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TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Icons ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 3

Whats In The Package ..................................................................................................................................................................... 6

New Updates - Multiple Versions Conflict ............................................................................................................................................ 6

AE Basics ......................................................................................................................................................................................... 7

Finding Your Icons ............................................................................................................................................................................ 8

Global Color Change ......................................................................................................................................................................... 9

Local Color Change .......................................................................................................................................................................... 10

Changing The Shadow ..................................................................................................................................................................... 11

Sound Effects .................................................................................................................................................................................. 12

Importing The Icons Into Your Project .............................................................................................................................................. 13

Scaling ........................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Looping .......................................................................................................................................................................................... 13

Rendering ....................................................................................................................................................................................... 14

Exporting to GIF .............................................................................................................................................................................. 16

Need Specific Icons? ........................................................................................................................................................................ 17

Do You Have Any Questions? ............................................................................................................................................................ 17

LIST OF ICONS

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WHATS IN THE PACKAGE

Audio folder (containing the sound effects)

AE file (CS5, CS5.5 and CS6 versions)

PDF tutorial (seems you have already found it :)

NEW UPDATES - MULTIPLE VERSIONS CONFLICT

Have you already imported a previous version into your project before this update? Then please read this section!

If you import several versions of the Animated Icons pack you might experience a conflict: previously set icons temporarily lose their

custom colors and certain icons will not get changed at all due to naming conflicts.

Please note that none of your settings will be lost, only overwritten by the later imported version. To override the problem make sure that

the settings of the Effect & Color control compositions match each other in all versions.

If you use icons with local colors as well and they lose their properties after importing the new version, the easiest fix to solve the issue is

to delete the icons with the same name from the other version(s) (in your project only!). For instance, if you used Rocket versionX with

active local colors and you would like to keep these settings, simply delete the Rocket composition from versionX+1 (again, not in the

original AnimatedIcons-version.aep, but only in your project). (You only have to delete the hierarchically highest comp (with the prefix),

i.e. i Rocket)

Make sure that you keep the Audio folder and the AnimatedIcons-versionX.aep in the same place related to each other, so that

After Effects can see the audio files.

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AE BASICS

Open the AnimatedIcons-versionX.aep file with After Effects (AE). This is the screen that welcomes you. Please remember the names

listed here as I will refer to them in the tutorial.

Project panel

Effect Controls

Timeline panel

Selection Tool

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FINDING YOUR ICONS

There are a lot of icons included in this project, they are sorted in an alphabetical order in 5 folders (General, Health, Technology,

Corporate, Social) under the ICONS folder. You can either locate them in their opened folders (ICONS / General for instance) or you can

use the search bar to find the icons by their names (maybe a bit faster if you know what you are looking for). Please use the icon list at

the beginning of this document as a reference.

Make sure that you always choose the icons from the ICONS folder. For instance if you search for strategy you will get several

results (see the example below), but only one of them with an i prefix is what you are looking for (hierarchically the highest level).

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GLOBAL CCCCOOOOLLLLOOOORRRR CHANGE

Open the Effect & Color Control composition in the folder with the same name. This is

your control panel where you can set your global colors and adjust the shadow for all the

icons.

Changing the colors

1. With the Selection Tool (press V) click on one of the three hexagons.

2. Open the Effect Controls panel. (If it is not visible next to the Project Panel, go to

Window in the top menu and click on Effect Controls.)

3. Select your color with either clicking on the rectangle or with the Eyedropper Tool

next to it.

4. Follow this procedure with the other two hexagons as well.

You can find 6 predefined color schemes in the Effect & Color Control composition below the hexagons. If you like any of them, use the

Eyedropper Tool to select their colors.

The 3rd color is the background color. Although the icons will be rendered with transparency, you can set your background color

here to simulate the environment you are embedding them into.

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LOCAL CCCCOOOOLLLLOOOORRRR CHANGE

From version 3 there is an extra (optional) feature - you have the possibility to very easily customize the colors of each icon

independently. It means that you can make exceptions from the global color rule and apply custom colors to any of the icons.

Applying custom color to a specific icon

1. Open an icon composition (e.g Icons / General / Map Pin ).

2. You will see 2 layers: xyz content and Local Color Control.

Left click on the Local Color Control .

3. In the Effect Controls Panel uncheck the Global Colors Checkbox

4. Set your two new colors.

Tip: To invert the icon colors very fast, just change the order of the effects New Color 1 and New Color 2.

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CHANGING THE SHADOW

1. Open the Effect & Color Control composition.

2. With the Selection Tool (press V) click on the hexagon at the bottom.

3. Open the Effect Controls panel. (If it is not visible besides the Project Panel, go to Window in the top menu and click on Effect

Controls.)

4. You can customize the direction, opacity and size (distance) of the shadow here. You can also apply soft shadow (Softness).

Checking the colors + shadow on all icons

If you open the MAIN color and shadow test composition, you can see how all the icons look with your new colors and shadow. The

icons are grouped into several comps, just turn on the transparency of the group that you would like to see (and turn off the others).

