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Unwanted movement between bezier keyframes
I’m animating a mouse pointer in AE and I’m running into a problem that I’ve had to deal with a lot in the past without any real solution. I’m hoping someone here can provide some guidance.
To make things simple I did a quick video: https://youtu.be/Wj0J4e4xIkA
If you don’t want to watch the video, then here it is in writing. Essentially I have keyframes dictating the movement of a mouse cursor. However, the movement is in straight lines which is unnatural. So I want to add curved motion to the mouse. To do this I right-click the keyframe and click on “Keyframe Interpolation…”. I then change the Spatial Interpolation to “Bezier”.
This is where it gets tricky. Sometimes that works fine. I get a single bezier handle and I can move it to create my curve. HOWEVER, sometimes AE adds in extra motion between keyframes. So two keyframes that are next to each other with the exact same position now has a motion where the animated object drifts off and then back again for no reason.
Please note that I am only using the “Bezier” option, and not “Continuous Bezier”.
In the past the only solution I have ever found is to remove ALL bezier options from ALL keyframes, and also remove all easing. Then I can go in and re-apply all of my easing and bezier options without a problem.
The problem only seems to happen when I have applied bezier options and easing to a bunch of keyframes IN ORDER, and then go back in and try to make a change later in the middle of the already-created keyframes. As long as I never go back and try to change keyframes and only do them in order, then I never run into this problem.
Why is this happening and how can I get rid of that extra motion?
Thanks in advance for your assistance.
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3 Replies
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Dave,
Thanks for your response. It is greatly appreciated.
Regarding #2, it’s actually not “easy” because as shown in the video I tried to manipulate the bezier handles and it did nothing to remove that unwanted motion. So that solution doesn’t work.
Regarding #1, I have used that workaround before, but it is a workaround. If there are two consecutive, identical keyframes without “continuous” bezier set, then there should be NO movement . I was just hoping to find out that there was actually something I was doing wrong that was causing the unwanted motion. Workarounds are fine, but I’ve been doing workarounds for awhile and I was just at a point where I figured I should get a REAL solution. It looks like I’m going to have to stick with workarounds.
Thanks again.
John
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I apologize because I guess I’m not understanding you. From 1:03 until 1:11 in the video I posted I am clearly moving the bezier handles of the offending keyframe, so I’m not sure why you’re telling me to zoom in so I can “get a good grab” on the handles. I’m clearly not having any issues in the video with “getting a good grab” on the handles, so what would I gain by zooming in?
Further, after I grabbed and moved the bezier handles, the only thing that changed about the unwanted movement was the angle of the movement as shown at 1:12.
I should also mentioned that I did try grabbing the handles and moving them until they they were essentially over the keyframe (which basically makes it linear movement and defeats the entire purpose), and the unwanted movement was still there and was basically unchanged.
So I have no problem grabbing handles and manipulating those handles doesn’t really change the unwanted movement at all, so what am I missing?
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I would not mess with the handles. this is one of Ae’s oddities that is refereed to as “The Boomerang Effect”.
watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLdBTzkMa7kto fix it: you can highlight both keyframes where this movement occurs between and right click on one of them->keyframe interpolation (or Ctrl+Alt+K) and choose under spatial interpolation->linear.
to avoid it: make sure you set your preferences to default spatial interpolation to linear and avoid 95% of the chances this will happen again:
Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
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