Expressions in After Effects

1. Course Introduction: Hello, hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining me. I'm Mark Mulachk. I'm your host here for this class on creating expressions in Adobe After effects, the After Effects Expressions one oh one, if you wish to call it that, where I'm going to show you how we can create some expressions, how we can do some amazing stuff. So for example, let's see, so for example, we'll make some bowl animating like this. Oh, maybe like that with an expression. So we don't have to do a bunch of keyframes. These animations will only have two or three keyframes in here. Or how about adding these stars which appear and disappear as well? And we don't have to create all these keframs. No. Oh how about some wiggle here? Hmm. So get somebody like this. Okay? Or how about this one? We can have this clock animating with an expression. This actually doesn't have any keyframes at all. This is all done with expression in here. Or how about a recizable text box where as you add more text, This box this box, this box is resizing automatically in real time. Now, these are two separate shapes. Two separate layers. But there is expression. We can make the shape layer resize as the text, which is separate layer is getting bigger or longer or shorter. And how about some animated statistics as well? So we have something like this. So if you can't wait as much as me, let's get started. Let's start adding some expressions. I'll keep it simple. I'll keep it easy, so you don't have to worry about if you don't like code, don't worry, or keep it simple is not a rocket science. And let's get started with creating expressions in Adobe After effect with me, Mac MulchiF macmlogic.com. 2. Prepare for Looping Expression: Et's start looking at expressions by maybe make a new project. I've got one already because I just opened it, and I'm just going to save it. I'll put it right on our desktop here maybe let's put it right on the desktop. And let's say expressions. I'm going to call it. Okay. So as we get started with expressions, obviously, we need to make a new composition. Let's see. Maybe we'll use different comps for different expressions as well, so I can keep an eye on them. So what I was thinking, what we could start with is as we started looking at how you can get expressions, we'll do a looping animation first. So I'm going to call it looping. The usual full HD, 20 ours per second, 10 seconds. Now, as for duration, so all we do is make an animation, and we'll make it. Let's say, I'm going to make maybe bouncing ball where it's going to animate for 2 seconds. 1 second to go down and 1 second to go back up. So if the duration is 10 seconds, it's going to play five times. It's going to look four times. So I was thinking maybe we can make it longer. So maybe 20 seconds this time, at least. So it's going to look more times. Okay so click okay. Just to keep it simple or draw a shape. I'm going to draw a circle here with the ellipso and just far forget, I'm going to move the anchor point with layer transform center ca point layer content. Okay right in center. And I just going to give this shape maybe a regular gradient for the fell in here. And for the actual fell, I'm just going to quickly reset this. So I need to remove some of these stuffs. All I need to here, which you normally get by default anyway. And I'm going to use different shades of red, so have a lighter ret and a darker ret maybe and this could be really bright red. And swift selection tool I just going to add this gradient to make this look more like a reflection so that this will actually be somewhere on the edge, maybe the And actually, I want to reverse the colors. So go back to the green dital and I was going to swap this. It's actually the opposite. Something like this. And then this can go here. Here we go. And this can go here. Maybe something like this. Just an idea. Okay. So let's make it animate. Let's make it bounce. So with the lay selected, I'm going to do P for position, add a key from at the start, and then 1 second later, 1 second. We'll move the ball with selection tool sets at the bottom of the screen. Say here. As we create this initial animation, we need to make sure that our next keyframe or the last one at 2 seconds, it's identical to the first one, so we can just copy and paste. So I'll just select this keyframe, control a command C to copy. I'll go to 2 seconds, and then control a command V to paste it. So the first keyframe at the last one at the moment, are identical. So for example, now, we're ready to add expression to make this loop. If we want to kind of test it, if you want to see if it's going to look seamlessly because that's the idea. I want it to be seamlessly looping. I would place I would move the end of the work area to here with the end and I'll just play it to see if it's going to look seamlessly. It does look seamless. We want to make sure there's no jump between the first in and the last one or when it's going to loop and no This one looks perfect at the moment, so it's all good. Because it's all good, now we're ready to add an expression, which we're going to do in our next video. 