel name—and
dragging the selected panel to one side or the other You can also create new panel groups—you want the Compositionand Effects & Presetspanels in the same place Here’s how:
1.Click the gripper beside the Effects & Presets panel and drag the panel onto the
Figure 1-2 The Effects & Presets panel is about to be dropped into a
location to the left of the Comp window
3.Drag the Effects & Presetspanel back to its original position
If your workspace becomes a bit disorganized you can always return it to the After Effects 7 default condition by selecting Window ➤Workspace ➤Reset “Standard” You will see a dialog box asking you whether you really want to do this Click OKand the panels will change to the grouping you saw when you first installed After Effects 7 How do you know whether a panel is selected? It will have a solid yellow line sur- rounding it when you click it.
Each of the pieces is called a drop zone.
F R O M A F T E R E F F E C T S T O F L A S H : P O E T R Y I N M O T I O N G R A P H I C S
4