Experience nested compositions—also known as pre-comps—are used in motion design to organize complex projects and apply effects efficiently. This article explains how to group multiple animation scenes into a single composition for better workflow and cleaner timelines.
Key Insights
- Nested compositions or pre-comps allow you to place one composition inside another, making it easier to manage multiple layers and apply effects collectively.
- They are especially useful when combining several animated scenes into one timeline without overwhelming the workspace with numerous individual layers.
- Noble Desktop demonstrates organizing assets into folders and using selection order to control layer stacking when creating a new composition from multiple pre-comps.
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Let's combine these babies together so we can get, so we can string them together. Okay. This is, this is 3D, 3D.
Page 89, technically page 90 because 89 just has like the intro to the lesson. Okay. Working with nested compositions.
So there are a couple of terms you will hear used interchangeably. Nested compositions, pre-comps, those two words we use interchangeably. Both of them are simply describing the process of putting one composition inside of another.
If you use Premiere Pro, they call it nesting, nested sequences, same idea. If you use Photoshop, it's kind of like smart objects. If you use illustrator, it's kind of like symbols.
I have met only two people who use symbols in illustrator, which is sad. Basically in illustrator, symbols are reusable objects. The idea that you would save something as a symbol so you could reuse it.
And what you did is this parent object, you could adjust it. It changes every time it was used. So it's a very efficient way.
If you're going to reuse things, it's got its own issues. Okay. But what they're also really like is Russian nesting dolls.
Matryoshkas. Those things, matryoshkas. Okay.
This is what the concept is like. One comp inside of another, inside of another, inside of another, inside of another. That is basically what they are.
Why? Mostly portability. You have five different layers that you want to apply a single effect to. Nest them.
They pre-comp them. Same difference. You have five different layers that need to move together and you don't mind losing the fact that they're separate layers.
Pre-comp is another solution to that. So what we did yesterday with the parenting, we could have also pre-comp those layers. It would have caused other problems.
I wouldn't want to do it that way, but it's a choice. It was pretty cool. Also, some effects cannot be applied with other effects.
Some effects are not compatible with each other. So you nest the layer with the effect inside of its own comp, and then you can stack effects. Okay.
Like if you use Premiere Pro, you cannot combine stabilization with time remapping, time changes. Physically will not let you do it in editing programs. So you use the nesting concept to get around that limitation.
So there's a lot of reasons to do it. Our reason for doing it here is it is the only way to combine two different scenes together. I want to come up without having a million layers.
Okay. So I've got one entire scene. That's this animation.
I need to go back and add my opacity, which I had removed. Sorry. So I got one animation and I got a second scene animation and I want to combine them together.
Now, could I export each of these comps as a video and create a video? I don't have a practical reason why I would do that, honestly, because that would just be more work if I can do it here and I can do it here. So that's cool. Now, the reason you would go to a video editing program is if you needed to combine this for some reason with video in that program.
Like if I didn't have a background and this was to be playing on top of video, then I would probably export this so that the video editor could add it. If it was a lower third, like title that they use in documentaries and stuff, or if it was a opening for like a show, then yes, I would export that and they would combine it together. The video editor.
But this is something, an entire product right here. So what I need to do is combine these together. So just for organization, I'm going to actually group these up.
I'm going to folder these up. So I grabbed the two comps. I'm going to drag them to the folder button.
And I'm going to call those nested comps or precomps. I'm going to grab the other folders of contents, drop them into another folder, just organize it. Images.
And if I want to control the order, I would add a number to these or an asterisk because like that, we'll make it a first. If you care, I mean, if you don't care about the order, that's fine, too. But I basically just want to like make us a little neater.
Do you have to make this neater? No, I'm just like it neater. So what I need is these two. I selected screen one first, has to be the first one on the new timeline.
I selected that one second because it's going to be the second one on the timeline. The order you select them in affects how they show up. Then I'm going to do one of two things.
Right click new comp from selection or just drag them to the new comp button at the bottom of the project file. I'm going to combine them into a single composition. The composition has to have dimensions.
So you have to pick one of them. They're the same size. So it's irrelevant.
Okay, whatever this is. Still duration. If this was instead of compositions, a bunch of still images, because maybe I want to make a slideshow.