3. Looping a Bouncing Ball: Once we have our composition ready with some animation, keep in mind this could be any animation you want. We just want some movement as an example in here, and we'll just make it loop. So make sure you have some animation, something like this. Now, I'm just going to reset the work area. So it's the entire composition, not just 2 seconds. Because this comp is one -20 seconds. This is going to play ten times. So it's going to nine times as we once we finished. Okay. Now, when you add expressions, you add expressions you add an expression to a property on your timeline. In this case, this is going to be the position property in here. So the property we have keyframes, like a position, for example, where you have the stopwatch, which is in blue at the moment. If you put a case over the stopwatch, you get a tool that says that you can add expression with the old click option click on a Mac. Not just before we do that in here. Because we want this animation to look, and we want it to look after it's done this one set of motion, we need to make sure that our CTI, our playhead is somewhere where the animation doesn't play anymore. Now, your CTI doesn't have to be on the keyframe here, but we need to be at least on the keyframe or after the keyframe. Anywhere here is fine, it doesn't matter, really. Just make sure you move your CTI after the animation stopped, and now we're going to hold old key option Kinema we'll click on the Stopwatch this will add an expression. You see the expression here in the timeline there. Keep the expression highlighted, and we'll just start typing something. As you add expressions, you're going to get some help. There will be some drop downs from after effects. Okay? So you need to know everything. So for example, we want to make this animation loop. So if you start typing the word loop, LO, you get this drop down. Or if you type in loop, here we go. And in this case, we're looking for loop out. So I'm going to use the down arrow key on the keyboard to move down to loop out. And you can add a double click on this, or you can press End on a keyboard to add this expression. Now you just click away to deselect it. Don't press Enter because this will just make a new line of code. So just click away, and that's it. That's it above right. So if you play it now, this is going to keep playing on a loop. I want to say forever, but this will just keep playing for as long as your comp is going to play. Someone is going to do this animation ten times, is going to loop nine times after 2 seconds. Also, in this case, just something to keep in mind is that if you were to export this animation as an animated gift, this will look automatically because you have animated gift. So you don't have to do this. But if we export this comp as a video, we apply expression like we did here, so it's going to play over and over again for ten, 20 or 30 seconds or as long as you want, then it's going to stop in here. Okay. Now, another example I want to show you with the looping animation is how you can apply it to any property. So let me show you another example in the next video. So let's keep it open. I will continue next video. 4. Looping Blinking Star: Let's do one more example of the looping. And I thought what we could do is this time, we could make a different property loop. So I was thinking maybe like a blinking star. Always the same composition. Going to dissect the layer, so we make a new shape layer. I'm going to use the start tool for that. I just draw a star. Just a small one. Okay. I was going to make the background dark go to composion settings too dark in the background. So I can see this better because I want the star to be more visible in here. I'll leave the closes. That's fine. Well animate, say just the opacity of this layer here. So the layer selected. I'll do T opacity, put a CT at the beginning, and add a key frame with opacity set to zero initially. So we can't see the star yet. And we can focus on the star right now, I'm just going to solo this layer. Again, I'll give it 1 second to fade in. So 1 second, opacity 100. And again, we can just copy the first keyframe with Control or Command C, go to 2 seconds and paste it with Control command V. Again, if we just set the end of the work area here and play it, the star will just fade in and fade out, fade in and fade out. Okay. So let's reset the work area. Remember, you can at well, at this in case of loop or loop out expression, you can add it to any property. So again, we'll move the CDI after the animation finishes right now. So anywhere here. And this time we'll hold click on the Stopwatch for the opacity. This time we'll add in expression to the opacity. That expression is going to be the same. So loop out and we just click away to accept it. And now we preview it's going to make the star appear and disappear, appear and disappear. We just fade in, fade out, fade in, fade out. We could then nest this comp in another comp. Oh, for example, I just wanted to show you what we could also do here. Oops. What we can also do here. Let me just zoom out in the timeline is we can duplicate this layer. Let me just name it star to have more stars. So