How To Animate Falling Rain With Strokes - After Effects Tutorial

hi my name is Oliver in this video I'll be teach you how to animate forming ray in After Effects so to get started I've Illustrated this very simple umbrella I have separated the top from the handle and the reasoning behind this is that we want to apply some effects to the top that we don't really want applied to the handle itself now if you want to follow along with this tutorial there's a download link for the project file down below so you can try and animate it on your own or take a better look at the key framing so we'll actually start by creating the paths for the rain now we want the rain to sort of fall down from the top hit the umbrella and then slide off hit the ground and splash out so some of the rain will just hit the umbrellas flesh out some will slide down onto the ground and then splash out and some would be in the background and only splash onto the ground so it's just to differentiate everything and make it a bit more interesting so the sort of rain particles aren't doing the same thing so to create this rain we will start out by selecting the path to and we want to enable the stroke and set it to some sort of blue color now this light blue works really well in this dark background and we also want to disable the fill so to present the fill and just to save lit and clear okay so we want the rain to start above the composition so we can go a bit up and let's say you wanted to start right here we click hold down shift and then we say it hits the umbrella right around here then we can zoom in and now we wanted to slide off the umbrella and then hit the ground so we select a point on the ground so we see we have this shadow it's sort of our plane for the ground and we wanted to hit right around here so we can click and crack this out sort of like this so you can see that it hits and then it slides for a bit and hits the ground right around here so you can adjust this as you like but we'll just start out with this one and that looks fine for now so you can adjust the stroke width if you want the rain to be really thick or you want it to be really thin but I think that around the 13 pixel mark is it's fine for this project and of course this really depends on the settings of your composition if it's a very big composition very large one you'll of course need a bigger stroke size so let's start animating this rain we just called this line number one go insert and open it up now you see we have the shape layer and what we want to do is click the ad and then we want to add a trim paths so what trim path essentially does is that it allows us to animate the path and if we open it up you can see that we have some different properties that we can change we have the start and the end now if we drag the end you can see that this becomes shorter and we sort of have to decide how long our reign is going to be if you have to imagine that it starts from up here and maybe we wanted to go down here now if we drag the offset we can just drag it down so you can actually see the length of this and I think this is about fine and we can try and work from this from the start so if we start with the offset at zero we can add a keyframe and let's just zoom in a bit go a bit ahead and then we can set this to 360 so what this essentially means is that it will loop one round so it will go down here into the ground and then it will start up here at the top again so the thing we have to make sure now is that at the start you can see that's a bit visible so we actually have to go into the shape and the path and just drag this up so you can't really see when it appears up here to start again so right now we should actually already have this animation and now you have to decide whether you want this to be quicker or slower I might wants this to be a bit quicker so track this in and you can see already now we actually have some nice-looking rain so what we're going to do is alt click the offset or the option click and we'll just type in the expression loop out parentheses and semicolon so what this essentially does is that it takes these two keyframes and then when the animation is done when we add the last keyframe it just repeats it so it's sort of just looping the animation and you can see if we play this it's just looping and that's really what we want so after we have done this we want to animate a bit of splash at the bottom as it hits the ground so we can just zoom in here and we actually you just want to do that in the same shape layer that's just easier that way so we can take the shape and the trim path press command ctrl key to group it and we can call this the rain then we actually want to draw a new shape layer so we're going to depend - and remember you don't want to select this rain group just select the layer itself and we just click down here so we can't really click on that exact point but we can alter it a bit so just click right next to it click up here and we can drag it out so sort of like a a little splash and we can just drag this into the sensor and then we select the layer again we want to select the pen tool and just roll one on the other side so they don't have to be exact same and alter them a bit play around with it and drag this into this sensor as well so we go down to these strokes and we select them press command G to group them and then we can go to the add and we can add another trim paths so this is going to be a bit different where you're going to animate the start and the end properties so you can set both of them to 0 then we can go to the point as it just hits the ground so that's right here add a keyframe to both of them and this may take around 6 frames 7 frames or so we can play around with it so press command or control and right arrow key just go one key from ahead at the time and we set both of them to 100 so right now you and see anything but that's because we have to offset these so if we select one of them with