• Adobe After Effects

  Control the animation of a group of objects with a time delay

  Posted by Andi Rrashi on May 4, 2014 at 6:36 pm

  Hello,

  Could anyone please tell me how can I animate a group of objects with a time delay in After Effects. For example, I have a group of 100 circles in an infographics composition and I want to animate their scale from 0% to 100% but some of the circles start animating randomly at frame 0, some others start animating after 10 frames or so and some others start animating later … Is it possible to automate this with an expression or something else and if yes, how can I do it?

  Thanks a lot in advance!

  Andi Rrashi replied 12 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Adam Neer

  May 4, 2014 at 11:58 pm

  If you’re OK with having to manually keyframe the initial animation for each (via copy pasting transforms), you can use an excellent script called “Rift” (aescripts) to stagger, sequence, or randomize the keys or layer starts. The sequence function allows you to define the number of frames you want between the first and last keyframe, using several preset speed curves (from sine to expo) and whether you want the curve defined by keyframe in, out, or both. Stagger will let you set the number of frames between each set of staggered keyframes. Randomize allows you to set the min and max amount of frames you want it to randomize your selected keys or layers. Its an immensely useful script with a handy UI and amazingly, it is choose your own price. Probably one of the very best, most useful scripts available and worth much more than the modest suggested price.

  of course, I’m sure there’s a way to do this by key framing a null and using some sort of time control expression to stagger your layers, but i think using Rift is much more flexible and allows for a lot of “creative trial and error”.
• 

  Andi Rrashi

  May 5, 2014 at 1:52 am

  Thank you Adam for the suggestion. I already sorted this out using expressions on each layer together with a random number generator to alternate the starting and the ending point for each layer. I’ll have a look at the script you suggested though. Seems like an easy way to solve things like this in the future.

  Once again, thanks!

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