Adobe After Effects Expressions
After Effects (AE) is a great tool for prototyping UI animations, but we’re alwayslooking for ways to speed up our workflow. AE comes with support forexpressions, which create relationships between layer properties or keyframes sothe designer can animate layers without defining each keyframe by hand. We’ll gothrough some basics of using and defining expressions, as well as how to modifythem to best suit your needs. We haveif you want to become more familiar with the terms and tools before jumping intoexpressions.Expressions will look pretty familiar to most of the readers that frequent theGiant Robots blog. They’re very similar to scripts you would use on the web, butrather than acting on the application itself, they define how a property should behave.Adobe based their expression language on JavaScript, so writing and editing thecode should also feel very familiar. Expressions are by no means a requirement forprototyping animations, but I’ve found them very helpful when trying to recreateeffects like inertia or bouncing without specifying a bunch of additionalkeyframes.Lots of expressions exist already, and have for years, but they aren’t alwayseasy to find if you aren’t sure what you’re looking for. Dan Ebberts has done agreat job explaining expressions and how to use them effectively, laying theground work for what we’ll be going over today.
Adobe After Effects Expression Shortcut
His site, has a lot of additional resourcesfor those that want to dive even deeper into AE.We’ll be working with a popular inertia expression today. It works by pluggingvariables for amplitude, frequency, and decay into a sine function thatovershoots its target and “settles” on the final value. All you’ll need to do iscopy and paste the following in the right place and edit the variables to changethe look and feel of the animation.
Adobe After Effects Expressions Shortcut
Use an expression to create random movement with the wiggle expression in After Effects. In this post we’ll show you how to create wiggle easily by modifying numbersnot keyframes.Editors sometime cringe at the word, but have no fear. When you understand them they really aren’t scary and can end up saying you a lot of time.If you’ve ever seen animations where light is flickering or a camera shakes, it’s likely you’ve seen the wiggle expression in action. Wiggle is one of the most popular After Effects expressions, as it is easy to use and visually interesting. Instead of creating a bunch of keyframes to make a layer randomly move, we can do this with a couple of numbers.
The Wiggle Expression in After EffectsFor this example I created the word ‘wiggle’ from text. I want the position of this text to wiggle, so select the text layer and hit P to open the Position Transform properties.Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) click on the stopwatch to create the expression. The text turns Red, telling you there is an expression applied.Type wiggle(2,50). This expression states that twice a second the text should wiggle 50 pixels on the x & y axis – the first number is how many times a second, the 2nd is the amount of pixel movement.If you want to modify the wiggle simply change the numbers. If we had done this with keyframes, every time the client wanted changes we would have to change the keyframes – not fun! Wiggling One DimensionWhat if you want to wiggle just the x or y position?
This expression is a little more complicated, but you don’t have to write it.I went to motion-graphics-exchange.com (an online resource for After Effects expressions), and searched for “wiggle one dimension”. This is the expression they have for ‘wiggle in one dimension’:wiggle only in x (horizontal): org=value; temp=wiggle (5,50); temp0,org1;Shorthand: wiggle(5,50)0,position1wiggle only in y (vertical): org=value; temp=wiggle (5,50); org0,temp1;Copy this text into your After Effects project and you’re done!For more After Effects expressions check out. If you want to learn about creating expressions, check out:,. Controlling the Wiggle ExpressionWhat if you don’t want the layer wiggling constantly? A common technique is to add an expressions control to a null layer so we can keyframe the wiggle. For AE newbies, a is an object that doesn’t render that we can use to control other layers.We are going to use the null with the original position wiggle we created on the Wiggle text (above).From the Layer Menu select New and then Null Object.
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Rename the Null “wiggle control” and then apply the effect “Sliders Control” (in the Expressions Controls category).Select the wiggle control layer in the timeline, and type E to reveal the Slider Control effect. Click the twirly for Slider Control to see the stopwatch.Go to the Wiggle text expression and select just the 2. With the 2 selected, click the pickwip (looks like a curly cue), and drag the pick whip to the Slider stopwatch.Pick whip is highlighted in Red:Here is the larger view:We no longer see a wiggle, as the Slider is now controlling how many times a second the text wiggles. Click the stopwatch to create a keyframe at the beginning, then move the playhead further in time and change the amount for the Slider to increase the wiggle. You can turn on motion blur to enhance the effect.Motion Blur Highlighted in RED (click for larger view):Now you know how to create a wiggle expression in After Effects and how to control it using a null and an expression slider effect – a huge timesaver.What After Effects expressions do you rely on?Share them with us in the comments below!