After Effects is a motion graphics, digital visual effects and compositing application. This is predominantly used in the post-production process of film making, television and video gaming. The main uses of After Effects for post-production is tracking, compositing, keying and animation. Here we breakdown the top 5 free After Effects plugins and templates. These plugins will help you create diverse, cool and professional-looking effects that will add unbelievable value to your production.
Introduction to Adding Keyframes in After Effects. Adding Keyframes in After Effects is mostly used in the animation process, its main tool is to animate. Keyframes are nothing but markers placing in the timeline for layers and change the values to create animations like position, scale, rotation, and color etc, keyframe animation works like we create a point in starting and ending points. 3D Invigorator PRO is the world standard for creating keyframe style title and logo animations directly inside of Adobe After Effects. The software is made to feel familiar so you can learn it quickly and be productive right away. Using Alpha Inverted Matte To Create A Transition In After Effects In this short tutorial, you will see how you can use Alpha Inverted Matte to create a transition in After Effects.
The main uses of After Effects for post-production is tracking, compositing, keying and animation. Here we breakdown the top 5 free After Effects plugins and templates. These plugins will help you create diverse, cool and professional-looking effects that will add unbelievable value to your production. Keyframe Wingman is a free tool inside Animation Composer by Mister Horse. Keyframe Wingman is a very simple yet helpful tool to easy ease keyframes inside of after effects with just one click.
Typominal – Digital Typewriter Text Preset
Typominal is fantastic for editing Sci-fifilms and more. It’s an add on which is applied to the text layer and creates acomputer-terminal-feel to the text. Think Matrix or Star Wars. This is aningenious plugin enabling you to emphasise script; with the footage, backgroundmusic and this effect you can bring your film to life. It comes with twodifferent cursor types to give you variation when editing. It is easy tointegrate with After Effects, and most importantly it’s free!
AE Flame
AE flame is an add-on that generates beautifulfractals that can be animated with ease. It comes with multiple optionsincluding colours, intensity and density to bring your graphics and film tolife. It’s easy to customise which allows you to create the effect that youwant.
If you want to find out more about AE Flame watch their tutorial here.
Animation Composer
We absolutely love this plugin, and if you’re new to animation it’s a must-have! It’s smooth in functionality and easy to integrate. There are also plenty of high-quality presets you’ll have access to. You can change each element of the animation quickly and smoothly which helps you edit more efficiently.
It’s great for sound effects too! It allowsyou to change the whole of the pitch through the plugin to suit your piece ofwork. It comes with additional free add-on tools that include:
Keyframe Wingman, Anchor point mover and the Transition shifter.
Video Copilot Reflection Plugin
This plugin is one of the best we’ve seen; the quality is insane. Video Copilot is renowned for its quality offerings. Creating reflections is not an easy task, but with Copilot’s reflection plugin you can create smooth, professional-looking shadows with ease – make sure to check out their video guide here. This will help you build on your animation skills and works perfectly with film title artwork.
Normality by 3DCG
Normality is an add-on for After Effects which helps you improve your lighting and shadows. It’s a free plugin but the quality of Normality is incredible; it’s one of our favourites. It allows motion graphic artists to create lighting on 3D objects at a high spec in After Effects. It’s high-quality features help you light your scenes to a professional level.
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Keyframes bring an After Effects project to life, so in this video tutorial, we take an important look at how to work with them.
Keyframe Wingman After Effect 2
There are a number of different ways to fine-tune animations via keyframes, from the keyframe assistant to the graph editor. Let’s have a closer look at all of the ways to work with keyframes in Adobe After Effects.
Adjust Values
In After Effects, you can make adjustments to keyframe values via the Timeline and Composition panels. A more precise method for changing a value is by simply double-clicking a keyframe in the Timeline panel. This will bring up a dialog box that includes additional options, such as the ability to view properties via different units.
Change Interpolation
Interpolation influences how a value changes over space and time. With either one or multiple keyframes selected, navigate to Animation and select Keyframe Interpolation. Here you can change the interpolation of both spatial and temporal keyframes. You can even set keyframes to automatically adapt to others by selecting Rove Across Time. This is a pretty in-depth topic, so be sure to check out my tutorial on the subject.
Move Motion Paths
A great way to adjust spatial keyframes is to manipulate them directly in the composition panel. Simply click and drag keyframes to reposition them, and make subtle adjustments to motion paths via bezier curves. Add, delete, and further manipulate keyframes with the Pen tool. Dots will give you a quick reference of the speed of an animation, and roving keyframes will automatically adjust in the timeline as you move them around in the composition panel.
Modify Speed
The timeline is an obvious place to make adjustments to keyframe values in time. If, however, you want more precise control over the speed and values of your keyframes, then click on the Graph Editor button. This layout allows users to use bezier curves to make specific tweaks to keyframe speed, velocity, influence, and interpolation. Speaking of velocity, if you’d like to get even more specific with velocity values, select a keyframe and go to Animation > Keyframe Velocity.
View Keyframe Data
There are a number of ways to view keyframe information. The Info panel shows timecode as well as spatial and temporal interpolation. To view all of the keyframes within a Timeline, press the U key. Right-click on a keyframe to get a quick view of the values of the attribute — as well as a number of navigation and selection tools. You’ll also have shortcuts to all of the tools in the Animation menu. Last but not least, check out the Keyframe Assistant menu for a number of creative options.
Keyframe Wingman After Effect 5
That’s it! Now go fine-tune those After Effects keyframes.
Keyframe Wingman After Effect Game
Interested in the songs we used in this video?
- “You Can’t Lose” by Wolves
- “Ultra Lights” by Cymatix
- “Shine Forever” by Cymatix
- “Hypnotic” by Gyom
- “Razor Trap” by Cymatix
Looking for more After Effects tutorials? Check these out.