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

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