After effects City Lit Animation course- week 4 Notes

Litza Jansz and John HorabinText and Shape toolsTitles and Motion graphics

Lets start with the text tool- its at the top of the screen

Type tool basicsThere are:2 type tools- horizontal and vertical choose the tool that works for your project, usually Horizontal

2 kinds of type- point and box- the first is most useful- simply click once with the left hand mouse button anywhere on the stage, then type…

Box requires you to click and hold the left hand mouse button (LMB) and rag out to create a bounding box that will control and limit where the text can be on screen- if you drag out a tall thin box and type a long sentence it will make sense of what is happening.

Again, usually POINT type is the most useful option.

play with the text tool for a while, experimenting with the different tools and types..

create a logo

Now lets use the toolMakeup a film title-

Write it on the stage using the text tool, and then choose and edit your font, colour, fill, stroke etc.

Note that when we double click the text to edit it, it is highlighted in red-

We can make changes using the CHARACTER window, over on the right hand sideLike Font size, spacing between letters fill types, as well as stretching individual lettersSave your composition.

JAWS

Create a large JAWS Logo

Activate the pen tool WITH the text layer still selected- thus making the PEN tool act as a PATH or MASK tool. If no layer was already selected the Pentool would behave as a SHAPE tool instead- more on that later…Draw a curve underneath the jaws text that begins off stage- Use only three points and practise click and dragging with the LMB to draw a smooth curve with 3 points.

now open up the text options dialogue on the timeline- look for the PATH dialogue box.

In the path options select the option for mask 1- which is the path you have just created with the pen tool- you should see your text leap to align to the curve as soon as you have selected this, and a new menu appears below in response to this feature becoming active.

These include options called first margin and Last Margin- you should think of these as ENTRANCE and EXIT instead, as that is what they will add to your text animation along this path.

Adjust the value of first margin with your draghand tool- see how it moves towards the left with a negative number, and to the right with a higher number.

Turn on the stopwatch to create keyframes at the beginning of your project-Create a negative number that moves the text entirely off screen-

Move the play head to before the middle of the comp on the timeline- change the number so the logo moves to the middle of the frame- move the play head to 2 seconds later, and click the keyframe key to the LEFT HAND SIDE of the stopwatch for first margin

This tool is really useful, as it automatically creates a keyframe on the timeline even if the value has not changed at all- This is really useful for generating HOLDS- an important concept in animation and all performance. Move the play head to the end of the project and increase the number until the text moves all the way across and off screen again-

Notice we did all of that with the tool for ENTRANCE- first margin- just because we drew a curve initially that deliberately included entrance AND exit, and we didn’t have to go near the Last Margin controls-

Usually, that’s best- avoid using both wherever you can, as results can be confusing.

So you’ve just created a text animation on a path you drew your self!Lets make it a bit more exciting!

Add an animator from the column to the right of the word Text on the timeline:

Choose Opacity from the long drop down menu that appears.

An animator is added to the layer below-Animators are very powerful because they are often used to drive many different changes with very few keyframes- this is due to their workflow- they have a RANGE SELECTOR value where all keyframing is done, although these keyframes can be linked to multiple properties.

Open the Range Selector.

There is a GOTCHA! Waiting here for us in the default settings! Change the END value to 0% immediately- in this context, Start and End AGAIN mean ENTRANCE and EXIT!

If we left end set to 100% we are stupidly telling AE we want the exit to have already happened!This will make it very hard to create animation that we actually want, it is an example of there occasionally being STUPID default settings for some things in AE.

Set The opacity value to 0%- this should make the layer invisible- put your play head in the middle of the composite timeline-

It hasn’t! so why not?Because the START value is still at 0%- meaning the entrance- now involving the Opacity value, hasn’t even started at all- if you drag up the start value now, you will see the layer beginning to fade out-

We will set keyframes HERE in the RANGE SELECTOR, then they will be applied to any property we add to the opacity later, and will move between the values chosen for each property we add.

Turn on the stopwatch for Start- move your playhead to the middle, and move the start value down to 0%- because we want the logo to be visible in the middle of the project!

Add keyframes for the beginning and end of the timeline at 100%- and ram preview the result-

We should get the animation moving along the path and fading up one letter at a time, as well as fading out at the end.

We should also see the letters fading in one at a time, which is cool, but how would we control that., if it is not what we want?

Open up the advanced menu set below, and change the based on setting to Words-See how the whole word JAWS now fades up as one when you ram preview it!

Try adding scale, blur, rotation to make the title assemble with another value:

I added a scale function from the ADD menu

DO NOT ADD ANOTHER ANIMATOR!!!Use the ADD Menu to add properties to Animator 1!

You should hardly ever need to add more than 1 animator to a text animation!

I added a scale value that I then edited so that the X and Y properties were unchained, then I reduced the Y value down to 10%.

When plsyed back this should cause the text to enter and grow, and exit and shrink, all still driven by the keframes added in the range selector.

This is an elegant way of working, because titles should nearly always synchronise their changes, and the range selector gives you an elegant way of being sure of that.

Try adding other properties to the range selector and using the ADD menu.

Also, try changing settings in the ADVANCED menu, in particular the randomise order settgs, and the based on setting- lots of different results can be achieved in this way.

You still only have one layer!

Motion graphics with shapes

create comp 2

Create shapes- use the shape tool to create the 5 different basic shapes on the stage

these are:Rectangle, rounded rectangle, ellipse, Polygon and Star- but actually, you can create a lot more shapes than that- the Polygon and star can be used to create shapes from the triangle up to shapes with hundreds of sides or points.

Create a 3rd comp Create a star- open the Contents >Polystar Path drop down

Experiment changing settings-

Try animating the stopwatch for points- I went from 3- the least possible- up to 20, and then ram previewed that results-

Move them around- maybe animate them quickly…Add a shape- a star-

Try animating the fill colour by turning on the stop watch for this value

Finally the ADD menu lets us add more motion graphic changes on top of the basic shape- the ADD menu works again a lot like the Animator menu in the text layers-

Although this time each property has its own settings and stopwatches, rather than being driven from a Range Selector.

Notice this time within its transform there is an ADD menu rather than an Animator menu- they have slightly different options for what sort of animated changes we can make- but again, are really powerful when combined creatively…