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  • - Well hello everybody, I'm Nathaniel Dodson

  • from tutvid.com, welcome to this

  • Adobe After Effects tutorial

  • where today we're gonna take a look at five

  • very basic, simple animations

  • that are perfect if you're just getting started

  • in Adobe After Effects.

  • You're gonna learn a whole lot about animation here.

  • If you do enjoy this tutorial,

  • well make sure you subscribe to my channel

  • so you never miss any future video editing,

  • After Effects, Adobe Premiere Pro, you name it, tutorials,

  • and without further ado, let's jump in

  • and get this thing started.

  • Alrighty, here in After Effects,

  • I'm working with a new composition

  • that I've sized to 2560 by 1440,

  • and I'm at 60 frames per second as well.

  • If you're creating a new composition to follow along,

  • go ahead and use these settings.

  • You can also go to composition, composition settings,

  • and change the settings

  • of an already existing composition in there.

  • I also have my background color set to the hex code 333333.

  • Just a pretty dark gray.

  • I also added this little image to the background,

  • I set its opacity to 5%, locked the background down

  • so it doesn't move or I don't accidentally adjust it.

  • It's not really part of this tutorial,

  • just if you're looking at it and you see it there,

  • that's what's going on.

  • Here's where the good stuff begins.

  • Alright, let's grab the text tool,

  • and type out the words, or the number and the word,

  • "5 easy", and over in the character panel,

  • I'm going to choose Bebas Bold as my font.

  • I'm gonna set it to 350 pixels in size.

  • And then I'm gonna use my align panel

  • to center this text to my current composition.

  • Now I'm gonna add some more text

  • by using the type tool again.

  • I'm gonna type out the word "animations".

  • One again I'm gonna use Bebas Bold,

  • this is a separate piece of text of course,

  • but this time, the text is gonna be a size of 195 pixels.

  • And again, I'm gonna align this to the middle

  • of my composition.

  • And I'm gonna drag it below my first piece of text

  • to give a little spacing,

  • just as much spacing as you think is right,

  • I'm gonna add a little bit here as I see fit.

  • Now once again, I'm gonna add even more text

  • by typing in, this time, "in After Effects",

  • and, I'm going to again use Bebas Bold,

  • I'm gonna change the size here to 113 pixels.

  • Again, I'll align this to the center of my composition

  • and adjust the vertical positioning

  • just to give a little space here as well,

  • so just make sure all this text is spaced out nicely.

  • After that I can grab the ellipse tool,

  • and drag out a perfect circle.

  • I can do that by holding down the shift key.

  • And here up in the top bar, I'm gonna chose

  • to give it a white stroke,

  • I don't want it to have a fill,

  • so I can click on the word fill

  • and just make sure I hit the slash in there.

  • I'm gonna add a 25 pixel white stroke to this shape,

  • so you can select stroke, make sure it's filled

  • with solid white, then choose to make sure it's 25 pixels.

  • Here again we'll use the align panel,

  • and we'll get the horizontal and vertical centers

  • aligned to this composition,

  • and you can adjust it just a little bit

  • or adjust your text to make sure your text

  • is perfectly in the middle of this ellipse.

  • Now, grab all three pieces of text.

  • In order to align this text,

  • you may need to first lock the ellipse layer

  • so you don't select it, because technically

  • it is on top of all this stuff.

  • And then just shift click the three pieces of text,

  • and you can nudge them up or down like I said,

  • just to make sure they get really into the center

  • of this circle.

  • So let's get animating here.

  • I'm gonna select the largest piece of text,

  • the "5 easy", but I'm gonna select it

  • down in the layers area.

  • And I'm gonna hit the letter S.

  • That's gonna bring up my scaling options.

  • Then I'll click on that little stopwatch icon right there,

  • and that's gonna drop a key frame

  • and allow me to start animating.

  • Key frames are essential.

  • They're the little stopping points in our animation.

  • I'm gonna set the scaling here to 0%,

  • it's gonna make the text disappear, don't worry.

