If you want to bring static images to life After Effects is your best option. With After Effects, any user can create high-quality animations, effects, and transitions, even if they lack previous experience with this type of software. On the other hand, more experienced users can make even more use of it to make their projects more dynamic and attractive.
In this article, we will take the first steps in After Effects so that you learn to animate any element from scratch.
Create your project in After Effects
Before starting, we will need to prepare a new project within After Effects. From the home page, click on New Project and then New Composition. A new window, Composition Settings, will open, where we will need to write the project title and set its resolution, among other things. For this occasion, click on Preset and choose the HD option. If you want to try other resolutions, through Preset, you will see a long list of different resolutions and sizes.
To open an existing project, go to File > Open Project. You can also import them from File > Import > File.
Animating in After Effects: Timeline and Keyframes
Within After Effects, we can create many types of animations and effects by changing their properties on the timeline. To do this, we need to work with Key Frames, which define the parameters of movement, effects, and audio. This way, the program knows how an object should change over time.
In the timeline, keyframes are represented as small diamonds, which you can move and adjust freely. To use them, you must do the following:
- Select which layer you want to animate. It can be an image or text, for example.
- In the selected layer, click on the arrow symbol on the left and select which section you want to animate. It can be the scale, position, opacity, etc.
- From Position, you can control where the object is located on the screen. With Scale, you will control the size of the object. Rotation will help you rotate the object and Opacity to adjust its transparency.
- When you already know what to animate, activate the keyframe by clicking on the clock icon located to the left of the property.
- With the keyframe, first, define where the animation starts. Move forward in the timeline and then add another keyframe that is the end of that animation. You can press the spacebar to play it and see how the object in question changes between the two keyframes.
If you want the movement to look more natural, right-click on one of the keyframes and select Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease Out or Easy Ease In. This makes the animation start or end more smoothly.
Add effects to your project
From After Effects, we can add all kinds of effects to our projects. To start, you just need to follow these steps:
- Click on Window > Workspace > Effects & Presets. This will make a new panel of effects and presets appear on the right.
- Use the search bar to find any effect. You have different categories: Audio, Color Correction, Distort, etc…
- To add any of these effects, drag the effect from the Effects & Presets panel and place it on the layer where the item you want to animate is located.
- When applied, the Effect Controls panel will appear. From there, you can adjust how the effect will look. Combine several effects to achieve more interesting results.
- You can also animate the effect from the timeline. Locate the effect on the selected layer and click on the clock icon to add new keyframes.
If you want to orient your workspace towards effects, go to Window > Workspace > Effects. This will adjust the entire interface for effects editing. From Workspace, you can switch to other special layouts if you wish.
Export your animation
If you already have everything ready, export your animation by following these steps:
- Go to the top menu and click on Composition > Add to Render Queue. This will open the render queue at the bottom of the screen and also allow you to adjust how you want to export your video.
- Click on the blue text next to Output to to choose where you want to save your file and assign it a name.
- Then, select the blue text next to Render Settings. From here you can adjust the quality, resolution, and frame rate.
- Finally, click on the blue text of Output Module and select the format you need. The H.264 format is ideal for videos intended for social media. If the video has sound, make sure the Audio Output option is set to On.
- From the Render Queue panel, click on the Render button to export your video. After Effects will start rendering and you can see the progress in real-time in the bottom panel.
Now that you have your project exported, all that’s left is to check that everything is correct and well. Experiment in After Effects with different effects, do tests, and be creative.
