Ahoy! It's Friday and I'm back with more After Effects tips for you.
Sounds like everyone was digging the amount of context I'm adding in these emails. I'll keep trying things and probably switch it up a little depending on how busy of a week I'm having.
If you wanna say hey, just hit reply and let me know what you think of this week's tips!
~Chris
AE Pro Tips of the Week
1. Separate Dimensions on any property
I LOVE to use Separate Dimensions when animating the Position of a layer.
Unfortunately, you can't do that for scale or any other multi-dimensional property.
Or can you?
Here's simple way to Separate Dimensions on any multi-dimensional property.
- Add 2 Slider Controls to your layer. Effect > Expression Control > Slider Control
- Rename the Slider Controls to Scale X and Scale Y
Now on your chosen property, Option/Alt + Click the stopwatch to Add an Expression
Add this expression to the Property (Scale for my example)
x = effect("Scale X")("Slider") // links to slider 1
y = effect("Scale Y")("Slider") // links to slider 2
[x,y]
If you did everything like I did, it will look like this!
Now you can animate X & Y separately using the two slider values!
And you have easy control of the graph curves for X & Y instead of the mess you had before.
2. Create a Text Box with One Layer
One layer.
A simple stack of effects.
Here's a simple but effective technique to rig a background box to fit to a dynamic text layer.
I've always done this with expressions (which is still a more powerful and flexible solution), but for simple use and fast use cases, this thread by JC Tecklenburg is GOLD.
How does this work?
Shift Channels - "Set Alpha From" to "Full On", makes anything within the layer's bounds fully opaque. The text layer is completely filled in.
CC Repetile extends the edges of a layer by mirroring or tiling to add padding to the box.
The Fill effect, fills all of the opaque areas of the layer with a color.
CC Composite composites the original layer back on top of the stack of effects. So it grabs the original text (with normal transparency) and plops it back over our new background.
BONUS 🕺🏻
You can add a Simple Choker between CC Repetile and CC Composite to give a quick, hacky rounded corner effect.
3. Animate a Stylized Faux 3D Diamond
In this thread, Handel Eugene shows how to create a Faux 3D Diamond using shape layers.
I don't plan on sharing too many tutorials in these emails, but Handel's thread is full of smart workflow techniques - too good not to share.
I love how simple techniques like precomping, mask animation etc can be layered together to create such a complex looking animation.
Also, the addition of Transform Skew at the end is 👨🍳😘👌
Don't like twitter? Check out the 3 minute tutorial on Vimeo instead
More helpful resources
📹MY YouTube channel - After Effects tutorials & tips
Gonna self promote here. I've been sharing a variety of After Effects videos to my Youtube channel and I have more on the way. Watch em here
📦Cloud-sync your scripts and presets folders
This post by Zack Lovatt shares how to use symlinks to keep your presets and script folders synced between computers. I always do this if I can - although it can get a bit messy between versions and mac/pc.
Check it out and stop re-installing your scripts all the time!
Be a good friend 👫
If you know someone who needs some more AE tips in their life, share this email with them!
You'll become their new favorite friend.
If you're new here, you can subscribe here so you don't miss out on this amazing deliciousness. Or don't. You're an adult, you can do what you want.
The end.
This week's question.
What is one thing you've learned in After Effects lately?
I like your replies - keep em up! :)
Chris
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