Once again, for our example, we are going to use our spaceship.
Interested in learning more? Why not take an online Adobe After Effects course? To start, select the layer you wish to animate.
Since we already showed you how to animate using keyframes, let's learn how to use presets to create animation. You can apply animation by using keyframes and adjusting the layer's properties, or you can use the animation presets that After Effects provides. You can also click on this tool in the Tools panel.ĭrag the anchor point to where you want to place it. To change an anchor point without moving the layer, click Y to use the Pan Behind tool. The anchor point for a layer is the center of the layer by default. It determines the point from which the layer scales or rotates. The layer duration bar for our top layer is circled below. You can also drag the layer duration bar. To set an In point, or the first frame where a layer appears, follow the same steps listed above for an Out point, except press Alt+[. You can also drag the layer duration bar to change the Out point. Just click on an edge of the colored bar to the right of the layer name in the Timeline pane and drag it. To set an out point, or trim a layer so it does not appear after a specified frame, move the playhead to the location where you want the layer to stop appearing. This is the location where you will no longer see the layer when the video is played. An In point is the first frame where a layer appears. An Out point is the last frame where the layer appears. We can specify where and when our spaceship – or any layer – appears by specifying In and Out points. There may be some layers that you only want to appear in certain parts of your composition. For example, perhaps we only want the spaceship layer in our composition to appear at the beginning as part of the introduction to our video. This saves time as you work on your composition. In addition, you can create parent/child layers as we did with text to animate several layers at once using the same animation. By using keyframes and increasing the scale value, you can make it seem like the camera is zooming in. You can also create rotation, scale, and opacity animation by following these exact same steps. Move the playhead back to the beginning by hitting the Home key, then press the spacebar to view your animation. Now move the playhead to the location in your Timeline where you want to add the second keyframe. The location of this keyframe will be where the animation (which happens to be motion) ends. Once you move the playhead, adjust the values for Position.Īs you can see below, the spaceship was moved in our composition. Next, click the stopwatch beside Position, as circled below. This will add a keyframe. Make sure your playhead is at the beginning of the time ruler. If it is not, click Home. To do that, we are going to go to the Timeline panel.Ĭlick the triangle beside the layer that contains the object you want to animate. Then click the triangle beside Transform. Adobe After Effects: Animation TechniquesĪnimating objects in After Effects is not difficult once you understand the simple steps. For example, you can take any object in a composition, then make that object move across the screen by simply creating keyframes.