Soft Wiggle After Effects
Repeater, rounded corners, twist, wiggle, ZigZag They’re all here! The power of shape layers, minus the headache. Connect Layers PRO is based on the powerful shape layers system within Adobe After Effects but you control them directly from the plugin interface. There’s a lot of cool effects in this video, but today, we’re taking a look at one of the simpler ones. At the very beginning, there’s some credits that are made to look like they’re in the world of the actual video. So today, we’re going to show you how to get that effect in Adobe After Effects. So let’s jump right into it!
Use an expression to create random movement with the wiggle expression in After Effects. In this post we’ll show you how to create wiggle easily by modifying numbers…not keyframes.
Editors sometime cringe at the word expressions, but have no fear. When you understand them they really aren’t scary and can end up saying you a lot of time.
If you’ve ever seen animations where light is flickering or a camera shakes, it’s likely you’ve seen the wiggle expression in action. Wiggle is one of the most popular After Effects expressions, as it is easy to use and visually interesting. Instead of creating a bunch of keyframes to make a layer randomly move, we can do this with a couple of numbers.
The Wiggle Expression in After Effects
For this example I created the word ‘wiggle’ from text. I want the position of this text to wiggle, so select the text layer and hit P to open the Position Transform properties.
Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) click on the stopwatch to create the expression. The text turns Red, telling you there is an expression applied.
Type wiggle(2,50). This expression states that twice a second the text should wiggle 50 pixels on the x & y axis – the first number is how many times a second, the 2nd is the amount of pixel movement.
If you want to modify the wiggle simply change the numbers. If we had done this with keyframes, every time the client wanted changes we would have to change the keyframes – not fun!
Wiggling One Dimension
What if you want to wiggle just the x or y position? This expression is a little more complicated, but you don’t have to write it.
I went to motion-graphics-exchange.com (an online resource for After Effects expressions), and searched for “wiggle one dimension”. This is the expression they have for ‘wiggle in one dimension’:
wiggle only in x (horizontal):
Shorthand:
wiggle only in y (vertical):
Copy this text into your After Effects project and you’re done!
For more After Effects expressions check out motion-graphics-exchange andaenhancers.com. If you want to learn about creating expressions, check out: JJGifford, MotionScript and Gray Machine.
Controlling the Wiggle Expression
What if you don’t want the layer wiggling constantly? A common technique is to add an expressions control to a null layer so we can keyframe the wiggle. For AE newbies, a null is an object that doesn’t render that we can use to control other layers.
We are going to use the null with the original position wiggle we created on the Wiggle text (above).
From the Layer Menu select New and then Null Object. Rename the Null “wiggle control” and then apply the effect “Sliders Control” (in the Expressions Controls category).
Select the wiggle control layer in the timeline, and type E to reveal the Slider Control effect. Click the twirly for Slider Control to see the stopwatch.
Go to the Wiggle text expression and select just the 2. with the 2 selected, click the pickwip (looks like a curly cue), and drag the pick whip to the Slider stopwatch.
Pick whip is highlighted in Red:
Here is the larger view:
We no longer see a wiggle, as the Slider is now controlling how many times a second the text wiggles. Click the stopwatch to create a keyframe at the beginning, then move the playhead further in time and change the amount for the Slider to increase the wiggle. You can turn on motion blur to enhance the effect.
Motion Blur Highlighted in RED (click for larger view):
Now you know how to create a wiggle expression in After Effects and how to control it using a null and an expression slider effect – a huge timesaver.
What After Effects expressions do you rely on?
Share them with us in the comments below!
I realize that expressions can be daunting, and some would rather copy and past useful code rather than learn the language. Hypersonic vst mac torrent. That’s cool with me. Therefore, I’d like to share with you my 5 favorite expressions. These are expressions I use in just about every project, and I consider them to be incredible workflow enhancements.
1. Intertial Bounce v1.2
Essentially, Inertial Bounce creates a bouncing motion of any parameter from one keyframe to the next, based on its velocity. Being that true “velocity” includes the vector (or traveling direction in 3D space), the bounce happens in whatever direction the object is traveling. This also accounts for scalar or array values, so you’ll find that this expression works just as well on 2D rotation as it does on 3D position. It’s very cool! This expression is a bit of a community effort. The seeds were certainly planted by the great Dan Ebberts, and then a modified version was posted on mograph.net. Although I’ve made a slight modification to it to make it a little more user friendly, it’s nothing that I will lay claim to as my own code. Nonetheless, it’s a great helper and I use it all the time. Modify “amp” for the amplitude or how much bounce is present. The variable “freq” is the frequency, or how frequently the bounce occurs. The “decay” is like a friction or mass setting, a higher value means a shorter decay over time.
2. Autofade
This is nothing brilliant, but it is something I wrote and use all the time. You’ll also find something similar in the After Effects preset “Behaviors” called Fade In + Out, which uses the Solid Composite effect and a custom interface. But, I like a simpler version that I use on Opacity. This is a slightly enhanced version that I’d revamped since I posted it in the “Auto Slideshow” presets and added the option to use markers. If there are no markers, the transition variable is used (where is says “transition=20″, this is in frames.) If there are *2* markers, the first marker is used for end point of the fade in, and the second marker is used to define the start of the fade out.
3. Snap Zoom In/Out
This is a cool expression to use on text. It creates a “snap” zoom on the in and out of the layer by modifying scale.
If you prefer to use Z space position instead of scale, try this one:
4. Y Axis Jitter
This is from Lesson 5 of my expressions series. This creates a random jittery motion in the Y axis. You can modify probability to make or less jitter, and the pos variable to define how large the jitter is. Quickbooks pro edition 2006 torrent download free apps.
5 . toComp
This one you’ll have to watch a short tutorial for here, and you can read a lot more about it at motionscript.com. The idea is that you can apply the equivalent 3D location to any 2D location. This might not sound exciting. But, think of all the 2D parameters out there, like lens flare location, Shine source, beams, etc. It is probably my most commonly used expression. But, the basic idea is this:
Note: I intentionally left off the semicolon, as you technically don’t need it in this case. Therefore, all you need to do is pickwhip your layer where the “layer =” variable is.