Trigger Animation with Markers in After Effects / Expression

As you can see, the guy blinks and moves his eyebrow right after the time indicator passes markers. Let me show you how it's done. Here I have a composition with a vector head. I'll create a simple blink animation. I select both eyes, press S to reveal the scale, turn off the proportional scale and set the first keyframes. We don't care exactly where. Then I create the last keyframes where the eyes are already opened. And I set the scale to 2% somewhere in the middle to close the eyes. Then I select all the keyframes, press F9 to make the animation smoother and the blink is ready. Now I need a Null Object. I will name it "Control". The markers will be placed on it. I check that the layer is selected and press the asterisk (*) key on Numpad. This will add an empty marker to the layer. To add a name to it, I simply double click on it. Let it be "Blink". Now I'm going to put my composition with the setup into a new composition. It will be called "Animation". With a right-click, I enable Time Remapping on the layer. I hold the Alt key and click on a stopwatch. Here I insert the expression. You can find it in the description ↓. Nothing happens after that, but that's fine. To trigger the animation, I need to create markers. Again with the layer selected I press the asterisk (*) key and give the exact same name to this marker here. Now the guy starts to blink. I can duplicate the marker to make him blink twice. If I want I can add as many animations as I like. And it doesn't have to be just a single action. An animation can have a beginning and an end. For example, I can lower his eyebrow slightly, as if he's a bit flustered. That will be the beginning. And after that, I will return his face back to normal. But that will already be a different marker. As a result, there will be two markers. The one that raises his eyebrow and the one that lowers it. To trigger this animation, I need to enter the new name that I gave to the marker. "Concern In" — here. And "Concern Out" — here. All animations are now triggered by markers. And I can make him stay with that emotion for as long as I want to. Even until the end of the timeline. And, basically, that's it. Just one little tip. When you finish typing the marker name, don't press Enter. Because you'll create a new line — marker names will not match and the expression won't work. To make it work, I delete the line I just created and press OK. The names now match and everything runs.

Channel: Vitaly Balyberdin

Views: 430

Keywords: trigger animation with markers after effects tutorial, markers trigger animation after effects tutorial, animation is triggered by markers after effects tutorial, after effects expression to trigger animation, time remapping expression to triger animation in after effects, launch animation with markers after effects, start animation using layer markers in ae, run the animation with markers after effects

Id: 1kcomrS0QxE

Length: 3min 5sec (185 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 26 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/balyberdin]

Expression: https://pastebin.com/hL2DNbdj

Project File: https://gum.co/lnfMMc

[u/ramlak121]

I really like the thumbnail gradient thing