  • And then we're gonna move out a little bit,

  • and when I say move out, I'm just dragging my playhead

  • down the timeline a little bit,

  • I had my playhead all the way at the first frame,

  • I'm gonna drag my playhead down the timeline

  • just a little bit, it doesn't have to be too far,

  • but you could stretch it out as much as you like.

  • This part is kind of up to you.

  • Wherever you see fit, and then I'm gonna change the scaling

  • back to 100%.

  • And After Effects will auto-add a new key frame

  • and fill in the animation between those key frames.

  • But, you can see here, when we play through

  • this zooming animation, it looks bad,

  • because it begins at the bottom left corner

  • and zooms in from there, I want it to look

  • like a natural zoom up from the middle.

  • What is going on here?

  • Well, see this little node thing right here?

  • That's the anchor point, and the scaling is done,

  • really, based upon where this point is.

  • If this point were in the middle of the text,

  • we'd scale right from the center

  • and get a proper zooming effect like we want.

  • Good news is, we can change this.

  • It's a little weird, but we can change it.

  • All we need to do is hold down the command and option keys,

  • or on the Windows, the control and alt keys,

  • and double click this tool up here in the top toolbar,

  • it's called the pan behind tool.

  • It's up here in the toolbar at the top of our screen.

  • And you can watch the point move, boom, right to the middle,

  • or right to the center of our text.

  • And now when we play through the animation,

  • we don't even need to reanimate anything,

  • it works exactly like we want,

  • except that it's still pretty mechanical

  • and maybe a little blocky looking.

  • That's because we need to add something called easing.

  • So let's add some easing to make it look

  • a little smoother and more natural.

  • I'm gonna select both key frames by shift clicking them,

  • and then I will right click on one of the key frames

  • and choose key frame assistant, and then easy ease.

  • This is gonna make the whole animation much nicer,

  • smoother, and just more professional.

  • Let's move along to another type of animation here,

  • a fade animation.

  • I'll leave the "5 easy" layer open

  • so I can see the key frames down there,

  • I'm talking about leaving it open

  • down here in the layers panel.

  • And then I'll open the animations layer.

  • And I'm gonna move the playhead

  • to where the "5 easy" animation stops,

  • and I'm gonna hit the letter T

  • to bring up the opacity option.

  • And I'm gonna drop a key frame here

  • by once again clicking on that little stop watch icon,

  • and I will choose to reduce the opacity to 0%.

  • This is gonna make our text disappear.

  • Then I'll move the playhead down the timeline a little bit.

  • However far we want.

  • And I'll change the opacity back to 100.

  • Select both of these new key frames,

  • we're gonna do that same easy ease trick,

  • it all looks pretty good.

  • Now that we've got our first two animations down,

  • let's do a pop-out animation

  • with sort of an added bounce effect

  • at the end of the animation.

  • We're gonna take things a little step further here

  • now that we've gotten two basic animations down.

  • Select the with After Effects layer,

  • down in the layers area, and hit S

  • to once again open up scaling.

  • And once more, I will hold down the command option

  • or control alt key, and I'm gonna double click

  • that pan behind tool.

  • Again, that's just to reset my anchor point

  • to the center of this piece of text.

  • And then I'm gonna drop a key frame

  • by clicking on the stop watch icon,

  • where on the timeline the fade in animation completes.

  • Then I'm gonna go and I'm gonna deselect

  • that little chain link icon here

  • between my scaling, this is between the X and the Y axis,

  • this is gonna allow us to change the scaling

  • of just one axis of our text,

  • while not messing around with the other.

  • I want to reduce the X axis scale to 0%,

  • and move the playhead down the timeline a little bit

  • and reset the X scale to 100%.

  • This will give us this effect

  • where the text is just sort of shooting out side to side,

  • from the center of this piece of text.

  • It's a really neat little animation.

  • Now what I want to do is select both of those key frames,

  • again by shift clicking them,

  • add that easy ease by right clicking

  • and go down to the key frame assistant

  • and choose to apply that same easy ease

  • to these key frames as well.

  • But with these key frames still selected,

  • we're gonna click on this little graph editor icon,

  • to bring up this kind of complicated looking graph.

