Where on earth are AE animation curves?

[Darby Edelen]

I think there are some vocabulary differences between where you’re coming from and where most of us operate, I will now attempt a rudimentary translation (;

[Grant McKean] “I cant find the X,Y animation curves anywhere.”

I’m guessing this means spatial interpolation? If you set positional keyframes and have the position property selected then you should be able to view the motion path in the composition window, you can use the pen tool (g) to drag bezier curves out of the keyframes or add keyframes.

[Grant McKean] “I have seen that most channels seem to have a speed curve which isnt wot i want.”

Channels, I’m guessing, is what we AE-heads usually refer to as properties (are they really called channels in Flame? That would get really confusing what with the RGBA channels and all…). Every layer will have transform properties, text layers will have additional text properties, 3D layers will have additional properties, every effect comes with at least one property, etc.

[Grant McKean] “And also that you can right click “edit value” but I cant see these values in graph form!”

It’s been a long while since I’ve used AE 6.5, but I believe that you can view the temporal graph as either ‘speed’ or ‘value’ based. These two are obviously related (speed is the rate of change of value), but if you need to adjust the interpolation based on specific values then there should be a way to do this in the graph editor. I should also note that the graph editor gained some nifty (but minor) new features in CS3.

Of course, all of this is coming from someone who hasn’t used AE 6.5 in about 4 years, so I may be getting the features confused with AE 7… I would recommend looking at the CS3 trial, the interface in AE 7 & CS3 is much nicer than 6.5.

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[Steve Roberts]

… but the X and Y position curves are not separate, which is a bummer. This feature has been requested.

One workaround is to create sliders for each value (effect>expression controls) and tie each slider to the X or Y value of the desired layer by pickwhipping the slider’s value to the X or Y value of the desired layer. This way, one slider follows the X position value, and one follows the Y position value. You edit the graph of each slider separately.

It’s goofy, but it’ll have to do for now.

Anybody else?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

Just to mention the obvious – the graph is now hidden until you click on the Show Animation Graph button.

It’s the button all the way to the right of the comp buttons. It looks like a graph with a curve.

From there, follow these help docs for more info on how to show different aspects of the graph:

CLICK ME for more info!

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Steve Roberts]

Does that apply to AE 6.5, Aharon?

[Aharon Rabinowitz]

OK Steve – good point – maybe I should take the time to read…

As Darby pointed out The XY value curve is represented in the comp window as a motion path. While other properties have both a velocity and value graph, position’s value graph was only represented in the comp widow as a motion path.

That has changed in 7+.

Sorry about that.

Aharon Rabinowitz
Email: arabinowitz (AT) yahoo (DOT) com
All Bets Are Off Productions, Inc.
Creative Cow After Effect Podcast
Internet Killed the Video Star: A Guide to Creating Video for the Web

[Grant Mckean]

Ok thanks for all your suggestions. From this I understand that the X,Y “value” graph has been added in V7. In version 6.5 (which is obviously quite old now)I understand, to my (possibly unjustified) amazement, that the only graphical representation of XY values is the motion path in the comp window.

Geees! learning a new platform is like learning to walk again!!

Thanks

Grant

[Chris Brett]

Hi –

– having problems with setting animation curves so have trawled the archives and read posts in this thread but I’m still having problems.

The temporal display ( when you click on the graph button ) does not make sense to me and being a bit of a newbie I cant see how to get the spatial display up either.

….spent a couple of hours just trying to get a simple motion path sorted and still cant see any meaningful relationship between the graph display and the finished result…..

Like the original poster I have good experience of the Flame/ Flint interface which allows very fine finesses in seconds and also where the graph display matched what you would expect in the comp.

I reckon the problem is that I just have not worked it out yet so if someone can give me a few more clues or point to a training video or something I would be very grateful.

Chris Brett / U K