Adding a preview in After Effects primarily involves ensuring the Preview panel is accessible and knowing the keyboard shortcuts to initiate playback of your composition.
Accessing the Preview Panel
The Preview panel is your central control hub for reviewing your work in After Effects. It's usually open by default in most standard workspaces.
- If the panel is not visible: You can easily open it by going to the main menu and selecting Window > Preview.
Once the panel is open, you'll find various controls that allow you to customize how After Effects renders and plays back your composition.
Starting Your Preview
To see your animation or effects in motion, you need to start a preview. After Effects pre-renders frames into RAM (Random Access Memory) to allow for smoother playback, often referred to as a RAM preview.
The most common way to start and stop a preview is by using keyboard shortcuts. These shortcuts trigger the preview function based on the settings configured in the Preview panel.
Common Preview Keyboard Shortcuts
Here are some standard keyboard shortcuts for initiating playback in After Effects, as mentioned in the reference:
- Spacebar: Starts/Stops playback (behaves based on Preview panel settings, often real-time).
- Shift + Spacebar: Starts playback (often previews with audio).
- Numpad-0: Starts/Stops RAM preview (renders frames into RAM for playback).
- Shift + Numpad-0: Starts RAM preview from the current time indicator (CTI) and stops when all visible layers are RAM previewed.
- Option (Alt) + Numpad-0: Starts RAM preview, playing back every frame whether it's rendered or not.
| Shortcut | Action | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Spacebar | Play/Stop | Standard playback based on settings. |
| Shift + Spacebar | Play | Playback, often including audio. |
| Numpad-0 | RAM Preview | Renders and plays frames into RAM. |
| Shift + Numpad-0 | RAM Preview (CTI) | Renders and plays from the current time indicator. |
| Option/Alt + Numpad-0 | Unrendered Playback | Plays all frames, rendered or not. |
By using these shortcuts after setting up your composition, After Effects will render and play back your animation, allowing you to review your work in real-time or near real-time depending on complexity and system resources.