  • This is where the magic happens.

  • I'll drag this little handle and pull the red line

  • up past the dashed line.

  • This will tell After Effects

  • kind of to overextend the animation

  • before letting it slide or snap back

  • to the proper 100% size.

  • We can tweak this graph line here

  • to perfect the easing as well, if we want.

  • Now, let's click on the graph editor icon

  • to get back to the original timeline.

  • I'll preview the effect and see how it's looking.

  • Pretty, pretty cool.

  • There are so many great applications for this effect.

  • Definitely something you want to remember.

  • Now let's animate our circle to draw around this text

  • as soon as it finishes appearing.

  • That is, as soon as the text finishes appearing.

  • I'm gonna unlock the shape layer

  • and twirl down the little arrow and find contents,

  • and twirl that down, and get down into ellipse one.

  • I'm gonna hit the little arrow next to add,

  • right there on sort of the top right corner if you will

  • of that layer, and I'm gonna choose to add

  • a trim paths here.

  • Move the playhead to where the text animation finishes

  • on your timeline, and reduce the end parameter to 0%.

  • This is going to sort of zip up and hide

  • the entire ellipse stroke.

  • Then just move the playhead a little further

  • down the timeline, set the end parameter to 100%,

  • and let After Effects do the auto-key framing

  • and animation magic for you.

  • Let's go ahead and preview this effect at this point,

  • and it's looking pretty good.

  • I think I'm gonna select both of my key frames here,

  • and move this animation back,

  • so it takes place kind of as the final piece of text

  • is animating in, to help this whole animation

  • to feel just a little bit tighter

  • and more well put together.

  • We can also select both these key frames

  • and add an easy ease to really complete the animation here.

  • Now there are also a ton of great animation possibilities

  • within some of the pretty amazing effects

  • offered in After Effects.

  • So let's do something cool here.

  • Right click within the layers area,

  • and choose to create a new,

  • and within the new menu choose solid.

  • And let's name this solid waves.

  • Now, we're gonna open up the effects and presets panel

  • by going window, effects and presets.

  • And I'm gonna run a search for an effect called radio waves.

  • Then I'm gonna drag that out

  • and just drop it onto our solid.

  • Then we're gonna look for our effect controls panel,

  • again if it's not open, window, effect controls.

  • I've got mine over here on the left.

  • And I'm gonna make some changes in here.

  • First of all, I'm gonna change the frequency to four.

  • I'm gonna change the expansion to 25.

  • Lifespan, we'll shift that to 1.2.

  • I want the color to be white.

  • And I'm gonna set the opacity to 0.25, which is 25%,

  • this runs from a zero to one scale here on opacity.

  • I'm gonna change the start width to 20,

  • and the end width, I'm gonna set it to one.

  • Now what I'll do is I'll drag the solid on the timeline,

  • I'll drag the edge, so this whole radio wave nonsense

  • begins right where all the other animation completes.

  • There might be some better ways to do this,

  • but this is kind of just a quick and dirty way

  • to make this work for the time being.

  • So I'll go ahead and I'll preview this.

  • And I can watch the entire series of animations

  • that we covered here today,

  • all take effect and play out before my eyes.

  • And I think it looks pretty good,

  • for a series of beginner level animations.

  • We talked about a simple zoom animation,

  • a fade in animation, a one-axis scale animation,

  • adding that cool little easing bump effect,

  • and of course, this really cool repeating wave animation

  • from the radio waves effect.

  • So that, my friends, I believe will wrap this one up,

  • for learning about key frames and stop watch icons,

  • and easing, and bumping and all the little things

  • we covered in this video tutorial, guys, that's it.

  • Get it, got it good.

  • Daniel Dodson, tutvid.com, I'll catch you in the next one.

  • And before you go, make sure you subscribe to my channel

  • for more great tutorials every day.

  • Also, buy my course.

  • It helps us do what we do, and this channel is supported

  • by viewers just like you.

  • You can also just click the thumbnail

  • and watch another video from this channel.

  • See you next time, guys.

  • (downbeat music)

- Well hello everybody, I'm Nathaniel Dodson

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