Angie Taylor
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COW Coins
1
Solve Coin
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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;
Hope this helps!
-
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;
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 -
Hi there,
To remove the unwanted motion, Make the first keyframe a Held KF. Right-click on KF and choose “Toggle Hold Keyframe”
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 -
Hi there,
This is just the way that After Effects works.
As soon as you’ve clicked on the stopwatch for a property you are basically telling After Effects “OK, record everything I do” to that property. So, if a stopwatch is on, and you move to where there are no keyframes, change that property, a keyframe will be created. This can be very frustrating for new users or those coming from animation systems where KFs need to be added manually (like Flash).
It takes a bit of getting used to but when you do it’s actually a very efficient way to work as you never forget to add keyframes! 🙂
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 -
Hi there,
As Darby pointed out, you may have the Mask/Path Display button switched off so check that first.
Also, another thing to check is this. Which layer do you want the masks to be applied to? If you go to the timeline, select your layers and hit the M key to find out which layer the masks have been applied to.
If you want the masks to appear on the same layer that you are auto-tracing (rather than one a new layer) you need to de-select “Apply to New Layer” in the Auto-trace dialog before applying. Otherwise it will apply the masks to a new solid layer.
When you apply the Stroke effect, make sure to select the “All Masks” checkbox to apply the strokes to all of the masks created.
Hope these tips help! 🙂
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 -
Thanks Jonathan, will try that! 🙂
Angiecheers,
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 -
Hi there,
I presume you are animating the clouds by adjusting the Position value? If so, there are two possible ways of increasing the speed between the keyframes, either as you’ve done, by dragging the keyframes closer together, or. . . by simply adjust the Position Values so that the clouds have a further distance to travel between the two keyframes. The farther and object has to travel within a fixed time, the faster it will go.
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 -
Yes, you’re right, there seems to be a bug with Kerning in both FCPX and Motion 5. In FCPX it is working it just takes time to update. You’ll notice that if you adjust something you won’t see a result but if you then switch to another parameter and then back to Kerning, the kerning value then updates.
Motion is worse though, sadly. Kerning does not work at all. I know bugs are not always easy to find but I have to say that I find it hard to believe a company like Apple released a Motion Graphics application where a basic but essential component of Typographic control is completely broken. I’m not sure what their testing processes are but you’d think these would be the most important fundamentals to test before shipping?
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 -
Hi Jim,
Unfortunately there is no “one answer applies to all” solution when it comes to precomposing as each situation is different. I’d recommend that you either read a book or watch a tutorial that covers the subject of precomposing in detail. If you like watching training movies then the “After Effects CS5 Learn by Video” product by me and Todd Kopriva covers nesting and precomposing in detail. Or there’s Trish and Chris Meyer’s wonderful “Creating Motion Graphics” books that also cover this in detail.
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 -
Hi there,
If you are using the standard Lens Flare that’s built into AE you can put the Lens Flare on a Black solid layer, place it above your video layer and change it’s Blending Mode to Add. this should knock out all black pixels and allowing the BG footage to show through.
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