After Effects Pro Tips
Get faster Previews with Shortcuts
You can set Preview presets and map them to different shortcuts in your Preview Panel!
In the Preview Panel, select the Shortcut dropdown and adjust your preview settings. It autosaves and you're done!
You can set up to 7 different presets.
I only use 3 presets - I mapped Spacebar & Numpad 0 to do the same thing so I can have the same functionality without a full extended keyboard when I work on my laptop.
This was first brought to my attention by Dan Savage with his hot tip below. If you're animating on 2s using posterize time, skip every other frame on preview! Simple, but genius.
You can also use this for heavy comps - previewing on 2s or 3s to speed things up (especially for the rough stages of animation)
Animate paths with as few points as possible
Tony Babel shared an amazing workflow tip for animating complex rounded shapes with shape layers.
Instead of trying to animate bezier curves and tangent handles, animate with as few points as possible and then add Round Corners to your shape layer.
If you're familiar with 3D modeling, it’s quite similar to the concept of subdivision surfaces - keep your vertex count low, and add smoothing later.
Simpler, cleaner, and easier to work with. As someone who loves to animate paths in shape layers, I have been using this workflow whenever possible.
(here's how you apply Round Corners)👇🏼
BONUS 🕺🏻
For more fun, link your path points to Nulls using the Create Nulls from Path script and you have some amazing animation control and potential.
I just posted a <2 min tutorial on how to use the script if that floats your goat.
BONUS BONUS 🕺🏻🕺🏻
TJ Peters shared a follow up with a technique that blew my cranium.
If you apply Round Corners to a full shape, you can use the Convert Vertex Point tool to re-introduce sharp corners. WHAT
3D Renders in After Effects (with environment reflections)
Philip von Borries shared an awesome technique for creating 3D shapes with built-in After Effects features. Get complex 3D renders without leaving AE (if you're into that)
- Set your renderer to Cinema 4d
- Create a shape layer
- Add an .hdr image and Right Click > Environment Layer
- Extrude your shape layer with Geometry Options and adjust Reflections, etc in Material Options
- Boom! Now you can add lights, animate in 3D, whatever you want!
Watch his dope mini-tutorial 👇
BONUS: If you don't have .hdr images, you can easily make your own as a precomp without leaving AE.
Philip has some follow-up tips with more ideas on how to use this technique. Go check his Twitter for more
Create Non-Smooth Jittery Animations (script)
Sometimes you don't want everything to be smooth. Here's a little free scriptlet that Zack shared for creating automatic "stumbly" keyframes.
It can give a very natural feel to "too-perfect" keyframes. Looks really nice for a typing effect as well.
I tried it out with my Typewriter Preset and it got a realistic typing effect in a couple clicks.
(that's cool!)
Eyedropper Color Pick OUTSIDE After Effects
I've already shared this one a few times on Twitter, but I'm including it because you NEED to know this one...
To select a color outside of After Effects...
Hover over the color and press ENTER (instead of clicking.
It's that simple. I swear this one drove me insane, but hopefully now you don't have to be insane.
