How To Animate A Line In After Effects

A super popular simply surprisingly easy motility graphic to make in After Effects is animating a line. Utilize After Effects to animate a line to "describe" an illustration before the viewer's eyes. Follow along with this tutorial of how I used After Furnishings to animate lines overlaying the Golden Ratio on my Open up Centre Parrot Rescue logo. (Encounter Open up Heart'south case written report also to learn how I designed the logo!)

Lara Lee Design | How to Use After Effects to Animate a Line, Learn More >

Prepare the Illustrator Artwork.

Like my previous After Consequence tutorials, exist sure to give each shape you want to animate its very ain layer in the Illustrator certificate.

Almost importantly, all the lines for the animation must be exactly that: lines. Stroke-only line objects. Equally a result, several animated illustrations depict monoline drawings. Therefore, to animate a line later, get in a stroke-only Illustrator shape first.

Notwithstanding, non every line has to take its own layer. After Effects tin automatically breathing a group of lines together.

To animate a line that isn't a simple stroke—for example, the brush typography in my Grin Team logo design—requires different Afterwards Effects techniques.

Finally, label layers with names that will make sense later importing the artwork into After Effects. To help manage my Later Effects workflow, I as well named and ordered my Illustrator layers in the rough gild of their appearance in the animation I want to build.

Import the Artwork into a New After Effects Composition.

Launch Later on Effects and select New Composition from Footage. Select the Illustrator document and change Import As: from Footage to Composition – Retain Layer Sizes. The artwork appears a new source in the Projects panel.

Next, double-click it to make a new composition from the artwork and motorcar-populate the Timeline panel.

Step 2: Import the Artwork into a New After Effects Composition.

Go to the Application Bar > Limerick > Composition Settings (Cmd + K) to tweak settings like the video duration and background color. For example, in mine I set up the duration to 16 seconds (0:00:16:00) for plenty of piece of work room. Then, I likewise changed the background colour from black (#000) to white (#fff).

As you're animating, you may observe you need to make changes to the Illustrator certificate. To acquire all the tricks for syncing edits with your After Furnishings project, check out tip #4.

Convert the AI Lines to AE Shapes.

Select a line layer within the Timeline console. Right-click the layer (or go to the Awarding Bar > Layer) > Create > Create Shape from Vector Layer.

As a result, Later Effects automatically hides the original line layer. Then, a new shape layer appears in its place. Subsequently Furnishings also adds the word "Outlines" to the end of the shape layer'due south name and changes the layer's icon and label color.

Step 3: Convert the AI Lines to AE Shapes.

Repeat this footstep for each line layer to convert them into editable After Effects shapes.

At this signal, I as well hide my Macaws Full Color layer for a grand reveal at the cease of the video.

Add together Trim Paths to the Outlines.

This part might exist tricky since information technology seems After Furnishings has moved around this effect with some updates. As of this tutorial, I'chiliad using After Furnishings CC version 16.1.3, so the location may differ for you if yous're using a different AE version.

Select an Outlines layer in the Timeline panel and expand it to Contents > click Add > Trim Paths.

Illustration of how to add Trim Paths to the outlines. — (An illustrated shut-upwardly.)

Next, expand Contents to reveal Trim Paths 1. Then, expand Trim Paths one to reveal trim path backdrop Start and End.

Finally, repeat this step for each outlines layer to add trim paths to them all. To work faster, select all the outlines layers in the Timeline panel, and then type U to toggle expand/collapse multiple layers at once.

Animate a Line.

The next part(s) might also be tricky. You might not remember precisely how you drew each line, but Illustrator does. The first point added becomes the starting bespeak, and the last point to stop the line becomes the ending point. This drawing social club, for example, affects how Illustrator applies stroke arrowheads to the path. It also affects the path's blitheness subsequently in After Effects.

Therefore, you might detect that you need to reverse/switch the steps I'one thousand outlining in my tutorial for your project. In fact, I found I needed to practise the same to finish my animation. Continue reading the next department for troubleshooting this reverse/switch.

Choose a line to breathing first. I opted for 1 that'southward large and obvious: my Golden Spiral layer. I select the layer and so proceed expanding it until I see Start and End stopwatches for Trim Paths 1.

Identify the Timeline scrubber at 0:00f. Add the first Finish keyframe here. So, set its value to 0%.

Adjacent, move the scrubber later downwards the line. For example, I went to 04:00f for 4 seconds. Add together the second Terminate keyframe hither and change its value to 100%.

Hither's the result when I used After Effects to animate my very beginning line:

Troubleshoot the Line Animation.

Every bit I mentioned previously, the cartoon social club of the line's points affects how it animates in After Effects. If the line isn't moving in the right direction or is hiding vs. revealing, try a combination of these solutions:

Mostly, to reverse path management, reverse the 0% and 100% values. Besides, to switch hide/reveal, switch the Showtime and End keyframes. (Nonetheless, I didn't observe this to be consistent.)

Select both keyframes in the Timeline panel > right-click > Keyframe Banana > Time Contrary Keyframes. Alternatively, you tin manually switch the starting and ending values with each other. (For example, switch the 100% at 00:00f to 0% and 04:00f from 0% to 100%.)

Make note if the line used the Start or End keyframes and the timing for both keyframes in the Timeline panel. If Start was used, switch to Terminate keyframes. On the other hand, if Cease was used, switch to Beginning keyframes. Copy-paste and drag-and-drop won't work hither, manually replicate the old times and values into the new keyframes.

Animate some other line.

Locate another outlines layer to animate its line. For my second line, I chose an outward shape from the Golden Grid.

Over again, expand the 2d outlines layer > Contents > Trim Paths i > Showtime and Finish backdrop.

I started animative this line like I did the outset: End keyframe #1 at 00:00f with 0% and then Finish keyframe #2 at 04:00f with 100%. This didn't work. My line hid itself instead of revealing itself. It also blithe in the wrong direction, moving against the animated screw instead of with the spiral. To fix these issues, I completed both of the troubleshooting techniques above.

I found that to reverse path direction, reverse the 0% and 100% values. To switch hibernate/reveal, switch the Start and End keyframes.

To show the 2 lines interacting, I want to time it and so that the second shape finishes drawing itself right when the spiral passes. So, I tweaked timing to gustation past dragging the Timeline scrubber back and forth to identify the moment of intersection and add together a keyframe there.

Result after animating two moving lines "drawing themselves."

One Concluding Notation: Animating a Grouping of Lines.

Remember before in step one, "Ready Illustrator Artwork," that non every line needs its own layer? After Effects will automatically animated out a layer with a line group if you don't need advanced control. Change the Trim Paths ane Trim Multiple Shapes setting from Simultaneously to Individually to run into how they play out.

For more ideas on how to breathing a line, check out Premium Vanquish's commodity, "5 Ways to Animate with Trim Paths in Adobe Afterwards Effects."