Creating a Simple Arrow with Path Animation | After Effects Tutorial

hi and welcome to the next tutorial in today's lesson we'll learn how to recreate this animated arrow using After Effects so anyways guys let's jump in so the first thing that we need to do is we need to create a new composition and I'm just going to run with a 1920 by 1080 pixel document 24 frames I'm going to leave it at 10 seconds the first thing that we need to do is we need to create our new background solid so I'm just gonna call this background just press it okay I'm gonna come over here to my effects and presets and run the gradient ramp effect on here and then I need to pick two colors from color hunt to put into my gradient ramp so here I am on color hunt and I'm just going to use these two colors for my gradient so all I need to do is click on it and then take it back to After Effects so once you put your two colors into the gradient ramp you can come over here and change the start and end ramps if you like and that will move where the stunt end of the colors are but anyways I'm happy with that so I'm going to leave it like that so the next thing that we need to do is we need to actually create the path for the arrow to follow so I'm going to deselect from the background layer I'm gonna come over here to my pen tool and I'm just going to change the stroke width to about 40 I'm going to change the fill to none and I'll leave it like that so the stroke color is going to be white so what I'm going to do with the pen tool I'm just gonna have it selected and I'm just going to click and then hold and if you hold these kind of handles they come out and you can create a you know pretty cool looking path just by it moving those handles around so now I've got my little path like that and if I want to change any of these points I can click on the point I can move the point if I really wanted to or I can come over here and click on the point and then move the handles myself and if I only want to move one set of handles I can hold control and that will one sign so I'm pretty happy with how this is looking it doesn't have to look that perfect if you want to add more points to this you can so all you have to do is just click on that plus little icon there and anyways so I'm happy with that so now I'm going to move to the next step so the next thing that we need to do is we need to open up the shape layer open up the contents open up to shape and open up the path and make sure you click on the path so the path is outlined then you need to go to window and you need to click on this thing which says create nulls from path and what we need to do is we need to click on the trace path section over here and what happens is now you've created this null that follows the path of that pen tool so firstly what we need to do is make sure that we click on that trace path layer we're just gonna take off the loop and then I'm just going to press you on my keyboard to bring up the keyframes so I'm going to increase that keyframe to about two seconds and all that's happening there is it's creating a keyframe from zero to 100% so that's the end of the animation now because loop is off it doesn't continuously loop so once we've done that I am then going to easy easy keyframes and then I'm just going to highlight both of them and then get into the graph editor and then just you know bring this side a little bit closer so that the peak is going probably to maybe about 200% something like that so now what happens here is it starts off you know fairly slow and then it winds up and when it gets to the loop it does the loop pretty fast and then it moves to the end now the next thing that we have to do is we have to meet the anchor point of that null to the middle so all I'm going to do is make sure that I'm on that layer hold ctrl double click on that Pan behind tool and then that will bring that anchor point to the middle so now that we have our null moving we are just going to go back to our shape layer I'm just going to add a trim parts and then so what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up the trim path and I'm just going to hold alt and click on the stopwatch and then I'm going to click and drag that pick whip and then make sure it hits the progress over there and so now what happens is we have now created a trim part so as the null is moving forward in time you can see that the rest of the path is following that null object and that's looking pretty cool cool so now that's looking pretty good and we've got our path moving across so the next thing that we have to do and the final thing is we need to create the arrowhead so make sure you deselect from all of your layers come over here to the star tool and make sure you click on the star tool now all you have to do is click and hold and don't let go of that mouse button press down three times until you get to a triangle and then I'm just going to let go and hopefully you will have a triangle there this time I am going to change the fuel back to a solid and that's going to be white but now this is very important you need to make sure that you control and double-click on the Pan behind tool to move the anchor point to the middle of that triangle so that you can connect it to the trace path and so that's the next thing that we are going to be doing all right we are going to be grabbing our we're going to parent the shape layer to which is the arrowhead to the trace part and we need to hold shift while doing this and then that will bring the arrowhead down there now if you don't see parent and Link all you have to do is go right click into columns and then go into parent and link and just add it back in there now the final thing that we need to do is we just need to come over to our Arrowhead so I'm just going to rename an arrowhead and I'm just going to press s for scale just going to bring down the Arrowhead I'm going to press our full rotation to kind of rotate it around but then I'm also to press p on the keyboard for position and then i'm just going to move it until it's you know sort of in the center something like that and so now when i go and preview this you can see that the arrowhead sticks to the the rest of the path and it goes through nicely so the final thing that we can do to this is we can just come over here and add some motion blur to the shape layer and the arrowhead and so now when it zips through you can see it's got some cool-looking motion to it so anyways guys that's about it for this tutorial thanks for watching i hope you learned something and i will see you guys next time

Channel: The Online Learning Space

Views: 7,623

Keywords: education, tutorial, technology, software, information, studies, helpful, tutorials, tutor, fusion, CAD, printing, HSC, IPT, learning, After EFFECTS, Premiere PRO, Premiere, arrow, arrowhead, animation, simple, animated, animated arrow, null, pen, tool, path, motion, graphics

Id: iHdg9xPmsN8

Length: 7min 20sec (440 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 23 2020