How to reveal text with mask and animate multiple lines in After
Effects! Welcome everyone I am your host, Elias Sarantopoulos.
All right so inside After Effects I'll go ahead and start this off, I've already placed a photo
into the Timeline as well as a description text with a layer style of a Drop Shadow .
So I'll go ahead and lock both of these layers so I don't accidentally move them
and to set up the multiple lines I will get the help of the Grid. So Under the View menu I'll
choose Show Grid. Now the event that you want to change the color of the Grid as I did on my end,
bring up the After Effects Preferences panel and under the Grids and Guides I
change the color of the grid as well as the grid line every 100 pixels.
So I'll go ahead and zoom in a bit here and with nothing selected into the timeline I'll grab the
Pen tool, a stroke of white color and the thickness of the stroke is set something between eight (8px)
to ten (10px). So I'll click once to create the first anchor point
and then somewhere in the middle right here I'll press the Shift key and click to create the second
anchor point, now I have a straight segment right there. So I'll go ahead and rename Shape Layer 1
by pressing Enter/Return on the keyboard and rename this to, White Line 1, I also need to
have a duplicate of this line and be placed to the other side so I'll go ahead and use the keyboard
shortcut (CTRL + D / CMD + D) and with the Selection tool it's going to click and drag and move this to the other side .
I'm also going to Zoom in quite a bit here because I want to make sure that both of these lines
sit at the very center. So this seems to be okay, as for this one I'm just going to move it
right there and I want to make sure that there's no gap between those two.
All right so things are looking good here, I got those two lines. Now I need a third line the third
line actually will be the length of both of these lines. So I'll select Line 2, duplicate it, lock
the other two, press Enter/Return and rename this to Red Line. I'm also going to change the color
of that, there we go and I will grab the Pen tool again and just click and drag, press the Shift key as you do
and make sure I have the correct length here, like so, all right. No need for the Grid anymore so I
will disable the grid and now I have three lines here. All right so what we need to do now is we
need to change the placement of the anchor point for all of these straight segments and set up the
ground for the animation. So for the White Line 1, here's the anchor point, I need to move this
to the far right of the line so I'll go ahead and grab the Pen Behind Anchor Point tool and click
and drag this and place it right there. I'm also going to Zoom in to make sure that I do a good job
and I'll place it right in the center to the far right. This is for the first line,
for the second line I'll do the same but this time I'll place it to the far left
and just right here at the center and the far left, this is for the second and for the third
line actually the Red Line will animate from the very center and for that I
can actually go to the Effect menu/Transform and then choose Center Anchor Point in Layer
Content or use the keyboard shortcut, and here is the anchor point right at the very center for
the red line. All right so we set up the multiple lines and now we are ready to go to the next step.
The first line to animate that will be the white line one so I'll go up to the
Add button and bring up the powerful Trim Paths operator. So let's see which one we're
going to animate, this is the Start and this is the End. I'll start with the End
and it's because I want this to animate from here and go to the left side.
So I am at the beginning of the Timeline, I will click on the Stopwatch to create the
first keyframe and then scrub the Current Time Indicator to let's say around here
and set the second keyframe to Zero percent. I'll press the Spacebar on the keyboard for the Ram
preview and this is what I have so far. All right so right now I have a Linear interpolation so
I'll change that by going to the Animation menu, Keyframe Assistant and change the interpolation
to Easy Ease. I'll press the Spacebar for another Ram preview and now I have more organic animation. The
thing is, I'm actually want to exaggerate the Incoming Velocity and increase its influence so
I'll bring them the Graph editor, here's the second keyframe, I will double click on that, here's the
Keyframe Velocity, this is the Incoming Velocity so I'll change the influence to 100 percent
and press the Spacebar for another Ram preview. That looks great, all right;
So let's go ahead and do something similar to the White Line 2 here, again I'll go ahead
and bring up the Trim Paths operator. I'm at the beginning of the Timeline, this time we're
going to animate the Start property. So I will click on the Stopwatch to create the first keyframe
and to go to the next visible keyframe, this is the next the visible keyframe,
I'll press the letter (K) on the keyboard and change the second keyframe, set this one to 100 percent.