all the option right there okey we have offset them so as you can see we have the splash it's way too slow right now but we can fix this in the eating process so just press f9 go into the graph editor and we can just track this up a bit so we can actually see what we're doing and these like the offset so this eating is going to be a bit extreme at the start we really want to emphasize the speed so this is the value graph you can select it down here and we want the value change at the start to be very high so I'll actually just track the handles up and then we wanted to ease out towards the end so it's like these angles in so you can see it really D accelerates quickly and it really has that sort of explosion splash effect so this looks sort of like a water splash and now we also want to loop this but the way we're going to do this is a bit different so the problem here is that if we were to loop this animation out it wouldn't really line up with the bottom one and the reasoning behind this is that it starts looping out just as as the last keyframe sort of ends and therefore this would loop out at this point this would do but at this point this would loop out at this point so in some way we need them to loop out at the same point and the way we do this is that we actually go to the very last keyframe of the animation then we just add a keyframe to all properties and go to the very start and add a keyframe to all properties that way we sort of till after fix that this is the start point of our animation this is the end point and now if we go into the offset and copy this expression click all our option on the other ones and paste it in you actually till after fix that it just has to loop this sort of keyframe interval and that way when we play it back you can see that it times up every single time so now if we actually zoom out and preview this animation see that we have this ring right now it doesn't look that great because we only have that sort of one particle or or one line of rain but we are quickly going to fix that why should we just going to take this line and press command ctrl D to duplicate it and now we're going in through this one and we're going to alter the path so this is the sort of splash we just named the splash for convenience sake and we'll go into the rain the shape layer and now we want to alter this shape so you can select these two first points we want those to be linear and we can just sort of hold down shift and drag them to the side so maybe we want this to hit right here but we also want to change this point we don't want it to be in the same Y position maybe this hits a bit further down and of course this splash would maybe be over here and just alter that so it sort of slides down and then we would take our splash and we can drag that all the way over here and we have to make sure that it lines up with the other path sort of like this and now if we play this back you see that very quickly we have created two of these sort of particles now we of course want to offset this animation but we'll do that towards the end right now we'll just focus on creating every single particle so we can select this line duplicate it again just the same process going to the rain now we might want this one to hit let's say over here now because we're going to the other side of the umbrella we might actually want the path to go in the other direction so we can select the point down here and drag it over so this might hit right around here and which sort of adjusted so we get a result that we like sort of like this and again with safety splash and we track it over here I have to make sure you have selected the splash and line it up and now we might actually just want one that hits the umbrella but doesn't really hit the ground so we can duplicate it again go into the contents and the rain so now we actually might just want to delete the last point of of this path so we can select it and delete it that way we only have this straight line and if we select that straight line like this let's say we go over here and then this should hit right around here now we of course also want to alter the splash so we'll click on the splash go down and select that and we have to drag it all the way up here so we just have this splash on the umbrella itself now you really just have to repeat this process until you get enough particles so a point where you like the result cause right now it's pretty hard to see whether this would look good because they happen simultaneously but you can see from from this one that you might actually want some some of the particles to fall behind so we can just do that really quickly take this number four and duplicate it and we just go into the rain and the shape and now we can selected path so let's say this hits here and then of course we want to drag it behind so it should hit the ground right around here and we take the splash and line it up so it's basically the same process and this is all about tweaking the paths and sort of getting a result that you like and we of course have to remember that this line should go behind the umbrella and we can then duplicate it so add another one and then we go into the path again and this time we maybe want it to hit over here and we wanted to hit maybe a bit further up and align the splash again like that so now we can zoom out so you look at what we have gotten so far you see have all of these particles but there's a few problems one of them being that some of the particles move way too slowly because as you can see this one on the right doesn't have to travel as far therefore we just have to pursue and speed it up so the way we do this is that we just select the last keyframes and drag them in a bit so as you can see that particle looks a lot better right now and we might also want to adjust all of them just a tiny bit so they are not the exact same so this is just by selecting the last one and dragging them out a bit you know just make it a bit