How to Make a Path to Move Art Onn After Affects

April 25, 2022 Post a Comment

Check Out 5 Keen Lesser-Known Later Effects Tools

There are so many tools, plugins, and scripts out there for After Effects, information technology can be hard to decide what to focus on showtime. Overwhelmed with choices? You are not solitary!

If you find yourself paralyzed with indecision about which tool, technique, or trick to try next, fright non! School of Move is here to help! In this article, I'll share with you lot five tools that you probably never use, but should. The all-time office is that these are all part of Afterwards Effects, no plugins required.

Time to learn some new tricks!

5 After Furnishings Tools You Never Use...But You Should

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thisLayer.name

Non an expressions guru? Don't worry, this one is super easy and will save you time! Information technology's as enlightening and life changing as the Wiggler, and just as easy to utilise.

Expand the layer in the timeline
Expand the Text category
ALT + CLICK (Pick + CLICK on a Mac) the stopwatch next to Source Text to create an expression
Paste or type "thisLayer.name" in to the expression editor to the right.

At present, any you name that layer will exist the source text for the blazon. The font, size, and other properties from the Character panel volition be retained and applied to whatever you proper name the layer.

This little trick eliminates the need to rename your layers separately from editing text every time your client or creative director comes to you with new re-create. Once yous start using this flim-flam, you will notice the time you lot salve adds up quickly. To acquire more means expressions tin save you tons of time, bank check out our Expression Session.

Move Sketch & the Smoother

Desire to brand a circuitous move path without setting a bunch of keyframes?

Motion Sketch to the rescue! Motility sketch records your movements every bit you draw a path on the screen using your mouse or Wacom. This two-step procedure is going to alter the fashion yous brand motion paths forever:

Open up the Motion Sketch Panel with Window --> Motion Sketch
Select the layer yous desire to breathing
In the Motion Sketch Console, hitting the Start Capture push button
Printing and concord the left mouse button while you draw the animation path (or use your Wacom pen)
Voila! Y'all take an animation path!
Now to make information technology supa-smooth, become to Window Smoother to open up the Smoother Console
Increase the tolerance level. College tolerance is smoother but less detailed. Lower tolerance is more detailed just less shine.
With the animated layer nevertheless selected, hit the Utilize button

BOOM! You just drew a perfectly smooth awesome path. This smoother play a joke on is especially for drawing squeamish smooth lines after that 11th cup of coffee.

To make this procedure even faster, increase the tolerance setting in the Motion Sketch Panel before you draw your path and skip the Smoother steps.

Paths as Motion Keyframes

Do y'all love drawing nice smooth flowy curves with the pen tool and rotobezier? I exercise. Why not use that fun procedure to animate something?

Draw your path either in a shape layer or as a mask.
Drill downwards to the path in the layer contents.
Select the path and copy it with CTRL + C (CMD + C on a Mac)
Go to the object'south Transform Position property and CTRL + V that pretty path to the position

Voila, you lot take instant path animation! You tin also go on to adjust the path blitheness by moving the keys and adjusting the points and bezier handles.

Compositing Options for Furnishings

This i is a real hidden gem. For those of you lot who by and large utilise the Furnishings Console when working with effects, this one may be a dainty surprise. In the timeline panel, you can use masks to control where an upshot works on a layer besides as animate the opacity of the effect.

Add whatever effect to your layer
Select the layer and depict or create a mask
Aggrandize the issue until you lot see Compositing Options
Click the + symbol next to Compositing Options
Select your mask in the Mask Reference dropdown

BOOM! Yous tin now control your effect with a mask. Y'all can also control the opacity of the upshot using the Effect Opacity setting in the Compositing Options.

This works with all of the furnishings. A few things to notation:
You tin can only choose masks that are on the same layer as the effect.
Yous tin can add as many mask references as yous like.

This 1 is so powerful, we wondered why it was hidden away. You're welcome!

Converting to Paragraph Text

This is another hidden simply super useful tool. AE doesn't seem to have whatsoever paragraph text tool which is a huge bummer, until you know where to find it.

With some text written, keep the text tool active but don't select any text.
Correct click (CTRL + click for Mac lovin' peeps)
Select "Catechumen to Paragraph Text"

BOOM! Now you take a text box and all the fancy paragraph text capabilities that come with information technology like making that box the perfect shape, auto-wrap, and the paragraph justification tools.

Want to go back to the way things were? I become it. Sometimes you just want straight upward text. Follow the same steps but select "Catechumen to Signal Text" and you are right back to where you started.

If yous really love paragraph text and want to create it right off the bat, select the text tool and drag in the comp window to ascertain a box from the corner. To define a box around a centre indicate, y'all can use ALT + Drag (OPTION + DRAG on a Mac).

Those are some of our favorite After Effects Tools, no plugins required. Enjoy your new super powers!

Want to Larn More?

