Combustion 2 for After Effects Users
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When you import an Illustrator file, Combustion creates a new Composite operator consisting of a transparent Solid layer based on the bounding box size of your Illustrator artwork, and then places the contents of the Illustrator file into a new Paint operator attached to the Solid. As that last sentence probably didn't make a whole lot of sense, a quick glance at either the Workspace (fig. 5) or the Schematic view (fig. 6) visualizes the hierarchy I just tried to explain.
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| Figure 5. A Paint operator in the Workspace view. |
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| Figure 6. The same Paint operator in the Schematic view. |
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If you twirl down the arrow on the Paint operator in the Workspace, you'll see a bunch of paths and groups that represent the somewhat arbitrary way Combustion organizes and renames the various elements of your Illustrator artwork during the conversion process (fig. 7).
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| Figure 7. Combustion really couldn't be any more helpful in how it renames all your Illustrator layers. I'm kidding, of course. |
To keep the numbers relatively neat, we want to make Mr. Orbit Monkey twice as big as he is now and still have those nice crisp edges associated with Mr. Orbit Monkey's status as a vector-based life form. The first thing to do is to increase the size of the Solid that the Paint operator is sitting on. Think of this as nesting a comp inside of another comp in After Effects: If the size of the nested comp is smaller than the layers contained in that comp, the layers are going to appear cropped in the parent comp unless you make the nested comp bigger. In the Workspace, click once on the Footage-OrbitMonkey layer to select it, then click the Footage Controls tab in the operator controls area (if it's not already selected). Then select the Output control tab, which should show you some options like those pictured in figure 8. Now, if you've been following along with me, you'll see that the size of the Solid object is 623 pixels wide and 405 pixels high.
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| Figure 8. Footage - Orbit Monkey was clicked first, then the Footage Controls tab was clicked, and finally the Output tab was clicked to show these controls here. |
Since it was my understanding that there would be no math in this tutorial, I'll take the path of least resistance, as I can multiply 405 by 2 in my head much easier than 623. I'm dumb like that. Making sure the Proportional check box is selected (below the Target Width and Target Height boxes), change the Target Height to 810 (405 x 2 = 810. Damn, I'm good). Back in the Viewport, you should see that the white space surrounding the Orbit Monkey artwork is a lot bigger now, giving us a canvas that will accommodate the soon-to-be-larger artwork without cropping it in the containing Composite operator.
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