the lays elected, you can just do Control or Command D to make a duplicate. I'll shift it a little bit, so it starts a little bit later. Let's say maybe half a second later so 12 frames. Okay. And I'll move the stars is not in the same location. So selection tool, move it maybe somewhere. And I have two stars which animate at slightly different times. Then we could duplicate this layer again. So control command D. We shift it by another half a second. So do 1 second and shift the layer to make it start at 1 second. Oh, 1 second. The move the star, so it's somewhere else. Maybe maybe here. Now, have three stars that appear one by one. We can do just a bunch of them, so you can do it again. Maybe, well, let's say do one at a time, Control Command D, S one, 12, and we just shift it. So it starts here, and we move it someplace else, maybe here. I'll do one more control a Command D. This will start at 2 seconds. And this will appear somewhere else. Maybe that in the corner. So have five different stars that appear one by one and they keep linking. You can have as many as you wanted, and you can also add them to a different column. Remember, this background color doesn't really exist. This is all transparent. So you could place them on a different background. And as we duplicate in the layer, it's duplicating all the layer properties, including the keyframes and including the expression as well. Now, in the next video, I'm going to show you a variation of loop out expression. H. 5. Looping Pingpong Expression: And this time we'll do a variation on the looping animation. Always the same looping comp and maybe just a quick animation, but this time, we'll do just two keyframes, the first and second keyframe without the third one. Let's if I'm going to select the layers again, or I could do layer new shape layer, and maybe again, any shape. Let's say ellipse will be fine or a circle. This time I'll make it move sideways, for example. And that's the layer, PFO position. At the beginning, the first key frame. And then let's say at 1 second. I'll move it across the screen. I'm going to ignore the anchor point right now. Let's say it moves maybe here. So the moments just moving sideways. Let me just disable solo from the stars for now, so I can focus on this layer here. At the moment is just doing this. That's it. It's only go This is the ball. This only got two keyframes. And it's only going to have two keyframes in here because we have a variation on the loop out expression. So he's going to do. We're going to stop the playhead as usual, we'll add the expression to the position property with Old click like we did before. But this time, when we do loop out, loop out, in the brackets, we'll add a property, excuse me, in double quotes called Ping Pong. So when you type in double quote, you get a drop down, I would ooePingPong here. Okay? That's it. I would just click away. And when you preview, this is going to animate forward and backward. It's going to move back to its starting position automatically. So if you don't want to bother with the third keyframe, if you want to quickly do it, you can just use the Ping Pong property on the loop out expression. Okay. In our next video, we're going to look at another expression, different expression this time, or we're going to have some say random movements for an object. You're going to use the Wigle expression on the next one. So let's keep it open. I'll continue next video. 6. Wiggle Expression: Let's make a new composition, which I'm going to call it. We go. Same as before. Maybe I was going to shorten the duration to 10 seconds, the usual, okay? W some object. So any object, any shape, I'm going do a circle again, say somewhere here. Maybe to lead by example, I will move the ancha point as well with layer transform and sent Anca point layer content, okay? Now, this time, which is going to add an expression to the position property in here. So I'm going to do PFO position. A click on the stopwatch. We're not doing any key pens this time. And what we'll do is we'll do Wiko here. Wig, okay? And wiggle will have two properties in here. The first property is going to be for the frequency of the wiggle or the movement. Let's say we do one for now, okay? 1/second. There would be a comma to separate the properties, and the second one is going to be for the amplitude, how far we want it to go. Let's say if we do maybe 100 to start with, I will click away, I will just play it. It's going to do this. It's going to move by up to 100 pixels once every second. If you wanted to wiggle more, we can change. So let's say would the second value to be maybe 500. So you get more movement. It's going to move further. We can also make it wiggle more frequently. So we can change one to say maybe three. So you get more movements. You know, we could duplicate this layer. Control Commandi to duplicate it. This will also have an expression here. And if I just move this one maybe here, we can have a bit more random movements here. This could be used for some simulations for, I don't know, the way bacteria or some cells move inside the body or something like that. So the wiggle, you got two properties. The first