MMDD 102 – Creating Motion

Week 3 – Creating Motion In After Effects

Let’s cover some more tools we can use to enhance our compositions in After Effects.

Arcs

There is a simple trick we can use to animate along a path. Instead if animating for example in one line, we can create a curved path or multiple curved path and get an object to animate along that path.

To do this we can use the pen tool. With this tool we can make a path.

We can use this path and apply it to the position of any object, once we do this we can discard it and its layer.

1 On the shape layer. Go into the Contents > Shape > Path 1 > Path. Select it so it is highlighted and copy it.

2 Go to the layer of the object you want to move on the path.

3 Expand transform on the layer to reveal the “position” property.

4 Click the position layer to select it and simply paste the path onto it.

Once you do this, the path and animation will be laid out and the object will adhere to it. At this point you could also delete the shape layer as it will no longer be needed after the path is copied over to the object we want it on.

You can also drag the keyframes to expand or contract them to make the animation longer or shorter.

Tweens

Interpolation or “Tweening” is what After Effects does in-between key frames. It’s the process happening in the background that moves the animation from point A to point B.

Usually After Effects does a good job at handling this but sometimes you may want to tweak this depending on the animation path to make things look more natural.

Spacial interpolation

Spacial interpolation is how the object moves through space within the composition window. If we make a simple animation using 3 keyframes we can see the differences if we play with this setting.

When we make a simple animation of the ball going to 3 points on the composition it automatically makes the curved path. If we right click on the path we can click the option for “keyframe Interpolation”.

In here you can change the settings.

Linear.

Bezier.

Continuous Bezier.

Auto Bezier.

Temporal Interpolation

Temporal interpolation is how the object moves through time using the timeline.

The setting for this can be changed by selecting keyframe(s), right clicking and selecting “keyframe interpolation”.

And you will get this window again.

In the Temporal Interpolation you can change the interpolation setting for the keyframes on the timeline. Once you change the setting it will change the keyframes icon on the timeline.

Linear
Auto Bezier
Linear In, Bezier Out
Linear In, Hold Out
Continuous Bezier, Bezier

You can also convert keyframes to: Hold, linear or auto bezier in the graph editor.

Key frame

We can use the key frame assistant to edit key frames.

For example. If we:

1 highlight key frames.

2 Right click one of them and then go to the keyframe assistant.

We can at this point edit certain aspects of the keyframe(s). In this case we could for example hit the “Time-Reverse Keyframes” button and it would automatically reverse the animation of the selected keyframes.

Motion Blur

We can change the amount of motion blur in the composition settings by editing the shutter angle. The higher number in this setting the more motion blur we will have.

Click on the “Composition Settings” and go to “Advanced”.

In here the shutter angle setting will change the amount of motion blur.

Trim Paths

We can animate different aspects of objects, like the outline of things using trim paths.

To do this you will need to use the “Add” button.

Select “Trim Paths”.

The Trim Paths property will now be available.

keyframes to animate the start or end.

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This post was written by amax