Ways to Animate in After Effects

Main Ways to Animate

We went over four types of Animation (each of these links to a video tutorial with sample files that we went over in class):

1. Manual Keyframe Animation: in this style you manually set keyframes and then change properties of objects or entire layers at different points in the timeline.
   • Animate Shape Layers Tutorial
2. Auto-generated Animation: we used Wiggle Transform to give clouds a random, floating movement. You can use this and other effects for various types of movement that would be hard or tedious to do with keyframes.
   • Add Animation Properties to Shape Layers Tutorial
3. Path-based Animation: in this style, you create a path (you can draw with the pen tool or others) and then apply that path to the position of an object so it moves along the path.
   • Animate an object to follow along a path Tutorial
4. Text Animation: There are some separate properties and Effects that you can animate for text. One is to use Animation Presets, another is to use Animators to animate the text letter by letter or the entire text.
   • Create and Animate Text Tutorial

Tips and Tricks

Preview Text Animation Presets

In order to do this you will need to install Bridge.

1. Go to the Creative Cloud App
2. Click on All Apps
3. Scroll to Bridge
4. Click Install

This will take up about 2GB on your computer’s drive.

Once Bridge is installed to view the text animation presets

1. Go to After Effects
2. Open the Effects and Presets Window
3. Click on the three bars next to the title Effects and Presets in the window
4. Click Browse Presets
5. Bridge should open to the presets (in folders). Open a folder and play aneffect to see it.