Posted by joe on 07/30/06 02:47

First off, I am running Adobe After Effects 6.5 Pro on a PC.

Very new to AE, but am reading, and studying as much as possible, and
am picking up on most all areas of interest with ease so far.

Scenario is this:

In tinkering around to make sure I understand different concepts, I
decided to try something, which I though would be simple, and, most
likely is.

I simply wanted to take a picture of a lawn, as a background, jpg or
what ever, and then apply a pre-keyed footage of a small explosion, to
look like as if a fire cracker went off in the lawn.

No problem, I got this far, and all worked well.

However, after the explosion, the pre-keyed footage ends, and the lawn
is flawless again.

Not what I wanted. I need a hole in the ground after the explosion,
or, at a minimum for the purpose of this question, just a black
smudge.

Now, in Photoshop, I could do this with ease. In Photoshop, I would
simply go up to Layer, New, Layer, and wa-lah, I would have a new
transparent Layer. I would then draw my little black smudge on this
new layer, and then, using the Move Tool, move the smudge, or the
layer as it were, to the exact location I needed it, and be done.

However, (from what I can derive), you cannot do it "like that" in AE.

In AE I go up to Layer, and then New, and I'm given the six standard
choices, (Text, Solid, Light, etc.), none of which work, in the same
manner, as I had described in the Photoshop method.

Is there no way to do it as easy as I could in Photoshop, in AE?

How is this done?

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