How to use multiple viewers in After Effects [VIDEO]

Today’s post is about how to use multiple viewers in After Effects in order to see how the animation looks like in real time. We will be using the Whiteboard template which you can purchase in the Bluefx store. As you can see in the video, we have this scene with the text and the business man graphics and if we want to change the text we have a dedicated composition for that, which is “Joe’s Solution Text 04”. Normally, you would use one composition viewer but there is way to add another one so we can see in real time the way the main composition is being affected as we edit the text. This way we’ll get an exact view on how the final animation is going to look like.   To add another comp viewer we need to toggle this switch and select “New Comp Viewer” or you can go to “View – New Viewer“. This will create a new comp viewer with an opposite locked or unlocked state. So, because our initial comp was unlocked, the new one will be the opposite, locked. So now, as we edit the text, it also updates in the main composition and we can see the final result in real time.

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Right now I’m using AE CS6. But if you try to create a new viewer in CS5 or a previous version, you might get this problem: you have two viewers but the frame is not split.

So, the way to do it by pressing : “Ctrl+Alt+Shift+N or Command+Option+Shift+N” on macs.

This will automatically split the frame containing the active viewer and create a new viewer with opposite locked or unlocked state. If, for some reason, you accidentaly close the viewer, you can always bring it forward by clicking this button.   Thanks for watching. Did you know about this feature? Do you find it useful? We do. Feel free to share your thoughts with us!