After Effects Motion Graphics Tips & Tricks
The more you bring yourself to use after effects in motion graphics, the better youâll be at what youâre doing. Practice makes perfect! In fact, achieving success with these after effects motion graphics tips is something that many filmmakers mistakenly overlook because they just donât spend enough time trying to learn and grow. To help you get the most out of the after effects motion graphics tips we provide, weâve listed several tricks and examples that will help you learn and grow.
1. Learn to Use the Graph Editor
Sure, anyone can use the keyframes that are set there, but only true professionals are able to make adjustments to the graph editor in a way that will create a more fluid design.
The graph editor can be adjusted so that the curves work with the visual animation of the footage to produce exceptional quality.
Learn how adjusting the speed graph and the value graph can provide various results and then focus on how to edit curves to produce amazing animation after effects. Motion graphics tips like this are the difference in you being an amateur and becoming a professional.
2. Adjust After Effects Preferences to Cycle Mask Colors
The use of many masks in an After Effects project can make identifying and selecting the mask challenging. To improve your productivity, and reduce the time spent trying to identify and adjust masks, go to After Effectsâ preferences.
Select the Appearance area and then choose âCycle Mask Colorsâ
When this box is checked, After Effects will cycle each mask in a different color so that you can easily identify what you want to work with.
3. Streamline Your Favorite Effects with Presets
Customizing your Presets in After Effects is another way that you can save yourself tons of time. If there are effects and settings that you use frequently, saving them as a preset will help you to streamline your editing process.
To save a preset of your own, simply create the animation as you normally would in a layer, and then select the effects that you will apply and choose âAnimation > Save Animation Preset.â This will open up a panel that allows you to save your preset for future use.
The next time youâre looking for a preset in After Effects, motion graphics tips like this will almost certainly come in handy! All you have to do is open the âAnimation Presetsâ folder and look for your preset.
NOTE: You can also save presets by dragging the effect from the âEffects Control Panelâ over to the âNew Itemâ area in the lower-right corner of the Effects Panel.
4. Donât Forget the Tiny Simple Details
After Effects motion graphics tips rarely discuss the smallest details that are essentially so simple that we overlook them, but so important that we really canât afford to stop using them!
When youâre working in After Effects, simple effects, like âMotion blurâ can be used to make your animations appear more natural.
To enable Motion Blur, click the âMotion Blur Switchâ for the layer that you want to have motion blur. Then, at the top of your timeline, enable the âMotion Blurâ button.
To increase motion blur, go to âComposition > Composition Settings > Advanced and then choose âShutter Angleâ when you increase the value of the Shutter Angle the motion blur increases. When you decrease the Shutter Angle value, the motion blur decreases.
5. Export for Social Media with this Step
Finally, in working with After Effects, motion graphics tips frequently cover how to use the program to create various types of animations and details, but we thought it was also important to explain how you can export your content for social media since it requires an added step that many are unclear about.
To do this, donât add your file to Render Queue when youâre done, instead Add to Adobe Media Encoder Queue. When the media encoder opens, select the social media preset that fits your needs and then double click.
This will set the social media file preset to the file. This way you can render the various files you need for each social media platform, with just a few clicks!
