The anchor point of a layer is where it scales and rotates from and its represented by a crosshair when a layer is selected. To change that I’ll need to move the anchor point to the center of the circle. The problem is that I want the layer to scale from the center of the circle, not from the center of the type. Scale is one of those properties and if I click and drag the percentages to the right of it you can see the layer being affected. Then I’ll twirl down “Transform” to reveal the transform properties. I want to start with animating the scale of the text so I’ll go to the Type Top layer and click the triangle to the left of the color label to twirl down it’s options. The first thing I’m going to do with all these layers is turn on this toggle called continuously rasterize, for Illustrator layers this essentially vectorizes them again so I can scale them infinitely without pixelation.Īlright, now let’s get into the animation.
When I start changing properties during animation I might mess something up and so it’s always good to have that original for reference. Now the reason I created a new composition to animate in rather than just animating in that original composition is so that I always have a copy of the logo just as it came from Illustrator. If you remember, I copied all the layers in my original logo composition so that is what I’m pasting. So now I’m in my new composition and I’ll hit Command + V to paste. I’ll set my duration to 3 seconds and then I’ll hit okay. This is hours, this is minutes, this is seconds, and this is frames. After Effects breaks down time into hours, minutes, seconds and frames. This is the standard HD setting for television. Then, under Preset I’ll select HDTV 1080 29.97. The first box is Composition Name and I’m going to change that to Compass Animation. This brings up a window with a bunch of settings to help define the new composition I’m creating. Next I’ll go the project panel and hit the create new composition button. Then I’m going to hit Command + C to copy. I’ll click in my timeline to make it the active panel and then I’ll go to Edit > Select All. If I double click on the composition it’ll open up in the composition panel and in the timeline. Now inside my project panel you’ll see a composition named after my file and a folder that contains the layers of my logo. If you don’t see that option you can click the “Options” button in the bottom left to bring it up. With the logo selected I’m going to go to the Import As drop down and choose “Composition – Retain Layer Sizes”. I’ll bring my mouse over the project panel and double click in some empty space to bring up the import window. This shows at what point in the timeline the composition window is showing.Īlright, with that stuff out of the way let’s import that logo. There is also a blue marker up at the top called the Playhead. You can see at the top there are numbers which represent different spots in time.
The right is a visual representation of time for your composition. The left side of this is where you’ll see your layers and all their switches and toggles. The last panel I want to talk about is the Timeline. It’s where you’ll see your elements and what you see here is what you’ll get when render out your animation. You can create folders to keep things organized too, which is really handy. First, is the Project Panel, this is where all of the elements you import and create live. Inside of Adobe After Effects there are a few panels I want to introduce you to before we get into animating.
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