Simple Squiggling Line - Adobe After Effects tutorial

hello everyone in this little After Effects tutorial we're gonna make this simple squiggling line maybe it's mustard maybe it's some kind of space worm I don't really know what this is this is a topic that was requested coming off of a basic patterns tutorial if you want to check that out now people wanted to know how did you make that squiggly thing that you used in the pattern well this is that explanation we use only shape layers which is pretty great and we should get this done pretty quickly let's see we can get it under five minutes you can get on making stuff [Music] all right so we've got After Effects open let's get into it I'm gonna make a new composition I'm gonna make a 1920 by 1080 composition just call this the example so should you want to get your hands on the project file for this tutorial it will be the thing that we make right now I'm gonna start by setting up my composition window here I'm gonna get the grid out there and I'm gonna get the proportional grid out there as well so I can tell where the center line is a little bit thicker and I don't really need the transparency grid so just toggle that off now there's one more kind of guide that I want to put out there I'm just going to double click the rectangle here you you bring up its attributes and give myself a 1080 by 1080 square here we go and this is really just to guide us in creating this there is some specific math and some numbers I'm gonna call out but just try to work visually just in case you are not using the exact same numbers that I am so let's make the square red so we can kind of see what we're doing out here perfect I'll just lock that so I don't touch it and I'm gonna grab the pen tool and we're going to give this a stroke a white stroke of 40 and we do not need a fill so we're just going to draw we're gonna draw the path that will ultimately become the squiggly line so here we go just draw it out make sure this is snapping to the points so now we have a line that we know is 1080 pixels long from one point to the other but we don't want a straight line we want a squiggly lines we're gonna rename the layer we're gonna twirl down we're gonna go into the contents into the shape I'm going to add a zigzag there we go we've added a zigzag make sure it's in the stack here under the path that can be very helpful and the size the size of the zigzag let's make it 40 that's a good size lookin real Charlotte brown II out here and the ridges per segment I'm gonna say eight let's go for eight ridges per segment and we're gonna make it smooth not corners but smooth so now this looks like what we want we need it to move the way we want and I accomplished that by adding a trim pads and I'm trimming after the zigzag so that's kind of important we could trim before or after the zigzag so if I trim after the zigzag that's how it looks if I trim before that's how it looks so that's just what goes down so after the zigzag and get your trim paths now how much do we want to trim well I want to trim off just this last unit here this last period this last if this were a wave this last little bit from right here to right there so I'm just gonna trim trim trim trim trim you know by the numbers if we really get in here real close dial that in right there seventy seven point eight again these numbers are important for what I'm doing but may not be applicable to you now I'm going to offset it we're gonna offset this thing and so setting a keyframe on the offset going ahead a little bit it's going to offset so it goes right to the end here right to the end of that square that we created cool so that looks to be 80 I'm going to change the stroke from a butt cap to a round cap it's gonna be these rounded ends which I would like and you'll notice there's a little bit over here because at an eighty degree offset we have a little bit peeking through over there so I'll just take that back to seventy nine point nine that's gonna be close enough so what does that do well it's got this thing working its way through this at the start just will be zero all right so it's kind of working its way through and now I want it to move so that it's always in the middle all right it's always in the middle of this square and I will do that by going to the transform of shape one I'm changing the position here thanks to some math that I've already done beforehand I know if I bumped this by negative 120 that's gonna put it right in the middle and set a keyframe here and that keyframe lines up with the other keyframe Yeah right there and now we're gonna go back to the beginning and we're gonna set here 120 so it should always remain in the center so it's just hanging out here in the middle waving along pretty nice I'm gonna hit you to call up all of these keyframes I've put in hold down alt click on the stopwatch type in l oo P o UT it's a capital o and then some parentheses I'm just gonna copy this I'm just adding the loop out expression which is going to continue cycling because we haven't written anything here in the argument it assumes we want it to cycle there are other methods and we cover the loop out on other videos on here but it's going to continue looping this all the time and you've done it congratulations you have created a basic squiggly line people asked and here it is this is a fairly simple kind of method and if you're going to do it with your own squiggle I would urge you to work visually and don't just punch in numbers and hope for the best but that is it it's just that simple just like it says on the tin if you had trouble with this tutorial please let me know in the comments and I'll try to get you through it if you've enjoyed learning this little bit of motion graphics this little bit of After Effects please subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so you'll know when new tutorials come out here it's good to know if you want get your hands on the project file that we mentioned head on over to eben Abrams comm links to that are in the description in the cards and if you subscribe to the channel then I will see you next time thank you so much and have a nice day [Music]

Channel: ECAbrams

Views: 362,131

Keywords: adobe after effects, after effects, adobe, after, effects, fx, mograph, motion graphics, motion, graphics, vfx, visual effects, instruction, tutorial, tut, how to, how, to, help, tips, tricks, after effects tutorial, motion graphics tutorial, vfx tutorial, shape layers, squiggle, zig zag, offset, shape, layers, shape layer wave, undulate, easy, simple, quick

Id: yG9jsBYaXfY

Length: 6min 17sec (377 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 07 2018