The Digital Matte Painting Handbook

Setting the Duration of the Animation

Now that you’re familiar with the location of After Effects panels and controls, you can begin to animate the project. First, you need to set the duration of your animation by adjusting the composition settings. Because After Effects defaults to the length of the previous comp, the length of the current comp may be different from the one shown here.

Let’s make this animation 20 seconds long. This composition is currently 400 frames long, but 20 seconds at 29.97 frames per second equals 599.4 frames, which we’ll round up to 600 frames. To change the length, choose Composition → Composition Settings. Set Frame Rate to 29.97 and Duration to 600 (Figure 13-10). These settings make the animation 20 seconds long. ...