Let's begin first with what the hell are nodes? Well, for those who know when working with After Effects, you use layers and they are very different from the nodes you use in nuke. For those who are totally new to even after effects, you can ignore me. But yes, nuke uses nodes. And nodes are basically a point in the web, kind of like those join the dots kind of thing where you connect the dots all together. But okay, that might still be a bit complicated.

So how about this explanation? Imagine a single nerve cell, this is your node, these nerve cells, I then connect it to one another, which forms a web of cells, aka your nodes in nuke. Okay, got it. Alright, let's move on back from our brains back into New York regarding the input and output of nodes. So let's start first with an input. Now in case you're wondering how I created this node, I simply hit the letter R M to create the Merge node.

Again, don't be too confused or overwhelmed by what this means at this point, just simply follow a law, hit m, and then click on this node. Now we're going to first talk about the input of nodes. Firstly, you can see there's two input pipes here. Now these are normally called pipes. And when arrows coming into a node is usually called an input pipe, so is just input pipe a, what you want to bring to input as something to be calculated by this node, and B is the same thing except it's just called B. Now the output of notes can differ and usually it's just one arrow pointing out.

And basically how it works is that we add these two things together to be calculated by this node. It gives you the output of the result kind of like a mathematical equation where you add one plus one, you do the calculations here equals two and you can use this value however you want. You can even use this value to connect to the next inputting node. Now in After Effects Next, what you would do is basically this your input and output are essentially what you see in the viewer and effects controls panel. Now, we don't have anything in here. So I'm just going to create something for illustration purposes, right click on your project tab, hit new composition.

And basically just set this as HDTV 10 ADP 24 hours, okay, click OK. And now you can see some stuff is happening in your viewer as well. As you know, if you have this comp open, it will be open in your timeline. Now how you will do the inputs in here compared to nuke is simple. Double click on your comp, it should bring up your comp in your timeline. And you basically add an effect and that's all you're going to have to do in terms of putting an input in here. So I'm just going to create a new layer very quickly.

Right click on a timeline, go to new, new solid and just make it whatever color you want, you know pink and make a ping. We're going to make it red. And now you can see that I can actually put stuff on this layer. Imagine that this is the node in nuke So for example, if I add a blur, I crank the crap out of this. And you can see that it applies to my view. So input effects controls, output, composition slash viewer make sense.

And of course in nuke, this basically surrounds the note and focus itself. If I actually created a same thing, basically, it's something like this, just set this to read for now. Blur, you can see it's essentially almost the same thing. Now in After Effects, what you can do is basically add layers on top of each other and then have them apply to whatever. And that's basically how you're applying create your default effects and have them affects the output in your viewer. So for example, I can create a new layer on top of our layer so let's just say adjustment layer and just create multiple of these Have them affect my layer below.

And those who are familiar with After Effects would know that this is actually hard work. So you can see, I have these layers affecting the layer below. Okay, so back to nuke how this works has been different. In fact, going back to the concept that it all focuses on that particular active node, kind of like your nerve cell, what you want to do is basically click on a note, hit tab, and it automatically connects the new note to that selected node or whatever new effect when you apply. So for example, if I go to blue, and maybe let's say I want to crop this a bit, so I search for crop and of course, I hit some random number, you can see that it applies to my note kind of like the layers and After Effects except that it is not in a layer format. Regardless of how many inputs you have, it's just what is needed to make the calculations in order to give you the appropriate result.

Now, let's say if you have a composition in After Effects and you want to actually basically View different steps or stages in your effects, you actually have to set up multiple viewers in order to have multiple inputs or to view your multiple output. So how you can do that and After Effects basically go to View new viewer, you can see that I basically created a new view. And I can actually have this view a different image by one. So for example, you can see I'm doing home one here and comp two over here. Now I knew this is pretty simple, you actually don't have to create multiple viewers if you don't want to. So all you have to do basically, to view different inputs is just to actually select on a note hits on a number keypad on the numbers on top of your letters and your keyboard.

So if let's say I want this to be one, this will be two, because I can view both of them at the same time without any hassle. And of course, I can still always create a new viewer. And one of the ways to do this is just go to the node graph, hit tab, search for view and you have your basically the same setup in After Effects. as well. Now in order to detach your nodes from this, instead of going in and manually moving arrows out of the way, what you have to do basically select the nodes hit control D, and those will basically detach it. At the same time if you actually want to replace a node and say I want this to be in between over here, I just clicked on the note owner place, make sure I'm still holding down my left mouse button and then make sure the left mouse button still selected and press down and then press and hold Ctrl and Shift at the same time hover over the no you want to place it I did go and you can see the note is now replaced.

Now and After Effects. If you want to basically deactivate a layer, you basically hide it or delete it. That's pretty simple. You can see these icons right here. Basically, to hide your effects. I'm just going to close these cuts getting a little bit crowded.

See I just hit my effects. You can also delete these layers if you don't need them, and how you would replace them. Let's just say I have a new solid just go to the timeline right click New solid. I'm going to make this Blue pink. Okay, I'm going to remove this from my timeline. And I say I want to replace this slide right here, you can do the same thing as what I've done in nuke, basically press and hold Alt, instead of Ctrl.

Shift and hover over the selected layer, let it go, I can see that I just replaced this layer with a new layer. Let's now go through the general comparison between layers and nodes. So the efficiency of nodes and redoing undoing work, it's actually much more easier to do it in new compared to layers. For layers, you actually have to go in to each individual comp, aka composition, to basically uncheck and click or select things you don't want to be president. So for example, I want attendance already double click go into here, basically, you have to use your mouse click multiple times, but here in nuke, when using nodes, all you have to do is basically hit d d key for dog to deactivate the node in between and there you go. So basically deactivates my note right easily and because you can access all of these at the first level at first glance And actually much easier for you to kind of turn on and off of facts in New York.

Now, you can also do a B testing with notes and layers. So for example, if you want to check before and after, I'm actually going to make this much more obvious. So you can actually see that before and after, just bear with me for a moment. in After Effects. This is done by again, using to viewers side by side as a cost. There are some new developments that are in the works that I don't even know about.

But first let me just set it up Go to View new viewer. You can basically do your before and after if you have all the words in separate compositions. Speaking of new developments for After Effects, attached to this lesson is a link to the new features for After Effects and usually they release some notes that you could check it out. But if not, this is usually how you would be able to do it for a be testing where you want to see the comparison between two different compositions and state so progress in new cover. You actually have a very specific topic. Going over to my view I'm just going to close these for a moment because it's getting a little bit too crowded go into my view and make sure my mouse is hovering over the view I hit w in order to do a B testing in just one view or composition itself.

So in order to set that up, I can see I have an A and a B up here, in order to do a B testing, I just make sure that I have my a input pipe to something and be piped to something else. And now you can see a split screen has been formed in my viewer to do an actual A B testing where input a is actually the crop coming right here into my viewer as an output and input B is basically the constant coming right here into my input for the viewer. Again all within one composition itself so if you compare this to After Effects can see which one is a little bit more efficient, because you can do it in one composition viewer was an after effects you have to split the two up. Okay, looks like I have a phone call. Give me one second.

Hello Mm hmm. Yep. Okay. Okay. Got it. Okay.

All right. Thanks. Bye. So, it appears that we have just received an assignment, apparently a commissioned piece of art for someone named David or something like that. Hmm. He sounded strange.

Anyway, so excellent. We shall use that as our assignment for this course. And actually, we will start working on that and gathering all those pieces in the next lesson.