How to Morph Shape Layer Icons Using a Guide Shape - EXTENDED EPISODE - Adobe After Effects Tutorial

hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of seven minute eighty tutorials relearn tips tricks and shortcuts and seven minutes or less no BS just AE the topic of this lesson is something that's been a source of frustration for me for a very long time morphing shapes now there are other tutorials out there that cover this but I've come up with my own method and I wanted to share that with you this lesson is gonna run longer than seven minutes probably closer to twelve to thirteen but if you stick around it will be well worth the wait like I said there are a host of tutorials out there about morphing shapes all the ones I've come across are cumbersome time-consuming they require a lot of steps that just aren't effective and few if any have consistent rules for this technique until now there are a few rules that you need to remember which I'll be displaying on screen as we get to them I'll also put these rules in the description below I recommend you watch this tutorial a few times to really get a solid hold of this technique once you understand the theory behind it you'll be morphing shapes with ease there's a lot to get through so let's dive right in okay so I'm reading three shape layer icons I'm going to show you how we can morph one into the next in a seamless way so first is focus on just our headphones and our iPhone we'll get rid of this laptop for now now the key to doing this is to use a guide shape and I'll show you what I mean by that let's go up to layer new shape layer and it's just at a rectangle and a fill so now the way to conceptualize this process is you will always be going from one shape to another so your first shape consider that the animation out shape and the second shape is your animation in so this guide shape should match your animation in which in this case it's going to be the iPhone so like so maybe about two seconds and we'll pull that over and then we'll end our headphones there there are a few things you need to pay attention to the first one is the scale of the animation in our scale for this iPhone is at 53% so let's make this shape layer 53% also so that way it's identical to this one will coats kite-shaped one and I'll even give it a different color so let's just shape this that way it looks like our iPhone so we want to match as closely as possible and if you bring it your opacity you can kind of see so this will be our guide shape for our first set of animations going into the iPhone so the first roll is to use the shape that's being animated in as a reference for your guide shape and we did that so the second rule is you want to convert all shape paths to Bezier paths unless the shape uses an animation tool my animation tool if you click on this Add button it means anything underneath gradient stroke so anything merge paths offset paths all the way down to zigzag if a group uses an animation tool then you're not going to convert the shape to a Bezier path and this will make more sense as we go through some of these but for now just keep that in mind that you want to convert all shapes to Bezier paths unless they use an animation tool right click on rectangle path and convert to Bezier path and that just gives us a path so basically when you do that it converts a shape into a path and if we have a path we can put a keyframe for path and hit you on that layer and let's hide that for now so this is what's going to be driving the animation for this morphing sequence okay so now let's open up our headphones because this is me our first shape or our animation out shape and if we open up our ear piece we see that we have two rectangle paths no animation tool meaning this doesn't have like a zig zag or a repeater or a merge paths or anything like that so we can convert these both to Bezier paths and put a keyframe for both of those and then close that up and for outer ear piece same thing we have two rectangle paths we can convert with no animation tools go down to blue phone we open that up now see this us have a trim paths so instead of converting to a Bezier path and morphing that shape we're going to animate the trim paths just put a keyframe for end close that back up and for wire loss of a trim paths and we want to put a keyframe for end and the reason why is because as you can see it has 56% this is the percentage that's driving the animation so that's what we're going to be animating I mean close that back up and then let's go ahead and just put a keyframe for position and scale in case we need it so if you get you on that layer these are all of the keyframes that will be morphing into the guide shape which is going to smoothly transition into our iPhone go down to the end of this layer here let's copy the keyframe from our guide shape and any place you see path just ctrl V to paste it and then for these end percentages make those zero what we're trying to do is we're trying to make the last frame of the animation out or this headphones layer look identical to the beginning of this iPhone and we will get there but first we need to prepare the iPhone for animation okay so the next rule is you only want to morph large shapes using the guide path keyframe here but for these smaller shapes you want to animate this scale just because it makes it look much better it's a much smoother transitions like this speaker up here in this power button we're gonna be animating this scale of those groups so let's open up speaker here and see this is a small shape but a keyframe for scale close that up power button is a small shape so we want to put a keyframe for scale now our screen we have a rectangle path no animation tool so no trim paths or anything so it convert to Bezier path keyframe for path and the same thing for body right click convert to Bezier path and keyframe for that and then we're going to just put a keyframe for a position and scale in case we need it so let's hit u to bring up our keyframes and so this is what this iPhone will eventually become but we want it to start from this guide path here so copy that keyframe where you see path control V and then for these scales up here for speaker and power button make those values 0 so basically we want this shape to become this shape and the way that we do that is this open up our headphones if you hit you we need our scales to match so as you can see our scale is different see we have seventy nine point four this skills 53 so we want to animate the headphones we want the final scale to be the same as this scale for our iPhone so let's make that 53 and as we can see it's the same size but now they are off in position so let's pull this over one frame so we can see this better so basically we need to move our headphones up so that way it matches it and pull that frame back and so we have this which looks pretty smooth but we still need to make a few more adjustments highlight all of the keyframes in the first set