Mapcomps

To start a project you need to create a so called Mapcomp.

Mapcomps are Compositions filled with online imagery tiles.

They are the basic building block of each GEOlayers 2 project.

Hit Create and your first Mapcomp will be built. Mapcomps get placed in the composition that is selected when you create them. If you rename the containing composition in your project some of GEOlayers' referencing will break. In this case click the name of the Mapcomp in the Mapcompbar to repair it.

Aside your Mapcomp you'll find a text layer and a provider logo(depending on the Server Profile). Keep those layers visible in your final animation to attribute the map. To get rid of this you'll need to get in touch with the map provider.

Animate Mapcomps

Use the Scroll- and Zoomcontrols to browse your map. By clicking the Add Keyframe button GEOlayers will keyframe the Latitude, Longitude and Zoom property on your Mapcomp layer. To animate the map just drag your Current Time Indicator some seconds later and change your Mapcomps view. Notice that Keyframes get created as you change it.

Finalize Mapcomps

Once you are done with tweaking Keyframes you need to Finalize your Mapcomp. Do so by clicking the Finalize button top right. GEOlayers 2 will now analyse your animation, calculate the requirement of tiles, download and place them in your Mapcomp, blend zoomlevels and update the provider attribution text layer.

You can hold SHIFT clicking Finalize to finalize the whole animation in preview quality.

You can hold CTRL/CMD clicking Finalize to finalize only the current frame.

Markers

Markers are layers that are snapped to a certain location. They are not scaled according to the zoom of your Mapcomp.

Select a layer from the composition that is containing your selected Mapcomp as well. Then click the Marker button to snap it to your map. If you don't select any layer a null will get created instead. On the Marker you'll find a "Scale with map" property and a "latitude longitude height" property to animate.

Overlays

Overlays work the same as Markers but are scaled according to the zoom.

NW-SE Overlays

NW-SE Overlays are Overlays that are positioned by two geo-points the north-west and the south-east corner.

Geospatial Files

Click this to select a geospatial file and draw it directly to your selected Mapcomp. GEOlayers 2 supports .shp, .geojson, .kml, .gpx, and .csv/tsv(with Lat and Lon fields) format. Those files can also be browsed in the Feature Browser.

label name Label selector

Select a Label Template here. This template is used when you label a Feature. Clicking the icon on the bottom of the list you can add a Label Template composition to your project. Each Composition that is inside GEOlayers 2 itmes/Label Templates in your After Effects project is noticed by GEOlayers 2 as a Label Template and will appear in this list.

Feature Style selector

Select a Feature Style here. This Style is used when you draw a feature. An "A" in the thumbnail indicates whether the Style is automatically selected according to the Features properties. This is done using Style Rules

Right click the Feature Style selector to edit your Styles and Rules.

Add Features

You have several options to add Features to the browser:

Filter Features

To don't get lost in all the Features you can filter them. Just type in a searchterm.

Anything

A simple word will check all Feature properties for a match.

Certain Properties

You can also filter by certian properties. Do this by typing in the property name, an operator and a value. For Example kind=country or population<100000.

Rules

It is also possible to filter by your own Rules. Type in rule: and the name of the Rule.

Styles

Last but not least you can filter by your own Styles. Type in style: and the name of the style.

There is also the three keywords: style:any, style:none and style:custom.

Note that Style filters are very ressource intense! Be carefull if you have a lot of Features in the Browser.

All the searchterms can be connected by && (and) or || (or).

Additional to that you can filter geometry types. Each Features geometry is one of Point, Line, Polygon or a combination.

Feature actions

If you have Features selected a set of buttons appear under your Feature Browser.

Feature Properties

Click to have a look at the Feature's properties. You can also change its name and apply custom Styles.

Feature Properties

Here you can change the Features' name and apply a custom Style to it. This style will be used to draw it when auto apply Style setting is on.

You can also directly create Rules from certain properties.

Select one or more properties and a rule preset will appear on the bottom of the dialog. You can then adapt the condition and either add it to an existing Rule or create a new one from it.