one is the frequency, how often is going to move? And the second value is the amplitude. How far from its starting point it can move in any direction here. I got three. For frequency, it moves three times every second, and it moves up to 500 pixels away from the starting point here. And you can have as many as you want, so you could make another duplicate, Control D, and I just move this one maybe to the center to start with. So I got three of them moving. Okay, that's the WigoEpression. In the next video, we're going to look at expression called time. 7. Time Expression: In this video, we're going to create a shape or use a shape, and we'll make it rotate. Rotating rotating would be a good example for the time. We can have a shape rotate at a certain amount of time. So here's an example. I've drawn some shapes and got two red lines, one for the hour arm, which is shorter, one for the minute arm, which is longer. That's the minute arm. Okay? This is the arm. Okay. Let's just double check. Also draw these lines. This is like a clock, okay. But let's just double check. Now, we need to make sure that the anca points are at the bottom of these shapes where the center of the comp is. So on the arm, there's the anca point. Okay. Let's just sololo it for a second. Okay. And then the minute arm just checking, make sure they all study the same position. And the minute arm also has the anchor point here at the bottom, okay? Right. So here's what we'll do now. I'll start with the arm. Look into well, we're not doing any animation, by the way, okay? Not as per se, okay? But we do need rotation property, and we'll add an expression to rotation with Old click on a Stopwatch, okay? And now we'll use the time expression and then times. So you know the symbol on the number eight on your keyboard when you multiply things. Okay? Now, our arm should rotate more slowly. So let's say now, so we're doing some rotation per second in here. So let's say, for example, let's say this one in 1 second is going to rotate maybe up to here. To 3:00. So this would be 90 degrees. If I'm correct. Let's see. So if I click away and play it. Okay. Let's just double check. So if we move the CTI to 1 second, it goes to 3:00. At 2 seconds, you go to six. Now, it's working. Maybe you'll make it slower. I'm actually thinking maybe we can make it do 3:00 in 2 seconds or do 45 degrees. Okay? Oops. No antach. So it's going to go from 12:00 to 3:00 in 2 seconds. Because going to rotate 45 degrees every second, okay? This will make it go more slowly. Okay, so what about the minute arm? So let's do rotation here as well. Click on a Stopwatch with the old key. Okay, so again, we'll do time. Now, at 2 seconds is 3:00. So it means that the minute arm has 2 seconds to do full circle. So it's going to do 180 degrees in 1 second. If I math is correct. Let's see. Okay. 3:00, 6:00, 9:00 and 12:00. Okay? So as we start here at 2 seconds, it's going to be exactly 3:00. At 4 seconds, 6:00. At 6 seconds, 9:00. We can tweak the timing, obviously, but the idea here is so we have these two arms which are rotating at different speed. The hour arm shorter one more slowly. The longer one, the minute arm, much faster to show passing time. And this will normally stop at the end of your comp. It won't look when you expose a video. That's how you can use the time expression in your animations. What we'll do in the next video is well let's see. We'll have a different expression. Keep it open. 8. Resizeable Text Box: Okay. In this video, I'm going to show another expression where we'll have this shape, a box behind the text, which is going to resize itself automatically to fit the text inside. So if you make a new composition, add some text, just a normal text layer as usual and add a shape behind it. So I've got this text layer, just a normal text layer here. With the rectangle, there are the corners behind it. It's just a normal rectangle with rounded corners, just a normal shape. There's nothing special about it. Just a couple of things I did here is I did place the text right in the center of the comp just to make it easier. So it's center aligned. And also the shape is also center aligned, okay? So there in the center. Also, the text is center aligned within itself here. So the text will expand from the center to both left and right, okay? Now, we have an expression which we're going to add to the shape layer, okay? So if we open the shape layer properties, we're looking for the actual shape and for the size property in here, okay? And I've got the coat in here because it's a bit longer this time, okay? So I'm going to attach it so you can download it. Someone's going to highlight this code in here and copy. Okay. Now here, we're going to add an expression to the size of the rectangle. Then we do Control V or command V to paste it. And then we just click away. So I got this expression here, okay? Now, as we customize the text, so say the text layer, we put some text in here. Text. You go. And the box is expanding automatically. This is a resizable box. Maybe something like that. Okay? The expression is in the document in the text file attached to this lesson. And this is the expression. It's