How to use Trim Paths on Vector Layers from Illustrator - After Effects Tutorial

hey everyone and welcome to my new tutorial in this tutorial we are going to learn how to properly animate trim paths on vector layers inside of after effects now basically instead of this happening we are going to create something like this and without wasting any more time let's go first i have this illustrator drawing that i made we are going to be working on this this file is already prepared we have four layers four different paths inside of these layers so we can jump into the after effects right now i will save this and open up adobe after effects i will create a new composition i will name this animating trim paths on ai layers i will leave the resolution 1920 by 1080 30 fps and 10 seconds duration okay and now i will drag the file that i've saved into this composition place it in i will import it as a composition footage dimensions will be document size okay now we have our drawing inside of it it's a standalone composition we have our four layers here we can see them because they are black as well i will right click this create create shapes from vector layer to get these shapes now i will delete these because i don't need them anymore so now we have four shapes i will go to fill and choose white color just so you can see it and here it is now every single one of these shapes is a fill this is not a stroke we can see that it's a closed path right so when we apply trim paths weird stuff is going to happen now let me fit this back up let me show you what i'm talking about let's say we want to put trim paths on the layer 4 on the stop layer i will go to add and use trim paths click here now let's see what's happening let's say we want to animate and look at this we will get this weird thingy happening right now to avoid this what i've found out is the following i will place this in the beginning put start on 50 and put the end on 50 percent as well we can see there is nothing here i will put a keyframe and then i will hold ctrl shift and right arrow to move 10 frames i will leave shift just hold ctrl to move like let's say 5 more frames now we can put start at a hundred percent and end at the zero percent and now we get something like this now we can play with the offset a little bit just to make this line you see like this so this is the animation that we get this is way better than the thing that was happening before this is the method that you can apply to all of these shapes i'll select all of these keyframes press f9 to easy ease them go to the graph editor and i will hold alt to zoom in and drag this handle to the left and now we got something like this maybe that's a little bit too fast so we can like drag these keyframes out to maybe one second and we've created our first animation we can click on trim paths ctrl c to copy them close this expand layer 3 outlines contents group and control v to paste it now we can click on the layer press u just to show these keyframes and we can drag them let's say here we have this we can even drag them a bit on the left to get this now we've animated the second part of this you can play around with the animation however you like but you get the idea we can fix that now we can go to layer 2 outlines contents and we can [Music] paste it here maybe press u to select the keyframes maybe move them a little bit press u again to close that go to layer one outlines now let's see where the animation ends here so maybe we can press on group one expanded just to see that press u to show them and here it is oh we can move this a little bit to the left so it starts faster there we go we've animated this using trim paths now if if you don't like the offset here you see we can just expand this and click on offset and move it however you like so we get the clean animation now we can add blur if you don't see this column you can press f4 on your keyboard to toggle it or you can go here to the left corner and see here expand or collapse the layer switches pane or expand or collapse the transfer controls pane or you can simply right click here columns and choose which one you want modes or switches now let me fit this back up and yeah this is the animation that we got now what we will be using in the second method is pen tool so we will basically draw shapes with stroke to animate it easier using trim paths let me show you what i mean i will hide these layers so i will start only with this layer layer four i will click on the pen tool i will click on fill we don't need any fill remove this i will leave stroke to purple and then stroke width maybe 20. i will put it on 20. now i will create one point here and one point here and while holding the left click i'm going to make this shape like this maybe around here now i will hold alt and click on this handle to drag it like this just so our next point plays according to our needs maybe i can put the point here and let's see what happens yeah this is good we can leave the point right here so let's say this is shape that we want now i will make our stroke a bit bigger just so it covers the whole thing and let it be 35 let's say 35 okay so this shape we are gonna use it as a track matte we will place it above the layer four because we can see that's our layer we've covered everything now we go here to the track matte and set it on alpha now what we will do is go to shape layer 1 contents shape and we will add trim paths open up trim paths and we will put the end to zero put a keyframe in the beginning move forward holding ctrl and shift and pressing the right arrow we will move 20 frames and we will put this up to 100 and now what we did here basically is we animated the shape layer 1 which is alpha matte to this layer 4. and now we get this we basically got the same animation as in the beginning so we can press we can hold these keyframes press f9 to easy use them go to the graph editor and in case you don't see this graph you can right click edit speed graph maybe you have edit value graph selected all this one move it to the left and now we get that fast animation we can press blur blur is enabled make sure it's enabled here so we get this it looks amazing now we're gonna have to do this for every single layer we can hide this layer we can open up the layer three and we can start drawing but it's the same layer as the one above so we can duplicate by pressing ctrl d put this one up here and we can simply go to layer transform and flip vertical so now we have this layer we can press on alpha matte on the layer 3 outlines and we get this so let's see both of them now let me fit this up that is our animation at the moment now what we will do is reveal this layer close these now we will go to the pen tool put one handle here hold shift put it here and we've covered everything up so you can see clearly you can make it smaller if you want we will expand this content shape add rim paths and now we can animate this however we want so now we will put and down to zero oops down to zero put a keyframe here move 20 frames forward put this on a hundred and there we have it maybe enable the blur instantly close contents close this click on layer 2 because that's our layer 2 put it on alpha matte so now i will fit this up to 100 and we get something like this now that's a bit slow if you ask me i will click on this shape layer 3 press u f9 easy is them make sure we are editing speed so take this handle put it to the left close and we got the animation there so now if we enable these layers we will get something like this move them a little bit there we go and for the last layer let's show it hide the other ones and make sure we select pen i will put one point here and while holding down shift and left click i will put one here and move it like this i guess so we get something like the curve maybe i've zoomed in a little bit but i think this will be fine let me zoom out okay yeah this is fine i will fit this up to a hundred from shape three i will copy the trim paths click on shape layer four open contents shape one and paste it here now i will press u and i will enable blur i will show all of these layers i will put this on the alpha matte shape 4 and there we go this is our animation and that's it for this tutorial i hope you learned something new and i will see you in the next one [Music] you

Channel: kat1z

Views: 8,437

Keywords: illustrator, after effects, how to use trim paths in after effects, import and animate illustrator layers in after effects, animate illustrator vector layers in after effects, how to properly animate vectors in after effects, using trim paths in after effects, kat1z, 4kat1z, Animate Vector Layers from Illustrator using Trim Paths, after effects trim paths, trim paths vector animation after effects, after effects tutorial trim paths, fix trim paths animation in after effects

Id: wTGuWpJFWn4

Length: 14min 3sec (843 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 20 2021