If you have only one Property selected you can also use it for naming all the Features of the containing Feature Collection.

Feature Style Editor

This is the place for all settings related to drawing Features. To open the Feature Style Editor right-click the Feature Style selector in the Toolbar.

At the top of the dialog you can reset, import and export Feature Style Sets.

If you have Sync Feature Style Set with After Effects Project in the prefs general section checked the Style Set will be saved in your After Effects Project. Like this it can easily be shared within the .aep File. If this setting is not checked you can manually load and save it in your Project.

Some general options for drawing are placed on the bottom of the dialog.

reduce Detail according to Current View

This means that GEOlayers 2 will simplify the Features' geometry before it will draw it. Its recommended to keep this setting checked since otherwise performance and rendertimes can be increased enormously. Note that the geometry detail is automatically adapted according your selected Mapcomps Current View.

draw on individual layers

If you draw more than one Feature at a time you can define whether they are drawn on a single or individual shape layers.

auto animate Stroke Width

If checked GEOlayers 2 will add an expression to the Stroke Width to animate it according to the zoom. If you don't explicitly need it switch it off since it increases rendertimes.

Styles

A Style is a definition of how Features will be drawn to shape layers. It defines Colors, Opacities, Strokes, Extrusion etc.

Create and edit your Feature Styles here.

Change the order of your Styles by dragging them around in the dropdown.

The selected Style can be edited below. You can select whether a Fill and a Stroke should be drawn. Unlike Polygons, Line and Point geometries will be drawn with a Stroke also if it is not checked. For each of the both you can define a color and a opacity. The Stroke has some additional options. The Width, which is relative to your selected Mapcomps current view, and a dash slider. Use it to draw your Stroke dashed or dotted. Note that this increases the time for the drawing process.

A Style can also contain an Extrusion. The containing Composition renderer will be set to CINEMA 4D therefore. Note that despite you haven't checked draw Features on individual layers Features with a different Extrusion will be drawn on separate layers due to After Effects limitations.

Data-driven Styling Watch Videotutorial

Each setting can be data driven. Click the button to automatically adapt the setting by a certain Property of a Feature.

Therefore type in the Property's name and a value range. Like this you can for example colorize the Stroke according to the drawn Features' population Property. If you define numbers in the value range colors in between will be interpolated whereas simple words will just change the setting on an exact match. Numbers can be treatened as a string or word if you use quotation marks.

By checking rnd the setting will be randomized in the gived value range.

The little icon in the Style thumbnail indicates that the Style has at least one data driven setting. Thumbnails in the Feature Browser also preview data driven settings.

Rules

A Rule is a set of conditions a Feature can fulfill. If it does so a Rule can apply a certain Style to the Feature.

Create and edit your Rules here.

Change the order of your Rules by dragging them around in the dropdown.

Note that Rules will be evaluated from top to bottom in this list. That means that if a Feature fulfills the conditions of two Rules the Style of the one lower in the list will be applied.

In the first section you can define which geometries to be taken in account.

The second section lets you create multiple property conditions.

Property conditions check if a certain Property of a Feature matches a Value you define. Something like kind is country, population > 1000000 or osmSourceLayer is water You can have a look at a Features' properties by clicking the Feature Properties button in the Feature Browser.

In the last line you define a Style that should be applied if all conditions of the Rule are fulfilled. If you don't select a style you can simply use your Rule to filter Features in the Feature Browser.

Label Templates

GEOlayers 2 Label Templates are stored in your After Effects project under GEOlayers 2 itmes/Label Templates. You can add and remove Compositons to this Folder and use them as your custom Labels. On an empty project a default set of Labels will be loaded.

Default Labels Watch Videotutorial

GEOlayers 2 comes with a set of default Label Templates. They are set up for 2 color schemes and can be customized. To do that open the following Composition: GEOlayers 2 itmes/Items/Label Settings/LabelColors. There you can adjust the fill colors of the containing shape layers or simply hide them if you don't want straps for example.

