Animating using parenting

Adding Easy Ease

The beginning and end of the scale animation are rather abrupt. In nature, nothing comes to an absolute stop. Instead, objects ease into and out of starting and stopping points.

1 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the Scale keyframe at 3:00, and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease Out. The keyframe becomes a leftpointing icon.

2 Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac OS) the Scale keyframe at 5:00, and choose Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease In. The keyframe becomes a right-pointing icon.

3 Watch another RAM preview. Press the spacebar to stop it when you’re done.

4 Choose File > Save.

The next task is to make it appear as if the virtual camera is zooming away from the composition. The text scale animation you just applied gets you halfway there, but you need to animate the scale of the compass as well. You could manually animate the compass layer, but it’s easier to take advantage of parenting relationships in After Effects.

1 Press the Home key or drag the current-time indicator to the beginning of the time ruler.

2 In the Timeline panel, click the Parent pop-up menu for the compass layer, and choose 1. Road Trip. This sets the Road Trip text layer as the parent of the compass layer, which in turn becomes the child layer.

As the child layer, the compass layer inherits the Scale keyframes of its parent layer (Road Trip). Not only is this a quick way to animate the compass, but it also ensures that the compass scales at the same rate and by the same amount as the text layer.

3 In the Timeline panel, move the compass layer above the Road Trip text layer.

_ Note: When you move the compass layer, its parent becomes 2. Road Trip because Road Trip is now the second layer.

4 Move the current-time indicator to 9:29, so you can clearly see the compasss in the Composition panel.

5 In the Composition panel, drag the compass so that its anchor point is over the dot in the letter i in the word Trip. Alternatively, you can select the compass layer in the Timeline panel and press P to reveal its Position property. Then enter 122, -60.

6 Move the current-time indicator from 3:00 to 5:00 to manually preview the scaling. Both the text and the compass scale down in size, so that it appears that the camera is moving away from the scene.

7 Press the Home key to return to 0:00, and drag the work area end bracket to the end of the time ruler.

8 Select the Road Trip layer in the Timeline panel, and press S to hide its Scale property. If you entered Position values for the compass, select the compass layer, and press P to hide the Position property, too. Then choose File > Save.

Дата добавления: 2014-11-20