#After effects tutorial

[confusedananass]

(instagram)

Tutorial in After Effects under the cut.

• Create a new composition and call it Split.

• Write your text, pre-comp it, call it Text or whatever you want.

• Create a mask from the center to one side (top/bottom), change anchor point to the top.

• Bring down Scale property and unlink it, keyframe the text to go from 100% to 0% in 1s towards the anchor point.

• Cut the layer at the end.

• Duplicate pre-comp.

• Select the bottom one, click M to bring down mask properties, invert the mask and move anchor point to the bottom (so the text scales to the bottom).

• Duplicate Text pre-comp one more time. Select it, press M and delete the mask, move anchor point to the center. Create new keyframes to scale it from 0 to 100 in 1s (properties unlinked). Select both keyframes and delay it by 1 frame. It makes the text look like it’s scaling from the center.

• Change bottom and top text color by adding Fill effect to the pre-comp.

• Easy ease all keyframes.

• Select all pre-comps and duplicate them, put them at the top and put them at the back to extend your animation (or arrange in your preferred order if you’re doing a phrase like me). So far it should look something like this:

• Create new comp Wave of 10s, add your Split comp.

• Create new Solid layer, call it Map, add Gradient Ramp effect, make white at the left, black at the right and hide the layer.

• Select Split pre-comp, Right-click → Time → Enable Time Remapping and extend the layer to the end.

• Add loopOut() expression to Time Remap.

• On Split pre-comp add the effect Time Displacement, on Time Displacement Layer select your Solid layer (Map), and on Source select Effects & Mask.

• Change Time Resolution (fps) to 250-300.

• Add Fast Box Blur effect, change Blur Radius to 0.5.

• To bring back the sharpness add Curves effect, change the Channel to Alpha and change values (see screenshot).

• Play around with Max Displacement Time [sec] on Time Displacement effect depending on the look you’re going for. I set it to 0.5.

• Now this whole animation is driven by our Solid layer (Map) we created. So if you make any changes to it, the animation changes too. For example, you can change Ramp Shape to Radial on Gradient Ramp effect, and see how it changes your animation.

• I additionally added some texture on the text, used Track Matte and added wiggle(5,500) expression to the Rotation property so texture would be constantly moving. Also added some additional effects to the new Adjustment Layer on top such as Roughen edges, Turbulent Displace, Posterize Time and Noise. Let your freak flag fly - it’s a matter of taste and creativity of what you do with it. Your animation should look something like this:

[lookatmeallthetime]

Hey, wanna make some mountains? In honor of the launch of the music video I just finished, here’s a tutorial on how to build out 2D layers in 3D space in after effects.

Getting Started

First of all, build your vector layers. You can build them as shape layers directly in After Effects, but I prefer Illustrator. Here’s the file where I organized the vectors for each scene:

I highly recommend using Overlord for moving shape layers back and forth between illustrator and AE. It can preserve layer positions relative to each other or center vector shapes in comps, group and ungroup layers, all kinds of nice things. But also, Adobe software costs enough as is. Look up one of the many tutorials about pasting vectors into shape layers and get your vectors in there!

Wigglin

I wanted my vector layers to squirm a little. Originally it was to mimic the effect of paper cut animation, but once I moved away from that look it was to keep the background feeling alive and, sigh, like its own character. Everything except for very curvy layers (like the bridge in the first scene) has Wiggle Paths > Corners applied to it as a Shape Layer effect. This tutorial by Ben Marriott helped me get the wiggle paths + posterize time cutout effect I was looking for.

In order to keep the amount of wigglin’ consistent from scene to scene, I stored all my layer styles in their own precomp with a slider effect attached, applied Wiggle Paths to each vector, then connected the layer properties with the pickwhip. I ended up with an expression like

this = comp(“Wiggle control comp”).layer(“Wiggle parent”).effect(“Detail Slider”);

Apply it to the Detail attribute of your Wiggle Paths shape effect, and you can adjust the intensity of the look across multiple comps!

Parallax

I’m guessing you’re here for the parallax effect and notes on laying out out vector shapes and textures in 3D space. This tutorial from Camp Keyframe lays it out better than I could, but here’s the short version:

1. Set all your layers to 3D

2. Set your workspace to 2 views and select top view so you can see how your elements are positioned on the z-index

3. Make a null, set it to 3D, and make a camera.

4. Parent null to camera and adjust the position so its z-index matches the z of the camera.

5. Parent null to camera and use null for camera controls hereafter.

6. Parent all unparented layers to null, adjust the null’s scale property, and unparent your layers once they’re where you want them. What we’re doing here is scaling layers as we push them back in the frame, preserving the layout of our original vector comps while arranging them in 3D space. (Even shorter version - mountains are big but far away, rocks are small but close up.)