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SOUND EFFECTS

All the sound effects are from the public domain and are therefore totally free to be used either for commercial or any purposes.

By default all sound effects are turned on. You can mute them one by one as you drag them into your project by simply clicking on their

speaker icon.

If you would like to get rid of them all, the fastest solution is to delete the Audio folder (in After Effects!), this will remove all the sound

effects from the project.

Turning the Volume down

Select an icon in the Timeline Panel and press L on your keyboard. If you set a negative value the volume will be more silent (-48 dB will

mute the icon). You can apply this method to mutliple icons as well.

There are a few icons which have a looping sound effect after the build up phase. If you would like to keep the audio effects for the build

up phase but omit the looping sounds later, you can keyframe the Audio Levels (from 0dB -> - 48dB).

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IMPORTING THE ICONS INTO YOUR PROJECT

Importing them as a single After Effects project file:

1. In your own AE project, select File / Import from the top menu.

2. Find the AnimatedIcons-versionX.aep on your hard drive and open it.

3. You now can see the AnimatedIcons-versionX.aep folder appearing in your Project Panel.

4. Open it and find the ICONS subfolder, you simply need to drag and drop the chosen icons into your timeline.

If you would like to import them as video files, first Render the icons (next chapter) and import them separately.

SCALING

The icons are quite huge, they are within an 888 x 888px square. If you would like to use smaller / bigger icons, I recommend to scale them in your own project file.

LOOPING

All the individual icons have a duration of 35 seconds. If you would like to use a longer loop period, you will need to open the icon compositions and lenghten all the layers and then do the same for all hierarchically higher comps as well.

If you plan to scale them, remember to turn on the Continuously Rasterize option, this way the icons will keep their vector

properties and they will be sharp even if they are scaled to whatever degree.

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RENDERING

I highly recommend to import the icons into your project as a single After Effects project file. However, if you wish to have the icons as

separate video files, this chapter will help you in doing so.

Open the Render Queue (Window / Render Queue) which basically is the panel in After Effects for creating your final videos.

All the individual icons have a duration of 35 seconds. In most cases I reckon a 10-second version will just be enough so I set the

WorkArea (the timespan you will render) to 10 seconds in all the icon compositions.

Changing the duration

If you want longer duration you will need to change the Render Settings before rendering.

1. From the top menu, select Edit / Templates / Render Settings

2. Set the Movie Default to ICON full length

This way all the icons will be looping for 35 seconds. Of course it is possible to make an infinite loop in your other project file you are

embedding the icons into.

Make sure your Quicktime version is up-to-date. Update it, if it is not, it will be needed for the rendering process.

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Rendering

In the Project Panel open the Icons subfolder and select the icons you would like to render. Use ctrl (command) and shift + left click for

faster selections. Drag and drop (or push ctrl/command + m) the selected icons into the Render Queue. I left two icons in the Render

Queue for After Effects to remember my render settings, you can delete them.

If you are done with selecting the icons, push the Render button on the right. Wait.. If you turn CAPS LOCK

on, the rendering will be faster.

If you rendered them, but by any reason you would like to render them again (e.g. in different colors) you will find

all the files you rendered in the Render Queue in an inactive state. It means that nothing will happen when you

push the Render button. You have to activate them again. Select all of them (ctrl or command + A) and duplicate

them (ctrl or command + D). Now you are ready to render them again.

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EXPORTING TO GIF

There are a lot of tutorial videos on this topic, here is my version. Besides AE, Photoshop will also be needed here. Based on this I will

divide my explanation into two parts. Please note that the size of each final .gif file might be a few hundred kilobytes.

1st part (After Effects)

http://risto.dataglobe.eu/videohive/animated-icons/gif-part1.mp4

1. After setting your colors, choose an icon and drag it onto the Render Queue.

2. Set its Output Module to Quicktime and Format options to PNG. (Update your Quicktime version (!) if you can't see PNG here.)

3. Uncheck audio output.

(You can also resize here, make sure "Lock aspect ratio" is ON.)

4. Before rendering, let's save this output module (Make template), so that you can use it later again.

(If you select multiple icons you can simply apply the template you've previously created to them.)

5. Hit render (I am rendering only one icon here).

2nd part (Photoshop)

http://risto.dataglobe.eu/videohive/animated-icons/gif-part2.mp4

6. Open Photoshop.

7. File / Import / Video frames to layers (sorry it can't be seen).

(You will see a black / white rectangle here since the animation has not yet started.)

8. Leave all settings unmodified.

(You can also set a preferred range here, like selecting the looping phase, this way avoiding the build up part).

9. File / Save for web - select gif, set "looping options" to forever and uncheck transparency.

hit save.

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NEED SPECIFIC ICONS?

Do you need an icon that is not included in this package? Contact me through the form on my VideoHive profile page and please share your ideas with me. If they are general enough there is a great chance that I will add them to the project via an update.

DO YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS?

Do you have unanswered questions after reading the tutorial? I worked very hard to make everyone contented, however if you are by any

reason unsatisfied, found an error, or whatever, please contact me and tell me about it. I will do my best to help you.

http://videohive.net/user/risto#contact

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