Advanced Shape Layer Animation techniques in After Effects

hey do you want to know how to make this animation of an umbrella spinning using only shape layers well that is a coincidence because that's what this video is all about i'll show you how i made this spinning umbrella animation using advanced shape layer animation techniques in after effects and as a bonus i'll show you a neat little trick that you can use to make all kinds of custom variations from this one animation and by the way you can download this project file in the description if you want to tinker with this yourself so if we dig into this animation it's really not very complex it's made up of four shapes what i'll call panels in alternating colors i chose alternating colors because i thought it would help accentuate the illusion of the umbrella spinning to create the loop i don't need to animate each panel go going all the way from the right to the left i just need each panel to move over two spaces by doing that i'll go from this to this back to this thus completing the loop and what's great about this animation is that once you've created these two shapes you've done like 80 of the work already the next 20 is just duplicating shapes and copying pasting keyframes before we dive into the nitty gritty though let's take a moment to refresh ourselves on the art of shape morphing because knowing how to morph shapes in after effects correctly is the key to creating quality shape animations of all kinds especially this one plus if you try to do this without knowing how to properly morph shapes your umbrella animation might end up looking like this and you might end up feeling like this to morph shapes correctly we need to understand how paths work in after effects think of shape paths like connect the dots in connect the dots you have a series of dots each dot has a number associated with it so you know which direction to draw likewise a shape path in after effects is made up of dots called vertex points and there is a starting point called the first vertex indicated by this extra thin line around that point and each point has an order that dictates the direction of the path this direction is invisible to us as a user but not to after effects if you want smooth transformations between two shaped paths both shape paths need to have the same starting point same number of vertex points and the same direction there are two things that can throw off the order between two shapes one they don't have the same starting point when you go to morph them it will look like the shape is rotating two they have the same starting point but have different directions if the two shapes don't have the same direction it will flip on itself now that we know how shape morphing works let's move on to creating this animation like i said before once you've created these two shapes you've already done like eighty percent of the work and by the way that's not a precise percentage i just whip that one out of my key stir to complete the outside of my umbrella i'll just copy and paste these two shapes and vertically mirror them realign them and adjust the color so that they're alternating now remember how i said that shape has in after effects have a direction well the same is true in illustrator and since i reflected these shapes on the right i've changed the direction of the path to make sure all these paths are going in the same direction i'll make each individual shape a compound path this by the way must be done in illustrator as there is no way to reverse the path in after effects and before you come at me in the comments and say yeah this button here does all that button does is reverse the order which after effects will draw on the path it's the equivalent of you deciding to draw the connect the dots picture in reverse order you're not actually reversing the order of the points on the path once we've individually converted each one of these shapes into compound paths now we can go into the attributes panel in illustrator and we can make sure that all the paths are going in the same direction before i push everything to after effects i need to set up my composition in after effects the only setting i want to bring to your attention is the duration i'll set the duration of my new composition to be 360 frames back in illustrator i'll select my shapes and push them to after effects with overlord making sure that this little button is turned off so they all go as one layer if you don't have overlord what are you doing with your life link in the description the first step back in after effects is to create a keyframe for each shape path on the first frame to do this i'll select a point on each shape and double tap s on my keyboard which will select all the paths on this layer and then i can just simply open one of them and click that stopwatch and this will create keyframes on all the selected paths to make this easy we need to reorder some of these shapes in the content section of my shape layer i'll reorder my group so that the furthest panel on the right is on the top and so on down now i'll hit u again to bring up all my keyframes and before i complete this next step i need to double check that my first vertex is in the same spot on all my shape paths if they're not i'll just right click on the right point and set it to be the first vertex it's important not to forget this step because if you do you'll be giving yourself a lot of extra work down the line and i'm speaking from a lot of experience having forgotten that oh and speaking of experience if you're having a good experience watching this video join me in the battle against the youtube algorithm and hit