quite a long one, actually. So there's a bit more here. Here we go. I can open it so I can see it, but here we go. But it's quite a big one. Here you have it. Here you go. And this makes the shape, any shape, resize itself to accommodate the text, which is actually a separate layer. It's not really inside the box, but it's looking at this text layer and it's adjusting the width and the height of the shape as you customize the text. How cool is that? Hmm. And this is the expression. We go. This is the entire expression. We go. I can see the enti expression if you prefer it here. Have fun. 9. Animated Statistics Expression: And now one more expression, one more exercise here. This time, animated statistics, a very popular expression used to make the numbers animate, make the numbers change from certain value to certain value. So a good example here would be with when you log in to say credit score, for example, into your account, it shows you credit score number, say, out of 100, for example. And the numbers animate to reveal your result. I'm a new comp already. It's vertical mode this time to make it look like a mobile app as an example. I put a headline in credit score, and now we just need a text layer with a number in the center. So I'm going to use example where we have a number out of 1,000, which represents percentages. Say, if we get 83%, this will be 830 as an example, and this should be nice and big. Let's see how big 150 maybe or even 200. I'm going to put this text right in the center as well. O no. Okay. And zooming close as you can see this better. Here we go. It's just a number, a text layer. Okay? Now, this is going to be a bit different from the expressions we've been doing so far. This time, on this layer with the layer selected, we need to add an effect to it. So you go to effect menu, expression controls and slider control. So we add in slider control effect to this layer. Okay? To get a slider control. I'm also going to show you a different technique of applying an expression in this case to make it a bit easier so we don't have to write everything. Now, we need to connect the text on a text layer with this effect we just created here. So if you open this layer in your timeline and open text, click on we'll click on a stopwatch for source text here to add expression. Here we go. Don't worry about the composition panel. Just ignore it for a second. It's as we fry boot. That's fine. Now, just so we don't have to write the entire expression, what you can do this time is you can click on this Piquip icon, the snail. Click Hold the mouse button down, and we drag it into the effect controls panel to point it to the slider property on the slider control effect. That's where you're going to drop it. This will write the expression for you. Here. Now you can click away and everything will go back to normal. The number will change to zero because the slider value now is zero. But if you try to change the slider value, see how the numbers are going to change as well. What we'll do now is we'll key frame the slider control effect. The CTI at the beginning, we'll click on a stopwatch for the slider, we'll keep it at zero. I'll give it quite a few seconds. I'll move the CTI to say maybe 4 seconds in here. Will change the slider control effect, slider value, so minus 830. So when I apply it. Now we may get decimal point. That's okay. We'll fix it next. Don't worry. But the numbers are going to change from zero to the number you specified. Mine are changing to 830 in 4 seconds. Now, we need to add just a tiny bit of code to our expression to remove any decimal points. So I'm going to click on our expression, put a cursor at the end. I would dot VI I will select value. Dot TOF two fixed, and zero between the brackets. Now you can click AI to close this expression, and now there'll be no decimal points, just full digits, just the integers. If you want some integers, you can well, the number in between the brackets, this number here represents the number of decimal points. So you may want maybe two integers, two numbers after decimal point. So you can do two here. So you get something like this. But in this case, we don't want any, so keep zero in between the brackets here. Here we go. I can make your animation longer, short. We can also apply some easing here, the usual You can use this technique with any numbers. You can use it with countdowns where you're going to countdown from maybe ten to zero because you keep framing the slide control effect and you decide what number you want to start with and what number you want to finish with as well. You can start from 830 and finish at zero for anything you like. Okay. Okay, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed learning some expressions in after effects one oh one or basics of adding expresis in Adobe After effects. If you enjoy it, if you like it, there's so much more you can do with expressions. This is just to get you started, just to show what expressions are like, how they work, how we create them, how we add them, how we customize them. And there's so much more you can do with expressions. So I hope you enjoyed it. Thank you for watching and have fun.