keyframe assistant ease out graph editor let's pull all these handles over maybe even pull this little bit closer and then for the animation in we're going to go keyframe assistant ease in and then pull all those handles over to the left so now if we kind of watch this we're almost there with this animation we still make a few more adjustments so the next rule is we need to animate the color of the animation out shape into the color of the animation in shape see how this goes from this green and it pops right into that white we want to animate that let's open up our headphones and that color is coming from this earpiece here so we open up our fill we can see this is that green just put a keyframe for that and then we want that to fade into this color where the iPhone begins and the way you do that is just grab the eyedropper click that color and hit you again and make sure your keyframes are lined up and they are and we'll just go ahead and do the same thing to this animation color keyframe make it a hard ease out so just makes us a little bit smoother so that's morphing the headphone into the iPhone so now that's more for iPhone into our laptop I'm gonna turn this on we'll just come down here maybe around four seconds so now we need to make a guide shape for our laptop let's create a new shape layer layer new shape layer and we're going to add a rectangle and give it a fill and now remember we need to make sure we have the same scale for our guide shape as we do for a laptop so see our laptop is at 53% scale so we'll make this shape layer here 53% scale and then open up our rectangle path and just adjust our size settings so it matches about the same size so the size settings cover or screen from top to bottom just like that okay and now right click convert to Bezier path put a keyframe for that and hit you then will hide that layer so now we need to go to our iPhone and we need to animate that out to this new guide shape so let's just highlight all of these keyframes copy and paste and if you right-click with all of them highlighted keyframe assistant time reverse keyframes that would just reverse the values so see now that goes back out to the shape right now it's going back to that first guide shape so let's copy this keyframe from our new guide shape and we're going to click on anything that has path and control V so now that will become the wider rectangle and we need to prep our lap top shape for animation so let's open that up so our reflection path here this has a trim paths so we're not going to be morphing this group instead we're going to animate the trim paths so put a keyframe for end because that's percentage this being animated at a hundred percent and then we'll sum up our speaker and now this is a small shape you just make this solo this so this is our speaker this like little shape right here since a small shape so we'll be animating this scale of that instead of morphing it the keyboard we have emerged paths so we'll be animating the scale of that group and now our screen is a rectangle path with no animation tool so convert to bezzie a keyframe for path same for body converts bezzie a and then the keyframe for that path now let's hit you and let's go ahead and line up all these keyframes here if you're on shift and hit P and that's the brings of your position and scale I like to always add in those keyframes just in case we need them okay so select the beginning of that layer let's go back up to our guide shape and hit you copy the keyframe in again wherever we see path we're going to control V and then for this trim pass we're gonna make that zero for scale make that zero and for this scale this is the keyboard so we let's just make this first value zero Tsar weight animates from the center remember we need to line up these two shapes here this is our final rectangle let's just move laptop above iPhones we can see it better and so we need to move now our position up so that way these two match and we want to highlight the second set of key frames ease in keyframe assistant I'm going to pull all those over so you see how this is looking real quick that's basically the idea right there okay and then we just need to animate now the color of this screen so if we open this up our iPhone screen goes into our laptop screen so remember we need to make a keyframe for this color here and then we want to pick her eyedropper and choose this gray so that way as it animates out it goes from white into gray and again the rules are as follows you want to use this shape that's being animated in as a reference for the guide shape remember you have an animation out shape in an animation in shape whenever you're creating your guide shapes make sure that you pay attention to the scale of the guide shape and the shape that you're making the guide shape for they should have the same exact scale invert all shaped paths to Bezier paths unless that shape is using an animation tool such as trim pass merge pass zigzag etc when a path uses trim paths don't morph the shape instead you want to animate the trim paths when a group uses any other animation tool such as a repeater or merge paths don't morph the shape instead animate the groups scale the next rule is you want to morph large shapes only using the path of the guide shape you want to animate this scale of small shapes so whenever you have a small shape like a power button or a tiny speaker don't morph that but instead animate the scale of that group next you want to make sure that you animate the color of the animation out object to the color of the shape that's being animated in finally in-between animations you just wanna make sure that you line up your animation out shape with your animation in shape the main thing you want to accomplish is you want the final frame of the animation out shape to look identical to the first frame of the animation in shape oh then up to you out please comment like share and subscribe and don't forget to click the bell so that way you're notified every time I upload a new video I'll put the project file in the description below along with a link to my you to me course the power of shape layers I'd love to see you guys over there and teach you all about shape layers feel free to reach out to me anytime with any questions or comments and let me know what topic you'd like to see covered thanks for watching everybody I'll see you next time

Channel: 7 Minute AE Tutorials

Views: 27,226

Keywords: after effects shape morphing tutorial, quick and easy after effects shape morph, morph one shape into another after effects, adobe after effects shape layer tutorial, shape layer animation after effects tutorial, after effects shape animation, after effects shape morph, after effects shapes, after effects shape layer, after effects shape tutorial, after effects shape layer animation, how to morph shapes in after effects, how to morph complex shapes in after effects

Id: oT2ggga0jUU

Length: 12min 51sec (771 seconds)

Published: Sat May 23 2020