Animate a leaf

[Frank Hardie]

Been asked plenty of times before. Try a search.

[Mike Clasby]

1) For basic animation in AE, look at this:

https://www.videocopilot.net/basic/index.html

Click on, 03. Animation, and you’ll learn about keyframes.

2) Quickie Lesson

To change the position of you leaf, set a “P” reveals Position, set a keyframe (click the Position Stopwatch) at the beginning, then go down the time line and drag the leaf to a new spot (position) and it will add another keyframe.
OK, go halfway back to the start and move the leaf again and you see an arc in the motion path and the Bezier handles will appear to control the curves of the path. You should have three keyframes.

If you want them to east at start and end,, select the first and last keyframe and hit F9.

Or

On a New Solid (Ctrl Y) you can create a mask with the Pen Toll (or past a path in from Photoshop/Illustrator). Then M reveals the Mask Shape, select and Copy, then Paste into a Position of your leaf layer and that mask will become a Path for the leaf. Drag the end keyframes to lengthen of shorten the time it takes to follow the path.

[Dan Schonberg]

lets say I have a path built not from a mask (never made a path from a mask actually-do I ned to get into this habit?). Just a path I built with the pen tool alone without animating an object. Can I pick an non-animated object and animate it along the non-animated path I built. I felt that using the pen tool gives me more control than making a keyframe…jumping in time and setting more. I would rather make a path at one moment in time, then set an object to follow the path (please do not give me directions to orient to path, thats not what I am looking to do). Thanks ahead of time for your help.