We have some amazing courses for every experience level from the complete newbie to the avant-garde motion artist.

Want to speed upward your workflows and achieve more with scripting? Bank check out Expression Session!
Looking to up your animation game? Try Animation Bootcamp or Advanced Move Methods.
Want to learn more than compositing tricks? VFX for Move to the rescue!

That'south not all we take to offer. If you want to learn even more cool motility design processes, tips, and tricks; check out our courses folio for the total curriculum.

Tag us on social media (#schoolofmotion) with your fun new experiments using these tricks. Now become make something awesome!

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Tutorial Full Transcript Beneath 👇:

Sara Wade (00:00): After effects has a wide range of built-in tools that tin speedily become overwhelming. Let's narrow your focus with these five tips that tin aid save fourth dimension. Hey everybody, Sara Wade here to talk about five born later on furnishings tools that you lot actually should be using, but you probably aren't past the cease of this video, your workflow should experience more streamlined. So let's cheque these out

Sara Wade (00:35): Commencement. We're going to take a expect at something called this layer dot proper noun. Even if you lot're not an expressions guru, this one'south going to exist super useful. Maybe even more useful than our skilful erstwhile friend, the wiggle expression. First, I'm going to twirl open this text layer, named school of move. I'chiliad going to twirl. Open the text and alt click the stopwatch to add an expression. So I'm going to but type in this layer.name, lowercase, this capital letter 50 and layer. This is called camel case, and it'due south really important that yous get the capitalization, right? Yous see how later furnishings is trying to fill it in for me, I'thou going to type in a semi-colon there. Now, whatever I named this layer is going to show upwards as the text there right now, it says schoolhouse of motion. But if I select the layer and hit enter, I can rename this layer to say, schoolhouse of motion loves you. So this is going to be super useful, particularly if y'all end upwards with projects with a ton of text and a client that likes to change things on you at the last minute, this is going to make what would have been a two to three step process. Just one step.

Sara Wade (01:45): The next tool I want to show you is actually two tools when used in combination that are really, really powerful. The first one is the motility sketch panel, and I tin can get to that past going to window and right down hither to move sketch, which opens upwards this panel. Let's become ahead and make a circumvolve that we tin animate hitting control alt home to heart the ballast bespeak there. And at present that starting time capture is active. I'thousand going to leave it at the default settings capture speed at 100 smoothing at one. Now in the motion sketch panel, I'm going to hitting outset capture. And so I'm just going to left click and drag this shape layer to create a path. And so now I've got this actually absurd motion path. And all I had to practice was depict it with my mouse. So yous may observe this path has a ton of points.

Sara Wade (02:32): It's not quite as smooth as I wanted. So I'm going to use the smoother to polish that out. I tin can go to the smoother tool by again, going to the window menu, going down here to smoother. You lot can meet it pops up over here. At present I've still got this layer with the by selected. So what I'm going to exercise is leave spatial path as the option. And I'm going to type in as an instance, 25 and hit utilize. At present look at that beautiful, smoothen animation. I can go in there now and grab those Bezier handles. If I want to elevate information technology out and edit the path, nosotros made that path rather quickly, simply we can adjust the path with these Bezier handles and even move the cardinal frames around. Then you can play with the timing by belongings Alton. Left-click, all the capabilities are still there making this a really powerful tool.

Sara Wade (03:20): At that place is a way to shorten this process, simply information technology depends on how you like to work. I personally like to depict the very detailed path and then utilise the smoother tool to smooth it out. But in this move sketch panel, in that location is this smoothing value. If I were to draw the path with the smoothing up college, say at 24 or 25, and so it would smooth that path out every bit we were capturing it personally, I like to capture more detail and so smooth it out and so that I tin go back and forth. But yous may find that you desire to compress that procedure and practise it all at one time. So that is movement path and the smoother, speaking of movement paths, allow's say I don't want to draw my move path and that super smoothen, fun, easy way using the mouse, because maybe I don't like using the mouse or a stylist say, you want to use the pen tool considering Bezier handles are fun and they give us and then much control and power.

Sara Wade (04:18): Let'due south come across how nosotros tin can do that. To animate this ellipse hither, I'm going to select the pen tool up here at the peak, or you tin hit M on the keyboard. I'm going to make sure that I accept no make full selected. I'll keep Rodo. Bezier enabled in that location, right to the right of my fill and stroke options. And I'grand just going to get ahead and draw a few funds will exist points. I'm not going to connect it because I don't desire it to loop simply however. So I've got a shape layer now with a path. And and so I've got my ellipse that I want to animate if I want this ellipse to motility along that path. And I don't desire to have the fourth dimension to create all these keys and exercise all of the smoothing out of the keys and trying to get it to move just correct.