7. Once your layers are all unparented, move your null around to text the parallax view. Now you can move your camera to pan left and your layers will respond.

Two side notes:

1. If you want an element to follow the motion of the camera, leave it parented to the null and it will stay where you put it in the frame as the background moves.

2. You see that little pixelated line in your switches? That pre-rasterizes your layers. This makes render times way faster because it’s inserting your precomp as a 2D plane, but if you want to blend scenes, turn it off to use your precomps in 3D space.

One more thing!

Even if two elements on screen aren’t touching, you’ll still get nasty collision renders if they’re on the same z-index. Select everything and press P to show your element’s position, and make sure the z is different for each of them.

Final step: textures!

Let me start by saying I did this step incorrectly on this project. If I could do it again, I’d export my shape layers to Procreate, use them as clipping masks, and scribble on them real nice and export them as transparent 2x pngs.

What I did instead was try to get spray and scribble and brush textures in Illustrator. Illustrator does not want to do this, it doesn’t like doing this, and it didn’t like me much by the end of the process. The one benefit was it was easy to name them the same as their corresponding shape layer, which made compositing easier.

Once you’ve imported them as layers, not a png series), it’s just a matter of copying and pasting the scale data (you can copy all dimensions at once if you select the attribute name rather than any one value) and position data. Make sure to set your texture layers to 3D and watch for z-index collisions!

Closing thoughts

I wrote this up in order to be useful to the community and find other folks who are at or near where I am as I learn After Effects. If this was useful to you or there’s something you think would be interesting, please comment or share your work!

[percocet]

animating text along a shape - an after effects tutorial!

[shehabeditz]

Custom 3D Logo Animation Tutorial in After Effects & Element 3D

[filtergrade]

Cool Black and White Waves Background After Effects Tutorial

[stoopidprizes]

Machine Head edit for no sleep nights

website is jacquelynserrano.com

[rhandzgraphix]

Scratch Texture Parallax Effect Slideshow in After Effects Tutorial

[confusedananass]

Just take a moment to chill.

instagram

Everything I did in After Effects and all effects I used can be seen under the cut.

Used simple rotation animation on plants and fingers with loopOut("pingpong") expression so they would keep rotating back and forth for eternity. Added CC Bend It effect to each of them and keyframed them to bend a little. Pre-composed.

To make the smoke, I made a new composition and created a simple triangle. And applied these effects to it:

Grow bounds - Pixels 150;

Wave warp - Wave type Sine; Wave Height 100; Wave Width 200, Direction ~+69; Wave speed 0.5; Pinning - Left edge (make sure you pin it on the side where you want the smoke to come from);

Wave Warp 2 - Wave Type Circle; Wave Height 100; Wave Width 300; Direction ~+106; Wave speed 0.2; Pinning Left Edge;

Bezier Warp to distort the shape even more, adjust as needed;

And I slapped this smoke pre-comp on my main comp like it was nothing.

Overall effects I used on Adjustment layer over the whole project:

Noise - Amount 5%;

Posterize time - 12;

Roughen Edges - Border - 2; Edge Sharpness 5; Fractal Influence 1; Scale - 1000; Complexity 2;

Turbulent Displace - Amount 2; Size 100; Complexity 1;

Turbulent Displace 2 - Amount 30; Size 2; Complexity 2;

Not a whole lot, but it's something. Honestly documenting this will help me remember better on what I did because I forget how to do basic shit. Ha.

[invisiblelightnetwork]

Check out this VFX breakdown for Lightning Bird, our independent short film! 🎬🎥 We used Blender and AfterEffects to create everything you see on screen. We're so proud of what we were able to achieve and can't wait to share it with the world. Keep an eye out for our film coming soon!

[motiondx]

After effects Tutorial Create Motion Graphics Background

[shehabeditz]

Golden 3D Logo Animation Tutorial - After Effects Intro - Element 3D Tutorial.

📌 Watch Full Tutorial: https://youtu.be/tDZeUfXD0LM

#aftereffects #3DLogoIntro #3DLogoReveal #aftereffectstutorial

[marcanimation]

'ello folks, my Cleanup tutorial is finally done and out! hope you find it useful

[foervraengd]

Adobe is a bad company, brand and product just for introducing the hell that is After Effects. Every time i have to use AE i pray for the death of adobe and that the ceos and share/stakeholders and whoever designed the UI and workflow a slow and gruesome fucking suffering. You think the ai shit is evil? Try staying calm using literally any fucking feature in AE for ten minutes. Adobe needs to die because of AE.