New to AE, need to understand rotation

[Jason Mettler]

Did you set the rotation to a negative number when you slowed it down? An easier way may be to set your rotations and then pre-compose your scene. In the new comp, use time remapping keyframes to slow or speed the scene up. You have much more control that way.

[Angie Taylor]

Ok, this is a fairly deep subject to get into so I’ll offer some quick instruction but also recommend that you spend some time studying keyframing in After Effects as it’s a complex world! Having said that, it’s the best thing you can study if you want to become great at AE!

So the first thing you need to do is set up the basic animation. Decide how many times it will rotate and over what amount of time. Say for example, you want it to spin once over the duration of 2 seconds;

1. Go to beginning of timeline, open Rotation Property, click on Stopwatch.
2. Move to 2 second mark, change the Rotation value to 1 Revolution (make sure to change the value for Revolutions, not degrees!)
3. If you play the animation, you’ll notice that it plays at a constant, even speed. This is because After Effects is using Linear Interpolation as the default Temporal animation.

In order to adjust how the speed accelerates and decelerates so that it gradually gets faster or slower, you need to change the Temporal Interpolation of the keyframe. The easiest way of doing this in an automated fashion is to Easy Ease the keyframe, it’s a good starting point;

4. If you want the animation to gradually slow down at the end, right-click on the second keyframe and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In. Play it again and you’ll notice a slight slowing down over time.

5. If you want to you can repeat this with the first keyframe to gradually accelerate as the animation starts, this time choose Easy Ease out.

6. For a higher level of control over timing you should use the graph editor to manually adjust the speed graph created when you animate keyframes. This is a more advanced feature and I recommend that you follow some training on keyframing in After Effects before attempting this.

There are very good resources in the AE online help that will help you;

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e19a.html

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d6fa.html

If you want a more structured course you could try the After Effects Learn by Video course which is co-written by myself and Adobe’s Todd Kopriva;

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321734866?tag=agelatayloran-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0321734866&adid=1R98BPB4YSGGD5A0QP5W&

Hope this helps!

cheers,

Angie

Angie Taylor animation & illustration for television, film, web and devices

https://www.angietaylor.co.uk
Twitter: theangietaylor
Linkedin: theangietaylor
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Angie-Taylor/118378194869002

[Angie Taylor]

Ok, this is a fairly deep subject to get into so I’ll offer some quick instruction but also recommend that you spend some time studying keyframing in After Effects as it’s a complex world! Having said that, it’s the best thing you can study if you want to become great at AE!

So the first thing you need to do is set up the basic animation. Decide how many times it will rotate and over what amount of time. Say for example, you want it to spin once over the duration of 2 seconds;

1. Go to beginning of timeline, open Rotation Property, click on Stopwatch.
2. Move to 2 second mark, change the Rotation value to 1 Revolution (make sure to change the value for Revolutions, not degrees!)
3. If you play the animation, you’ll notice that it plays at a constant, even speed. This is because After Effects is using Linear Interpolation as the default Temporal animation.

In order to adjust how the speed accelerates and decelerates so that it gradually gets faster or slower, you need to change the Temporal Interpolation of the keyframe. The easiest way of doing this in an automated fashion is to Easy Ease the keyframe, it’s a good starting point;

4. If you want the animation to gradually slow down at the end, right-click on the second keyframe and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In. Play it again and you’ll notice a slight slowing down over time.

5. If you want to you can repeat this with the first keyframe to gradually accelerate as the animation starts, this time choose Easy Ease out.

6. For a higher level of control over timing you should use the graph editor to manually adjust the speed graph created when you animate keyframes. This is a more advanced feature and I recommend that you follow some training on keyframing in After Effects before attempting this.

There are very good resources in the AE online help that will help you;

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7e19a.html

https://help.adobe.com/en_US/aftereffects/cs/using/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7d6fa.html

If you want a more structured course you could try the After Effects Learn by Video course which is co-written by myself and Adobe’s Todd Kopriva;

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321734866?tag=agelatayloran-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0321734866&adid=1R98BPB4YSGGD5A0QP5W&

Hope this helps!

[Aras Kanani]

Thank you both, very useful information, ill definetly look into those Angie