Learn how to use track mattes, trim paths, and gradient wipes in Adobe After Effects to create dynamic text and shape animations. Understand the nuances of shape layers and how their properties can impact animation techniques.
Key Insights
- Track mattes can be used with bar animations to reveal country labels, but the associated bars must be manually re-enabled after setting them as mattes for the text layers.
- The Trim Paths effect, exclusive to shape layers made of strokes (not fills), allows for animated outlines similar to a "write-on" effect; however, it cannot be used on default shape layers that maintain properties like roundness and size unless converted from their default path types.
- Gradient Wipe, when paired with a grayscale reference layer such as one created with Fractal Noise, enables randomized reveal animations for layers; this technique can be applied using any grayscale source including images or video.
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The country labels are basically made by assigning the text to use the bar as the track mat. The bar gets turned off when you do that, so you got to turn it back on. So the France text, the track mat column uses the bar.
The bar color bar gets turned off, turn it back on. So I do that for each of them. The United States text uses the US bar, turn it back on.
So what happens is it animates. They are revealing the text. Like, so that's what it does.
So in this example, I have the numbers that tell you the value are outside of the bars. If you put them inside the bars, you could have the same exact bar reveal them as well. So I have an outside, which means the track map would fail if I tried to use it.
And I put them inside the bar. I could actually have the track mat draw them on just like they're drawing on the words. So it's kind of cool.
The grid gets a gradient, sorry, the outline is trim paths. I'm going to the outline. There is an effect available only for shape layers, which I open the shape layer.
There's an add button. These are shape layer only effects. They don't exist outside of here.
They are something shape layers can do. Some of them like twist, literally twist the shape. It's hilarious.
Wiggle, transform, zigzag. It's the fun stuff, by the way. But one of the repeater, repeater repeats the shapes of the layer.
It's kind of cool, by the way. The one called trim paths, though, is the shape layers equivalent of the write on effect we did. It only works for shape layers.
And honestly, it only works for shape layers made of outlines. Something made of a fill would not work well. But the instructions have you animate.
Again, I'll do it from the beginning. The shape layer, again, over one second animation. It has you animate the end property starting at zero.
And then at one second, going to 100%. So what happens is now the shape layer draws itself on like that. So it is basically visually the equivalent of what we did with the right arm.
But it only works for shape layers. And like I said, it only works for shape layers that have just strokes. If you try to do it with something with a fill, I'm making a bow tie like that.
If you try to trim paths on something with a fill like this, it just looks really weird. It does that if it has a fill. Okay, so it's actually trim paths is pretty good for a shape layer that's only made of outlines and made of strokes.
But for anything else, it tends to look very strange. And like I said, it only works on shape layers is why we couldn't use it before. So but here, it's actually pretty nice.
Okay, it has you do one more thing. That's a gradient wipe. It has you make a layer just to use as color.
So there's a layer solid I made before. I'm gonna drag it in my timeline. You can make a new one if you want.
Okay, it has you add an effect to this to create a kind of cloud pattern. Okay, that is not what I'm going for. It has fractal noise, which does this.
That's fractal noise. Okay, it makes a cloud pattern. Now for the record, it's got many options that make more than a cloud pattern.
Okay, so I could make a whole bunch of different like looking things. Okay, but by default, it's a cloud pattern. Okay, I'm gonna hide that layer.
It's only here for reference. Okay, I'm gonna call it gradient. Okay, what I'm gonna do is add to the bar, the grid.
I'm gonna add an effect called gradient wipe. What gradient wipe does, gradient wipe is it adds an effect right there. Gradient layer, I'm gonna pick that gradient I made.
And I'm gonna have it pull from effects. What it basically does is this is the gray scale of that layer. And it animates this layer appearing based on it.
So I can get this kind of like right in at kind of random draw on effect. Effectively, but it's doing it based on the gray scale available on that layer. So it does, okay.
The layer can be hidden, it doesn't care. And so the instructions just have you basically animate from the grid fully hidden. To the grid fully visible.
So that's completion backwards. So it basically has you draw on the pieces like that. That same, you could do that on any layer.
If you wanted, for example, the bars that is a scale in, just to kind of like fade in like that, you could use it. It is the, so linear wipe, straight line. Radial like we did, circular.
Gradient wipe based on the gray scale values of any other layer. And that could be video. So you can get a kind of like kind of cool, like people use it for like burning effects.
People use it for like dissolving effects. It's actually pretty cool. It's nice, okay.
Now, I used the layer and I added an effect to it to make the gradient. But you could have done that in Photoshop, use an image as a photo, use a video. No problem at all.
So it's kind of cool. But that's how it appears. It doesn't have you animate the numbers.
It doesn't have you animate the color bar. The block, but it says in self-study that if you wanted to, you could animate that and give some advice. Kind of cool.
I'd also suggest animating the numbers because it's kind of cool. So here's a problem, by the way. So there is a command to change the anchor point of a path.
However, when I did that before, it was a path I drew with the pen tool. But that is a rectangle. A rectangle has a set anchor point and I cannot control its anchor points.
So the effect for outline trim path is drawing it from there, okay. Now, technically, if you want to change that, the simplest way would be to go into the rectangle itself. Down here, the shape transform, I'm rotating the rectangle inside the shape layer.
Now that first point is there. If I go like negative 180, the first one will be there. So the ability to assign a new anchor point doesn't work with the shapes.
The shapes themselves, the ones you made with the shape tool, by default, they prevent you from editing the individual anchor points. You can't pull them around. Because to have these properties like size and roundness, shapes have to be a special type of object.
And so they're slightly different from the way if you just drew a rectangle with the pen tool. One's called a bezier path. The other is called a rectangle path or an ellipse path or a polygon path.
So they're kind of like a special class of object by default, which means you cannot manually edit their anchor points, okay. It's possible to convert them, but then you'd lose the rectangle properties. So unless you have to, you kind of want to avoid it.