• Adobe After Effects

  Disappearing Bezier Handles

  Posted by Tony Hudson on July 26, 2009 at 3:20 am

  Hi all you AE folks,

  I have an issue where my Bezier handles within the value graph editor appear inconsistently. I set the keys to Continuous Bezier (or Easy Ease) and sometimes the key will have a handle and sometimes it will not. The handles will always show in the comp window, but that is mostly useless for critical timing. It truly appears to be random whether the handles will show or not.

  Is there a handle visibility toggle I am missing?
  Is this a display issue related to amount of zoom in the graph editor?

  I have searched the online help and this forum for an answer, and I previously posted this on the AE Basics forum without finding a solution. I’m hoping this larger crowd might have an answer.

  This is AE CS4 on Mac, but I have the same issue on AE CS4 on XP

  Thanks.

  Tony Hudson- Visual FX Supervisor for “The Singularity is Near” and “The Pranksters”

  Tony Hudson replied 16 years, 9 months ago 29,490 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Tony Hudson

  July 26, 2009 at 3:35 am

  *nevermind*

  After scratching my head over this for days it finally struck me what was going on. there are no bezier handles available when x/y/z are locked together. Once you “Separate Dimensions” (this is CS4 we are talking about here) the bezier curves will behave like any other 3d graph editor, allowing control of the tangent.

  This must have to do with the math involved in the Auto smoothing, as
  According to the help page on Separate Dimensions:

  “Important: When you recompose separate Position properties into a single Position property, some information about the motion path and speed is lost, because the multiple Bezier curves used to represent the individual components are collapsed into a single Bezier curve at each keyframe. When you separate dimensions, some information about speed is lost, but the motion path does not change. You should work with separate dimensions or without separate dimensions for each property for an entire project, rather than toggling back and forth.”

  Good thing to know.

  Tony Hudson- Visual FX Supervisor for “The Singularity is Near” and “The Pranksters”

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