Quick & Easy After Effects Shape Morph Tutorial

in this video I'm going to show you my method to quickly morph between any two shapes quickly and easily so we want this triangle to morph into that square the method I'm going to show you is super versatile it will work on any shapes and you can apply lots of the principles to a bunch of non shape morphing scenarios first let's open up our position property on our triangle keyframe its current position and a few frames later move it over to where our square is now the key to a good transition is anticipation anticipation is the movement that happens before our main movement that builds up energy and thus the viewer know hey look get your eye balls over here something is about to happen adding anticipation is one of the biggest things you can do to improve your animation for anticipation here, our triangle is going to move very slightly to the left before it morphs across the screen to the right so let's add another keyframe position closer to the start and then another one about the same distance after because we're going to make our shape overshoot as well where it goes a little further than it needs to and then settles back down into position on our second keyframe lets nudge our position a touch to the left and on our third key frame a touch to the right just using our arrow keys let's hide a square as well we don't need to see that for now now the triangle moves over to the left slowly zooms over to the right and comes back a little to rest to make that all feel smooth and natural let's add some easing first I'm going to right click on its position and click separate dimensions because we're only animating its x position any y-axis information is just going to get in our way so let's delete those Y position keyframes now let's select our x position keyframes and jump into our graph editor by clicking over here this is a representation of a X position over time it goes to the left goes to the right very fast and then comes back left again let's select all of those keyframes and click the easy ease button down here to ease that motion and get some Bezier handles here's what that looks like and now we're going to adjust these so that they ease in and the ease out are really gradual so let's pull out the beginning and end handles as long as we can there that's looking better now let's make this main movement a little quicker and more explosive we can do that by facing these handles towards each other and making this curve a little bit steeper but we don't want these edges to be that long so let's bring those down a touch now let's take a look good we're almost there I'm gonna tink around with these for a few minutes to get that feeling a touch more natural because the better this motion is the better the whole effect is going to be there we are I'm also gonna add some rotation to exaggerate that motion I'll play some rotation keyframes in the same areas as our position keyframes turn the second one a bit to the left the third one a bit to the right then go into the graph editor and make a similar curve to our position keyframes if you haven't installed the free plugin is copy is very handy for copying ease values now here's our animation it's looking good but there's no shape morphing nowhere to be seen so let's fix that at the end of this animation let's make our square visible and then parent it to our triangle by using the pickwhip here and selecting the triangle now they are both attached and let's drag the end of the triangle layer to the middle here where the animation is at its fastest and let's trim the start of our square to the same point as well so now our shape switches in between these two frames let's take a look for a lot of for a lot of scenarios this is all you need the anticipation and smooth easing make it so you barely even see the cut but because all animators are show-offs and want everyone to know we morphed a shape like a Big Damn animation hero we're gonna draw their attention to it with some shape path animation let's search for a path property over here in the timeline and I wanna select both their paths and right click convert to Bezier path so they're both editable let's add keyframes to both of those let's add an extra keyframe at the beginning of this big movement on the triangle and one at the end of that big movement for the square now we're gonna focus on the cutting point between the shapes here let's zoom in a touch for the triangle I'm gonna select that pen tool from up here I'm gonna move back this vertex here and with our convert a vertex tool from up here in the toolbar I'm going to drag it out over that vertex to create a rounder shape and I'm also going to round the other corners too slightly here I want it to look like the back of this triangle is moving a bit slower and leaving a trail behind it I'm gonna easy ease that first keyframe with f9 on my keyboard let's take a look there not bad now let's adjust the path of the square to make a similar shape now that's a shape morph if ever I've see one but let's add some extra elements and secretary motion to really impress those strangers on the Internet and hope to scrape together some self-validation we can add another keyframe to a square path here and then adjust this square path keyframe so it looks like that trailing section of the shape has caught up and it's deforming the square inwards there we go and let's add this blob that flies off from a square because it just got too much momentum for us to handle this is just a shape layer and I've got a few keyframes adjusting its position rotation and scale appearing when our square is at its furthest point to the right for this second blob section here that's attached to the square which I've called blob 2, I drew the shape on a separate shape layer and keyframe its path property each frame is touching blob one and then ease into a flat edge going back into the square sometimes it's faster to just draw a shape for four or five frames instead of some tricky After Effects morphing hack then I've also added this squiggly texture which is just a comp with this shape inside with no fill and then a pink stroke I just parented that to my triangle and then selected to preserve underlying transparency over here so it's only visible on already visible areas underneath which is our Mighty Morphin shape last of all is this shading layer which is just a pink shape that I've and a Gaussian blur to, parent it to my triangle and then also added preserve underlying transparency as well so that it is well is also confined to our existing shape layers then I've added this whole comp to a dramatic space background because this is just the type of stuff that happens all the time in space I've made a short playlist of some related videos that'll think you'll enjoy if you've made it this far I'll see you in the next video and please consider subscribing if you'd like more of these videos every week Subtitle: Zoe J Marriott

Channel: Ben Marriott

Views: 506,551

Keywords: after effects shape morph, after effects, morphing objects in after effects, morphing shape layers, after effects tutorial, after effects transition tutorial, after effects tips, adobe after effects, ben marriott, shape morph, shape transform after effects, shape layers after effects, after effects shape animation, after effects shape transition, shape animation after effects, shape animation, transform shapes after effects, after effects animation, easy after effects

Id: 3EGuLX6PsQ4

Length: 6min 47sec (407 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Q-ArtsMedia]

Once again an outstanding tut.

[u/kangis_khan]

Great tutorial! Thanks for sharing your knowledge with the rest of us.

[u/Sullyh_]

Wow, I just watched it yesterday by the youtube recommendation.