• Animation Drawing In After Effects
• Drawing Chalk In After Effects
• How To Animate Line Drawing In After Effects
• How Do I Rotate My Drawing In After Effects 2020

Cover image via

In this video tutorial, we cover how to harness the power of this simple, hidden feature in Adobe After Effects — Trim Paths.

Trim Paths is a tool in Adobe After Effects that allows you to make precise adjustments to shape layer paths. However, new users may not know about it because it is hidden away under a shape layer submenu. So, what can you accomplish with this handy, little animator? Let’s have a look at five fun, useful projects.

1. Infographic

Creating an infographic can seem complex; however, it only takes a few simple steps. For a basic bar graph, I’ll first create a two-point path via the Pen tool, placing the first point at the bottom of the frame. Next, I’ll turn off the fill, and set the stroke to 150 pixels. Finally, I’ll add a Trim Path animator via the Add dropdown menu and animate the End property from 0% to 100%. To have a number dynamically change as the graph grows, I’ll add a text layer and parent the source text to the end property of the Trim Path. Lastly, I’ll add a simple value expression to round the numbers out to absolute values. And voilà — a dynamic infographic. (Check out my full tutorial on how to create infographics in After Effects here.)

Pen tool is one of the great performance tools in after effects also, with pen tool we can draw a shape easily and create different masks, masks are used to merge the multilayers in after effects. Masks are created by drawing paths on any layer with a visual component; that is, anything you can create or import into After Effects that you can actually see in a composition. It’s possible to create what are called open paths, which are just kind of a line you’re drawing on the layer, and those don’t do anything by themselves.

2. Map Route

Maps are fun, and you can quickly create an animated route with Trim Paths. First, I’ll add points and a path to a map via the Pen tool, with the stroke at 5 pixels and no fill. I can customize and stylize my map route via the properties of the stroke element. For this example, I’ll add some dashes and change the Line Cap Findfocus. property. Once I’m happy with the look, I’ll add the Trim Path animator and animate the end position. For a full tutorial on how to animate a map route, check out my “Create a Map Path Inspired by Indiana Jones in After Effects“ tutorial. (That tutorial belongs in a museum.)

Animation Drawing In After Effects

3. Text Box

Drawing Chalk In After Effects

Chris evans daniel craig movie. You can use Trim Paths to quickly add detail to a lower third — or another text element. A popular look for lower thirds, and other graphics, is the animated bounding box. To create one, I’ll simply grab the Rectangle Shape tool and set the stroke to 10 pixels, with no fill. Then, I’ll create a rectangle and align it with my text. Now, I can animate the end in conjunction with the Offset for some truly desirable results. (This also works great with simple underline elements.)

4. Text Stroke

Another popular look is the animated text stroke. As opposed to creating a simple box or line element, adding and animating a text stroke can be a bit more tricky. Disc burn for mac. For this, I’ll first take my text and select Layer > Create > Create Shapes from Text. To change the stoke of all the characters at once, select the layer, and use the Stroke option at the top of the interface. Once I’m happy with the look of my stroke, I can add Trim Paths and animate the range to get the look I want. (Check out my stand-alone tutorial on “How to Animate a Text Stroke in Adobe After Effects.”)

5. Circle Bursts

The circle burst is a fun animation element that creates simple movement, and Trim Paths can help bring these to life. Let’s create a quick circle burst and add it to a star-shaped animation. First, I’ll create a simple path (via the Pen tool) coming out from the top of the star. Next, I’ll add the Trim Path’s animator. To have the line shoot out from the center, I’ll animate both the start and end attributes, slightly offsetting each. Finally, I’ll add a Repeater with 9 copies, a Position of 0, and a Rotation of 40. Now, I can change the Y Position of the shape element to place it perfectly. (For more circle burst madness, check out this tutorial.)

Interested in the tracks we used to make this video?

• “Virtual Arrival” by Cymatix
• “Summer Cruising” by Mattijs Muller
• “Midnight City” by Make Music
• “Fake Awake” by Tonemassif
• “Street Signs” by Sound Force

Looking for more video tutorials? Check these out.

How To Animate Line Drawing In After Effects

Rotoscoping is a technique of drawing over the frames of a video to create a realistic animation. It’s a great way to create a professional-looking animation without having to organically draw each individual frame—and you can do it using Adobe After Effects.
You might believe that animators always draw their characters from scratch, but many start off by tracing a video reference frame-by-frame. Rotoscoping is time-consuming, but it doesn’t require any drawing ability and often leads to a polished-looking final product. You can use this tutorial with any video you have on-hand. I used an iPhone video of my friend dancing, but you can search for something specific on the internet and use that as well. (And, fun fact: Since we will be drawing over the video, there are no copyright issues with using someone else’s footage for this project! Just be sure to hide the actual video in step six.)

1. Bring your video into After Effects and choose a small portion to animate.
   To begin, drag your reference footage into Adobe After Effects. Create a composition from the video layer. Beware—rotoscoping is a tedious process. Animating one second of motion might take you as long as thirty minutes, so don’t select a long clip unless you have plenty of time on your hands.
2. Double-click the brush tool () on the video to create a paint layer.
   Once this is created, you can select your paintbrush as well.
   In this example, I created my black outline using a brush with a 15 px diameter. The color scribbles beneath were roughly twice as thick. You can mess around with the settings in this menu and use whatever you would like.
3. Set your frame duration in the “paint” panel.
   This will indicate how many frames of motion your paint strokes will be on-screen for. The lower the number, the longer it will take you to animate—but the more complex the animation will be. For fast-moving motion, you will want to work with single frames. However, slower video footage works fine with a frame duration of 2 or even 4. It’s okay to switch the frame duration throughout this project depending on the speed of the video’s motion.
   In this example, my dancer’s arms move faster than his legs. For most of the video, I used a frame duration of 1 for the upper body and 2 for the lower body—though I used single frames for faster sections of legwork as well.
   Once your paintbrush has a color, size, and duration, you may begin painting over your first frame!
4. Use the command key and arrow keys to advance to the next frame.
   If you have finished your first frame, press the command and arrow keys at the same time to skip to the next frame in the reference video. (If you are using a frame duration of 2, you’ll have to press the right arrow key twice, since you’re skipping two frames.)
   To delete a brushstroke or change its duration, click the down arrow beside “effects” in your timeline window. Open the paint layer. You should be able to see all of the brushstrokes you have created, each spanning the number of frames it occupies onscreen. Scroll until you find the brush you would like to delete or modify. You can delete a brush using your computer’s delete key or modify the length of a brush by dragging the beginning and endpoints back and forth in the timeline.
   
5. Make the video invisible.
   For most rotoscoping projects, you’ll want to remove the original video reference and add a background of your own. Open the paint layer, like we did in the previous step, and change “paint on transparent” from off to on.
   
6. Click back into the main composition to view your animation.
   Close the paint layer by going back to your original composition. (The tabs usually appear along the top of your project window.) Drag the playhead to the beginning and press the spacebar to watch your animation from beginning to end.

How Do I Rotate My Drawing In After Effects 2020

If you enjoyed this tutorial, it’s only the beginning of what you can do using Adobe After Effects’ drawing tools! Discover everything that you can do with brushes, stamps, and erasers.
Are you a current student? See how you can save up to 60%.