Remember, to use motion blur, you have to click on the MB icon in both the layer AND the master enable button above.

Motion Blur can be enhanced by increasing the shutter angle or samples per frame (composition settings>advanced tab).

Photoshop

In Photoshop, always create graphics with an EVEN number of pixels in height and width.

To convert a PSD from footage to layers, click Layer>Convert to Layers

To edit a PSD, click on the file or layer, right-click>Edit Original. AE won't "see" any added layers, though.

Keyframes

To Stretch a group of keyframes out over time, select them, then alt-drag the first or last one.

Hold shift to snap to keyframes

To time-reverse keyframes, click on at least two keyframes, then right click>Keyframe Assistant>Time Reverse

Exponential Scale - Select two scale keyframes, right-click>Exponential Scale

Comp Window

To zoom in/out, click in the Comp window and scroll the mouse.

To return to 100%, double-click the zoom tool

Simple Expressions

(Alt-click on a layer property’s stopwatch to create an expression)

Rotation over time

time*80 (or any number)

As the comp plays, the layer will rotate. Works only for items that don’t need X-Y coordinates. For instance, rotation, opacity, blur amount, evolution, etc., but not for scale, position, etc., because they need two numbers instead of one.

Wiggle

Wiggle (20, 40) (or any numbers)

Creates a nervous wiggle. The first number is for the number of times per second, the second is the amount of wiggle. Works for any parameter – opacity, position, scale, rotation, etc.

Pickwhip

After alt-clicking the stopwatch, you can drag the pickwhip (little spiral icon) to most any other layer property, and it will use that layer property’s numbers. For instance, if you’ve got a layer scaling from 0 to 100, and you want to fade the layer in over that same amount of time, this is the easy way to do it without setting keyframes for opacity. Just alt-click on the opacity stopwatch and drag the pickwhip to the word scale.

To parent CC Particle World to another layer’s position property:

position x: target = thisComp.layer("Null 1"); // this would be your layer to track (target.position[0]-(thisComp.width/2))/width position y: target = thisComp.layer("Null 1"); // this would be your layer to track (target.position[1]-(thisComp.height/2))/width position z: target = thisComp.layer("Null 1"); // this would be your layer to track target.position[2]/width