that like button to trick youtube into recommending this video to more people let's carry on now finally we are ready to get cracking on this animation at the halfway point which is frame 180 or 15 seconds in i'll select the first keyframe from the second path and paste it on the path above and then i'll do that down the line now for this shape on the bottom which is the panel on the left this is one of the few times that you'll have to manually work the path to collapse on itself i'll do this in between these two columns of keyframes as it is hard to grab the vertex points when a bunch of other shapes are on top of it then once i'm done flattening that shape out i can just move that keyframe to align with the rest of the keyframe at this point if you preview your timeline you'll you should be able to start to see what's going on now i'll do the same thing once more but on the last frame and i'll be copying the keyframes from frame 180 and we're almost done but as the umbrella rotates we have this massive gap on the right so we need to fill that in to do that i'll duplicate my first group and i'll move it to the bottom of the stack then i'll grab the keyframes and offset them so that the first keyframe lines up with the middle keyframes now i need to do what we did with the left panel collapsing on itself but for the right panel once done with that i'll duplicate that group once again and i put that new group on the bottom but before moving on to that new group i'll change the color of this current shape to maintain the pattern of alternating colors now with this new group i'll hit u to isolate the keyframes and i'll just simply move the keyframes of the new group to start on frame 180 now i'll repeat that entire process for the underside of the umbrella the only difference being that this time i'll order my shape groups so that the furthest panel on the left is on the tops of the stack so that it appears to be rotating from left to right let's review what i just did in case you're a little lost i gave you a big spiel about shape morphing and that's because this entire animation is just each panel morphing into the shape of the panel next to it so that's why we reordered the groups from top to bottom to correspond from right to left that way since i know that this panel is going to replace this panel as the umbrella rotates i can simply copy the keyframe from this next shape down in the stack and paste it above this morph isn't as dramatic as a triangle morphing into a circle but in principle it's the exact same thing and remember when i said once you've created these first two panels that you've done pretty much eighty percent of the work this is what i meant instead of manually moving our vertex points and trying to do this all by eye we are taking advantage of the work we've already done and this is all derived from our knowledge of how shape paths work so we can make these smooth shape morphs okay so besides adding in the handle which is just a shape layer as a finishing detail i want to set this whole thing up so that i can have full control over the rotation of this umbrella so i can make as many variations of this animation as i want i want to essentially have control over the rate of rotation i'll pre-compose everything and add an angle controller to this new composition then i'll right click on this new composition and i'll turn on timer mapping i'll pick whip the time remap property to the angle controller which will add this little expression to that property and then i'll just add divided by 12 to the end of this expression since 12 is my frame rate if your frame rate is 24 or 30 frames per second you should put that here instead i personally like to animate on twos so i use 12. then in the angle controller we're going to copy this first part of the expression from the timer map and we're going to paste it onto the angle controller and this time instead of divided by 12 we'll add the percentage sign and 360. 360 because that's the total number of frames inside this precomp you can replace 360 with whatever number of frames your composition has so if your composition is one second long at 12 frames per second you would put 12 here instead of 360. are we on the same page now with those two expressions set up you can animate the rotation of this umbrella with this angle controller to twist and spin forward or backward it's awesome now we have full control we can make as many variations on this as we want so that's it again this video isn't so much about animating a rotating umbrella although if you needed to do that specifically that's great because now you have this video to refer back to but my hope is that it's more about the techniques i use to make that animation and i'm hoping that you're starting to be inspired by some other application of these techniques to create the animations you want to make if you do make something cool share it on your social media profile whichever one you use and tag me i'd love to see it i've left all my social media profiles in the description below now if you've enjoyed this video remember to hit that like button to give me the upper hand in my battle to defeat the youtube algorithm also remember to subscribe to the channel and hit that bell icon so you know when the next video comes out and if you're not busy after this video go check out some of my other videos we'll see you guys in the next video

Channel: Keyframe Academy

Views: 83,289

Keywords: advanced shape layer animation techiniques, shape layer animation after effects, shape layer animation, Keyframe Academy

Id: HSqxHGd_V6I

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 14 2022