AFTER EFFECTS MOVES

a list of ideas to tackle

INTRODUCTION TO CREATING A VIDEO ESSAY

• Framing the Content
• Color Pallet
• Visual Vocabulary

COMPARING AND CONTRASTING

• split screens

SHOWING CHANGE OVER TIME

SHOWING DETAILS AND CONTEXTS

SHOWING PATTERNS AND REPETITIONS

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// Below is forked from another working doc, to be ported above

After Effects -- Popular Moves

Motion

• Whip Pans
• Drifts
• Speed Ramping
• Motion Tracking/Mocha
• Camera Tracking

Stacking Effects

• Distortions
  • Pixelation Transition
  • 8 Bit
  • Fractal and Turbulent Noise
• Color Corrections
  • Greenscreen
    • Keylight
    • Luma Key
  • Double Exposures

Generators

• Sound Waves
• Particle generations
  • Snow
  • Rain
  • Smoke

Camera animation

• 3D Motion
• Rotating Scenes
• Flybys
• Rotobrush
  • and Rotobrush 2!(in AE 2020)

Text/Title animation

• Block Quote Animation
• Font Animation

Popular expressions

• Interpolation Expressions

• Wiggle

  • This expression will randomly move your layer on the x and y axis if it’s a 2D layer.
    • wiggle( frequency , amount );

• loopOut

  • The Loop expression is probably to most used after effects expression, it allows you to repeat your animation
    • loopOut("cycle");

• Inertial bounce

  • The bounce expression is very useful to make your animations and titles look dynamic with a nice elastic movement, just make 2 keyframes position and past the code below.

    • n = 0;

    if (numKeys > 0){

    n = nearestKey(time).index;


    if (key(n).time > time){


    n–;


    }


    }


    if (n == 0){


    t = 0;


    }else{


    t = time – key(n).time;


    }


    if (n > 0){


    v = velocityAtTime(key(n).time – thisComp.frameDuration/10);


    amp = .05;


    freq = 4.0;


    decay = 2.0;


    value + v*amp*Math.sin(freq*t*2*Math.PI)/Math.exp(decay*t);


    }else{


    value;


    }

• Time

  • Time expression is good for constant animation, the higher the number next to “time” below the faster your animation will be.
    • time*150

• to Comp

  • This is a perfect and easy way to create cool dynamic motion in 3D space with 2D layers.

    • layer = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”)

    layer.toComp([0,0,0])

• Fade

  • The automatic fade expression is useful when you don’t want to bother a create keyframes for a fade animation.

    • transition = 20;

    if (marker.numKeys<2){

    tSecs = transition / ( 1 / thisComp.frameDuration); 


    linear(time, inPoint, inPoint + tSecs, 0, 100)


     - linear(time, outPoint - tSecs, outPoint, 0, 100)


    }else{


        linear(time, inPoint, marker.key(1).time, 0, 100) 


    - linear(time, marker.key(2).time, outPoint, 0, 100)


    }

• Motion Trail

  • As you can see below with this motion trail expression you can get some pretty interesting animation of layers trailing .

    • //Apply to position

    delay = 5; //number of frames to delay

    d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index - 1);


    thisComp.layer(1).position.valueAtTime(time - d)

    *   //Apply to Opacity

    opacityFactor = .75;


    Math.pow(opacityFactor,index - 1)*100

• Squash/Stretch

  • This bouncing squash and stretch expression should make your animation a bit more alive by adding a proportional scale to your shapes or images.

    • maxDev = 13; // max deviation in pixels

    spd = 30; //speed of oscillation

    decay = 1.0; //how fast it slows down


    t = time - inPoint;


    x = scale[0] + maxDev*Math.sin(spd*t)/Math.exp(decay*t);


    y = scale[0]*scale[1]/x;


    [x,y]

• Rotation

  • Here is another After Effects rotation expression, no keyframes needed to make a simple 360 rotation on a layer.

    veloc = 360; //360 Degree Rotation per Second

    r = rotation + (time - inPoint) *veloc;


    [r]

• Blink

  • The blinking expression becomes super handy when you don’t want to repeat a bunch of opacity keyframes over and over or want to animate a cursor quickly.

    • blinkSpeed=15;

    n= Math.sin(time*blinkSpeed);

    if(n<0) 0 else 100;