Sara Wade (04:58): Here'due south what I'll do. I can twirl open this layer, reveal the path I just made and copy that past data with control. See, next I'll reveal the ellipsis position by hitting P and just paste with control 5. And what information technology did is basically pasted keys for that ellipse to proceed that whole path. If I hit the infinite bar to play magic, right? Information technology'due south super magic. And then I tin can even motion that whole animation. I can motility the path around, adjust the handles, all the different things. Once more, I tin can catch those keys and stretch them out. I tin can go into the graph editor to practise all the things I would unremarkably exercise in the speed graph and automatically I've simply got all that blitheness. I've got all those keys generated, merely similar that. Once again, you draw the path, copy the path data, go to the position, property of the layer. You're animating and control the pace that path into the position. And you will get motorcar magic animation.

Sara Wade (06:00): This next play a trick on is more of a subconscious characteristic than a pull a fast one on. If you're coming to after effects from Photoshop or any number of other design tools, you're probably wondering why can't I merely draw a box for the text? Why does the text ever have to come up in this way? If I write school of motion and I'thou in that layer, I can't elevate it around. I can't brand a box for it. If I go into these paragraph options, they're all groovy out. Super frustrating, right? So in that location's a fixed for this. Information technology's merely in a super hush-hush location. Then allow's get this tech centered. Well, roughly centered, okay. I'm going to select my text tool and the layer and the timeline. Then without selecting the text, then I'thou going to right. Click check this out, catechumen to paragraph text. And now when I click in there, I have all the tools I can shape the box.

Sara Wade (06:l): I can make information technology skinnier. The text will automatically wrap and I can come up over here and I can employ force justify and all of those fun things that were grayed out before. Oh, and so this looks a little terrible. I'thousand going to go back to centered. Merely the important thing is you can access all the paragraph text tools that you know, and love for Photoshop or InDesign or every other application in the world is simply hidden in that super cloak-and-dagger place. And so let'southward say you want to become dorsum to the other kinds of texts. I'm going to, again, select the layer, select the text tool, but don't select any of the texts in information technology, right? Click over it and choose catechumen to bespeak text. And then it's back to the old style y'all can't access any of this stuff anymore, but maybe that's what you want because not all texts needs to exist paragraph texts. Hopefully that's helpful. Super clandestine. Don't know why information technology'south so hidden, but at present that you know where it is, you volition never, ever forget,

Sara Wade (07:49): Okay, this next workflow tip is really flexible and really powerful. Y'all're probably going to observe a hundred unlike ways to use information technology. So I'thou going to select this layer and I'm going to add a blur effect to it. So permit's become to the outcome, menu blur and acuminate, and let's only pick camera lens blur. And let's say, I desire to localize or focus this effect to a specific part of the layer right now it's blurring the whole layer. I don't want that. Well, here'south the super magic trick. I can utilize a mask and a little known compositing feature in the consequence we only applied. So let's go ahead and keep the ellipse tool selected. And with the layer selected, I'grand going to describe a mask. Now, if I reveal the blur effects, I'll evidence yous this magical compositing option. If I click this plus push button, every mask I take in this layer is going to come and I can select them.

Sara Wade (08:41): I simply have one in this layer. So information technology's automatically selected. At present the blur volition only show upwards where the mask is. And so if I were to catch this mask and say, change the feather of information technology inverse the opacity of information technology, I can motility information technology effectually, any I do to this mask, that event is localized to information technology. So let'due south try adjusting that feather. Now that I'one thousand using this compositing choice, I can also alter the opacity of that effect down here. Nosotros've got this blur. And then allow's really amp upwardly the blur so that we can see where information technology's affecting. That's ameliorate. It'south conspicuously inside of that mask circle. And permit's say, I want to just tone it downwardly or blithe coming on and off. I can change this effects, opacity and the compositing options. And if I want to, I tin set up key frames to turn that effect on and off.

Sara Wade (09:29): I could gear up key frames to motility that mask around so I can command the opacity as well equally where that effect is localized. I can brand that mask expand, contract animate, all those things. So this is super powerful. Information technology works for any effect. And what'southward nifty is y'all can use these compositing options for every unmarried effect and afterwards effects, you tin can select whatsoever mask in the layer to have that level of control. Over again, that's by hitting this plus push button. So if I wanted to have a second mask, I could select a second mask, or perhaps I'g going to have both go to, to again, issue opacity is going to exist right hither and that's going to control how visible that effect is. Information technology's a super powerful tool. This may not exist the most heady mode to utilise this compositing characteristic similar nosotros did hither today, but y'all can already see where this tin be useful and that's it. So those were five tools and afterward effects, y'all probably never use, only you really should. If you want to stay on height of the latest and greatest emotion blueprint, make sure to hit the subscribe button and click the bell icon. So you're notified whenever nosotros mail service new content. And if you want to learn more than school of motion has courses for anybody from the complete new vanquish to the avant-garde move artists, head to our grade folio and the clarification for more information.

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