Object along a path animation - 3 different ways | After Effects Tutorial

hey guys in this After Effects tutorial I'll show you three different ways of animating shapes along a path knowing how to do this saves you a lot of time in the animation process and gets you great results with little effort let's start with way number one by creating two solids the first one gets a fresh green color the second one a shiny yellow one now let's add a round mask to the upper solid then we draw the path along which the yellow shape should move adjusts it to give it a nice curve add a keyframe for the mask path copy and paste it into the position row of the upper layer you can see that the position keyframes are automatically set that's the basic principle you need to know now let's move on and make it a bit more interesting let's roll the shape on a line this is my solution for doing that with solids we delete the mask and this time to our shape [Music] I trusted to give it some nice curves pretty okay like before we take the path of the shape copy and paste it into the position row of the yellow shape what you'll see now is that it moves all around the green shape of course to change that we set a keyframe at the position while we want the move to begin and end after that we delete all the key friends before the beginning and after the end let's move the first keyframe to frame zero and the last one to around two seconds as the motion path is messed up a little we have to readjust it [Music] alright let's set the last keyframe to ease ease in and adjust the speed graph the shape slowly comes to an end and also starts slow before it takes up speed we want to change the direction of the move so select all keyframes then right-click on one of them and select the keyframe assistant and click time reverse keyframes now the shape starts slowly coming over that hill then takes off speed and slowly rolls out again now we copy the mask select subtract and expanded by around minus 12 frames by parenting the mask path to the upper mask path it follows the form of the upper mask which is great now we move the whole shape down until the yellow shape is on top of it that's it moving a shape along a path with solids and masks solution number two is using shape layers OLF shape layers by the way let's grab the path tool and draw a line we don't need the fill and give the stroke dark color did you know by double-clicking on the ellipse tool a shape is automatically created centered in your comp now we have to get rid of the stroke and set the size to 200 pixels awesome it's the same principle leg before we set a keyframe for the path copy and paste it into the position row there we go the basic move is set but now we want the shape to roll down that right curve again we move to the end of the timeline and position the shape somewhere here and adjust the motion path then we open the graph editor and adjust the speed graph move the last keyframe down to zero and drag the handle to the left to let it roll out then we drag the first keyframe down and drag the handle to the right to let it start slow rolling up it needs to slow down as well rolling back down to now we shift the middle keyframe a bit to the left to balance the speed a bit more first curve needs to be a bit higher than the second one meaning it is faster at the beginning and slower when rolling back [Music] now we need to adjust the anchor point so that the shape is it's on top of the line [Music] as we can see now we have to adjust the rotation at the beginning it will be around minus 45 degrees on top of the curve it will be zero halfway down it will be around 24 degrees at the bottom it will be zero again and at the right end it will be around minus 65 degrees back half way up it will be 24 degrees again now we open the graph editor and adjust the curves a little bit looks confusing as it's the curves of the positional rotation combined as both where I was so selected you could also do select the position row to see just the rotation curve [Music] let's see almost we need to adjust the rotation a bit more [Music] okay that'll do [Music] next let's animate the line we open the add menu and select trim paths at the beginning both values will be 0 [Music] shortly before the shape arrives at the right end the end value of the line will be 100 now we have to smooth that animation at ease ease in and adjust the curve from the graph editor awesome the third way of animating a saber number path is using trim paths same start we draw a line make it nice don't need to fill eight pixels for the stroke and a nice blue color some more adjustments then we copy the layer loader stroke up to 50 pixels and add trim paths we set the start value to 50% and the end value to 49.9% now we give it a round cap and there we have the round shape all we need to do now is animate the offset of the shape so let's set a keyframe for the star in the end as the shame rolls back we move the end keyframe more to the middle and set a new and keyframe somewhere here let's add easy ease in and adjust this curve slow start slow rollout slow start again slow rollout again let's have a look awesome now we move the path up a bit and adjust it on the right side done guys these are three different ways of animating shapes along the path thanks so much for watching guys hope that was helpful if you have any kind of questions let me know in the comments below please give me a thumbs up subscribe and hit that notification bell we all know that sharing is caring I'd love to know holla'd tutorial inspired your work that's a link in the comments below or tacking on Instagram see y'all next time bye you

Channel: Manuel does Motion

Views: 74,084

Keywords: after effects, motion graphics, after effects tutorial, animating along a path, moving object along a path, animating along a path in after effects, motion graphics tutorial, easy animation tutorial, animating in after effects, animating paths in after effects, learning after effects, animate in after effects, animate path after effects, After effects animation, after effects shape animation, after effects shape layer animation, shape layer animation, after effects basics

Id: 01iyVL_TPBk

Length: 10min 31sec (631 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 05 2020