Dissect a Project

Dissect a Project

If you’ve been handed an unfamiliar project and need to
make sense of it quickly, there are a couple of other tools
that may help.
The new one of these is probably my favorite new feature
in After Effects CS4: Minifl ow (Shift key toggles with the
Timeline, Comp, or Layer view active, Figure 2.11b). It
quickly maps any upstream or downstream comps and
allows you to open any of them simply by clicking on it.
If you’re looking for a whole visual map of the project
instead, try Flowchart view (Ctrl+F11/Cmd+F11 or the
tree/node icon in the Composition viewer). You have
to see it to believe it: a nodal interface in After Effects
perhaps the least nodal of any of the major
compositing applications.
This view shows how objects (layers, compositions, and
effects) are used, and in what relationship to one another.
The + button above a composition reveals its components;
for the cleanest view, toggle layers and effects off at the
lower left.
You can’t make any edits here, but you can double-click
any item to reveal it where you can edit it—back in the
Timeline, of course.