Supercomp

SUPERCOMP

A compositing environment that makes it easy to create complex, seamless composites. In Supercomp, light and atmospheric effects interact with ALL of your layers and the elements of a scene in a far more natural way and with far less pre-composing than ever before.

Supercomp includes more than 15 gpu-accelerated context-aware tools for integrating all of your elements into your final shot.

 

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Getting Started

1. Add each element into a composition on their own separate layers.
   • Adjust Blend Modes for the layers where necessary (ex. Screen, Lighten, etc.).
   • Hide render-intensive layers to improve performance. Don't worry, Supercomp will bring it back.
   • Pre-compose 3D Layers, as Supercomp does not (yet) fully support them.
     • If they utilized any After Effects camera layers, you'll need to precomp those into their precomps as well (duplicating them if necessary).
2. Apply Supercomp to any layer, this creates a solid with Supercomp applied and launches the Supercomp Panel, which can be repositioned anywhere on  screen to preview both the final output in After Effect's viewer, as well as the output for selected Supercomp elements in Supercomp's viewer.
   
   • Caution: Do NOT rename Supercomp Layer after its creation, otherwise the link between Supercomp and the composition will break.
   • The Supercomp panel displays the output of whatever composition is open on the After Effects timeline with Supercomp applied. Moving the playhead, applying effects to layers outside of Supercomp, or moving elements of the composition in After Effects will update into Supercomp’s preview.

Once the interface is launched, working with Supercomp is a three part process. Click the steps below to learn more about each step:

1. Import Source Layers: Add and adjust the order of layers of your composition, positioning them from foreground (top) to background (bottom).
   • Tip: To skip this step, select the layers in After Effect's timeline, then head into Effect > RG VFX > Supercomp.
2. Adjust Layer Types: Define each Layer Type (Normal, Additive, or Displacement) to adjust its output and prepare it for the assortment of Layer Effects applicable to its type.
3. Apply Layer Effects: Using presets or starting from scratch, add layer effects to blend and integrate elements of the composition from one into the other, helping achieve the look of sharing one unified space.