Create Isometric 3D City Animations in After Effects

in this video learn how to create your own 3D World well kind of we're going to use After Effects Along With a Little Help from Adobe Illustrator to create isometric animations which look 3D but they're not actually 3D anyways let's not waste any time and let's get started all right the first thing we're going to do is create our 3D Graphics just kidding I have no patience for that nor would I even do a good job that's why I pull stock vector graphics like this from the web my favorite website is free.com in which you can get free isometric Graphics like this however when you're working with vector files the first thing you need to do is organize your project in Adobe Illustrator or if you have a budget perhaps you have a graphic designer who will do this step for you which then very cool but open your downloaded isometric Vector City graphic and Adobe Illustrator if illustrator is new to you don't worry we're doing very simple stuff here like C and cancer right away navigate to the layers Tab and familiarize yourself with the layering of all the objects in your document we just need to place every object into their own layer so we can properly animate everything in After Effects for example example if I open the building's layer each building is already in its own layer so I will just move these layers outside of the current layer and delete the now empty buildings layer moving forward if I open the tree layer I will see groups instead of layers since these are groups I can select the tree layer click on the three line icon and click release to layers sequence now I can move these trees outside of the main layer and delete the now empty tree layer and while we're at the topic of organization be sure to delete any graphics you don't want as well but most importantly continue this process until every object that you want to animate is in its own layer the organization of the project file is really the most important part of this entire process and when you're done with it you're honestly about 75% done with the entire project but be sure to save your project as an Adobe Illustrator file and then move over to Microsoft Paint excuse me after effects import your recently saved illustrator file into After Effects be sure the import box is set to composition and click okay now go into the compos position and there are all your objects layered out now you're probably thinking this is going to be a lot of layers to animate but let's be real unless you're working on a super specific project the majority of the animations will just be a copy and paste but before you should animate anything select the Pan behind tool and move the anchor points of each layer to the actual object you'll notice that the Anchor Point of every layer is by default in the center of your composition this is no good when it comes to animation so take a few moments to move the anchor points of every layer so then your object can animate from that point okay now that is done let's animate this Beast I'll select an object and we'll want to create an overshoot scale animation animate the scale of the layer from 0% to 100% then move to a few frames before your last key frame and increase the scale to a value higher than 100% then lastly make the first and last key frames easy EAS key frames by hitting F9 on your keyboard when done correctly this will create a really cool overshoot animation now we can copy and paste this scale animation to all the other layers and feel free to animate your objects anyway that you need and a quick tip be sure to offset your layers so your objects will animate in at different times so here's what I have so far and it's coming together now let's talk about animating these cars to follow the path of the road and loop their animations what I'll do for this instance is select one of the car layers and grab the pen tool I'll draw a long straight line like this then I'll copy the mask and then paste that data into the position you may need to readjust the position after copying and pasting it however you'll see that the card now follows the road and we can Loop this animation by Alt clicking the stopwatch and apply the loopout open close expression and playing back through our car will now Loop and here is the final animation when we repeat this method for everything else all right let's do one last thing to really make this move create a null object and then pair in all the layers to the null then animate the scale and position the null object to move the composition this added and move it will make a nice difference in your work and if you want to add additional Graphics like these call out animations be sure to check out our tutorial linked below or save time for 20,000 plus templates in which you can preview and apply pre-made Motion Graphics in a single click with the motion duck extension then you can easily change the graphic to fit your project needs be sure to check the links below and always be creating

Channel: SonduckFilm

Views: 18,296

Keywords: Tutorial, After Effects Tutorial, After Effects, After Effects Tutorial City, After Effects Tutorial 3D, After Effects Tutorial Isometric, 3D Isometric, Adobe Illustrator 3D, Adobe Illustrator to After Effects, 3D City, 3D City in After Effects, After Effects Motion Graphics, Motion Graphics, Motion Graphics Tutorial, SonduckFilm Tutorial, Isometric Tutorial, Create City After Effects, Isometric Motion Graphics, 3D Motion Graphics, Create 3D After Effects, 3D After Effects

Id: KPo0mrcrtQo

Length: 4min 23sec (263 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 25 2023