Create custom Labels Watch Videotutorial

Each Composition that is inside GEOlayers 2 itmes/Label Templates in your After Effects project is noticed by GEOlayers 2 as a Label Template. Note that the Labels anchor point is at the center of the Template Composition by default. If you want it to be somewhere else add a layer called Label Anchor Point to your template composition. This layer should not be parented to another. The anchor point of each Label created with this template will then be adjusted to this layers' position in the template comp. Additional to this an expression will link its position to the Labels anchor point. This allows dynamic labels.

Text layers that are not locked are used as template fields. The text layers' name or content defines the text that is inserted to it as you create a Label.

• Any random name will tell GEOlayers 2 to insert just the Feature name.
• A Feature Property in curly brackets in the name or text layers' content will lead to replacing the source text with a certain property's value. Multiple properties are supported. So a text layers name or content could be {population} or Latitude: {lat}, Longitude: {lon} for Example.

Footage layers that are not locked and are named like a Property in curly brackets are used as footage template fields. The layers' source will be replaced when the Feature provides a suitable Property for this. Properties can hold the following data:

• An absolute local path to a file with or without file extension D:\my_folder\my_file(.jpg)
• A local path or filename with or without file extension that is relative to the template footage my_file(.jpg)
• A http or https uri http://www.myserv.er/my_image.jpg

Inspect a Features' properties by clicking the Feature Properties button in the Feature Browser.

Create a new Project

Click this button to create a new GEOlayers 2 Project with the default Label Templates, Feature Styles and Rules. If you have set up custom Label Templates or a custom Feature Style Set those will be loaded.

Recent Projects

This helps you find and open your recent mapping projects as quick as possible.

Sample Projects

You can download Sample Projects to get you started. The Projects can contain Feature Styles and Label Templates. Also features can be delivered with the Project. In this case they will be added to your Browser when the Project is loaded.

If there is a top right you can also watch a related video to learn more.

Label Template Projects can be directly imported to your GEOlayers 2 Project if one is open in AE.

Tutorial Projects

General

max. Tiles for preview

Choose the maximum number of Tiles in not finalized Mapcomps.

Tiles Directory

Choose a directory to store downloaded Tiles. Note that you should allways collect Files on finished projects since GEOlayers 2 will dynamically overwrite files in the Tiles Directory

Update Views of linked Mapcomps

If checked preview tiles will be downloaded for the selected Mapcomps and mapcomps that are linked to it.

Language

The language that is used for certain server requests that support different languages and feature naming in the browser.

Features

Default geospatial Files

Select geospatial Files to be imported to the Feature Browser when you launch GEOlayers 2.

Labels

Switch on collapse transformation on Labels

If checked collapse transformation will be switched on for each Label you create.

Make Labels 3D layers

If checked each Label you create will be a 3D layer by dafault.

custom Label Templates

If checked you can coose an After Effects project containing Label Template compositions. All comps of the project will appear as Label Templates unless you include ignore_ to their names or put them into any folder. Do this with precomps you don't want to show up as Labels. They will appear in the items folder in your project.

Frames to jump forward after Label creation

GEOlayers 2 will jump forward in time after the creation of a Label. Otherwise you won't see it since most Labes are animated in.

Styles and Rules

Sync Feature Style Set with After Effects Project

If checked the Feature Style Set will be saved in your After Effects Project. When you open a new project that has a Feature Style Set it will be loaded automatically.

custom Feature Style Set

If checked you can select a custom Feature Style Set that is loaded when you launch GEOlayers 2. This will be used when you create a new Project or reset the Feature Styles.

Internet

Proxyserver

You can set up a proxyserver here. Note that this is for all downloads and data requests. The UI uses the system proxy settings.

Server Profiles

A Server Profile represents the connection to an imagebased Tileserver. So basically it's something like a Mapcomp style.

Create and edit your Server Profiles here.

You can drag your Server Profiles around in the dropdown to change their order.

Each Server Profile has a certain API.