random honestly and these two last ones there go straight down so they might want to move a bit faster than the rest like this and now we can just see if we need one more particle this should actually be fine so what we are going to do is that we will just take these one by one and try and offset them so again this is basically random so there's no real way to do this this is just my feel so just keep on playing around with it until you get a result that you like so now when we play this back you can see that we may like a bit of frame over here to the right side the way we can simply fix this is that we can just select one of the lines that go behind so maybe this one and we can just drag it over to this side instead and try and see how that feels so that feels a bit better and now we have actually animated Dhiren now of course you can add a lot more properties you could animate sort of the stroke width or you could animate the end of the shrimp path there's a lot of possibilities but this is really sort of the base and then you can try it and play around with it you might want to add a bit of animation to the umbrella because right now it seems pretty stiff so you can take the top of the umbrella and pound it to the handle and then we select the handle and we want to adjust the anchor point so select the pan behind to drag it down to the bottom because we once add a bit of rotation to the bottom right here then we can go in press P and then press are put on shift and press out that is and right click the position and separate the dimensions so now we want to work with the Y position and the rotation so let's go to the start and then keyframe to both of them and just go one second ahead at a bit of rotation so maybe around five degrees and we just want to push this up a bit sort of like this then we can actually go to the start and we just want to push it down a bit and maybe go negative five in the rotation so we just want some subtle motion and we want to take these starting keyframes so we can actually Lube it copy them go one second ahead and paste them then we can select all of them and press f9 go into the graph editor and right here we just want to work with one of them at a time so we can actually see them probably so it's like the Y position and we'll just do a standard easing just ease them a bit more like this because we solve want this to oscillate and therefore we don't want any extreme easing just want this sort of basically easing but just pushed a bit further then we can all click all the option click the Y position and type in loop out semicolon copy that and just paste it onto the rotation and to make it a bit more interesting well I should just take the rotation well done old our option and click the right arrow key two times that way you will offset them a bit and if we just make this a bit bigger so you can actually see what's going on try and play this back and as you can see right now the rotation is way too extreme but we can easily fix that so select the rotation and go into the graph editor we just select all three points hold down command a control click the top point and just drag it in like this you can sort of take a look at this maybe it's still a bit too extreme just write it down and we can also go in and change the position so that's just done in the same way drag it down a bit and try and play it back so as you can see this is really subtle animation but it's just to make the umbrella come to life and we also might want to add some effects to the top of the umbrella just because the rain is hitting it so it wouldn't be completely still so we can go to the Faceman psets search for turbulent displace drag that on to it and right now you can see it's way too extreme but we really just want to lower the size quite a bit and then we also want to lower the amount and you can just see it's a bit of displacement and if it's not in motion it's quite hard to see therefore we will alter option click the evolution and before we should do that the thing the revolution does is just animate the turbulent displays so if I drag this up so you can actually see the displacement you see that it just becomes animated and we can hold object like that psiphon time times 1000 and what this does is that it changes the evolution by 1000 every second and will you play this back you see that's a bit of subtle motion just as the rain hits and because the rain is not hitting at the start we want to animate this to start so you can see the rain starts hitting here say we can add a keyframe for the amount then we can go to the start and just set it to zero and we might want to zoom out a bit and try and preview the final animation so as you can see that's how you animate rain and of course you can alter this in a lot of ways add some effects you can also animate a lot more things within the trim paths and the sort of path and stroke itself and that's really a lot of possibilities with this so I hope that you take this tutorial and create some amazing things yourself and I'll be so glad if you shared with me on Instagram at all and off that's a link in the description so if you enjoyed the video be sure to leave a like post a comment down below and tell me if you could use this for anything and if you have any suggestions for future tutorials be sure to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to get notified when our build future videos that's all for now till next time

Channel: Oliver Randorff

Views: 32,840

Keywords: motion design, mograph, motion graphics, animation, 2d animation, 3d animation, animated, after effects, adobe after effects, animated rain, rain, motion design tutorial, how to animate rain, animating rain, animated stroke after effects, stroke animation, path animation after effects, rain animation, rain animation after effects, animation basics, flat animation, mograph tutorial

Id: x8x0KPmxlfU

Length: 19min 23sec (1163 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020