I will marquee select this two, I'll change the interpolation from Linear to Easy Ease and
I'll do the same. I'll bring up the Graph editor and here's the Incoming Velocity, I can also grab
the Influence handle to 100% and so the animation basically here is, it accelerates fast it, peaks and
then it decelerates. That's the animation here so let's press the Spacebar, that looks great!
Here's the thing though, I don't want to see those two lines to be visible when they start animating,
I want them to be invisible so for that I'll actually bring up the Scale property
and animate only one axis rather than both the X and the Y-axis. So I'll start
with the White Line 1, I'm in the beginning of the Timeline so I will press the letter (S) on the
keyboard to bring up the Scale property, I will disable the link icon right here
and I'm also going to animate and scale only the X property, you see this is the X property here.
So I am the beginning of the Timeline, I will click on the Stopwatch to create the first
keyframe and I'll set this one to zero (0). So I'm going to scrub the Current Time Indicator just a
little further here and then set the scale to 100 percent. I'll do the same for the Whites Line 2
and I'll press the letter (S) on the keyboard for the Scale, I will disable this link icon here,
I'll make sure that I'm the beginning of the Timeline, I'll set the Scale property here,
the first one to zero percent (0%) and to go to the next visible keyframe, I'll press the letter (K) on
the keyboard and set the second keyframe to 100 percent. I will marquee select all of these and then
under the Animation menu, Keyframe Assistant, I'll change the Interpolation to Easy Ease. So let's
see how that works by pressing the Spacebar. That looks fantastic actually, great and organic
animation. So I'll keep that and I'm ready to go to the next step and animate the red line.
The next line to animate that will be the red line so I'll go ahead and focus on that.
Now for this red line I'm only going to animate the Scale property so for that I'll press
the letter (S) on the keyboard, I'll make sure that I'm the beginning of the Timeline and
once again I will disable the link icon so I can only animate on the X-axis. I will click on the
Stopwatch to create the first keyframe and I'll set the Scale property to zero percent (0%). Now to time
this correctly, I'll target the second line here then press the letter (U) on the keyboard to show
properties with keyframes. Now I need to jump to the last visible keyframe so I use the keyboard
shortcuts the letter K twice on the keyboard two jumps to the last visible keyframe and I'll set
the Scale property not to 200%. The plan here is to actually have some of the red line invisible
at the very end so I will Scale this actually much less, let's say to 15%, you see that so we have
some at the very end. I will marquee select those two, I will change the interpolation from Linear to Easy Ease,
I will target the second keyframe, I'll bring up the Graph Editor and change the Influence to 100%, this
Incoming Velocity. I'll press the Spacebar on the keyboard and see, preview the animation. That
looks actually fantastic, great! One thing that I want to do and make sure that I have consistency
is actually copy and paste the Layer Style, the Drop Shadow for the description text to the
rest of the lines here. So I'll press the letter (UU) twice to bring up the modified properties,
and I'll target the Drop Shadow, I'll Copy this to the clipboard,
target the first line and paste that, target the second line and paste that, and then target the
red line and paste that as well. So all of these lines do have the same Drop Shadow property values.
So I'll press the Spacebar for the RAM preview, there we go and now we have consistency throughout.
The last thing to animate is to reveal the description text and for that I'll use a
Track Matte but first I'll go ahead and set this up. So with nothing selected into the Timeline
I'll grab the Rectangular tool and I'm actually using just a Fill, the color doesn't really
matter, what matters is that I cover the entire description text. So I'll go ahead and click and
drag to create a rectangular shape as such. I press Enter/Return on the keyboard to rename this to Box,
I'm also going to Center the Anchor Point in Layer Content so all transformations take place
from the very center right here. All right, so I'll make sure that I'm the beginning of the Timeline,
and I'm going to animate only the Position property so for that I'll press the letter (P)
on the keyboard and click on the Stopwatch to create the first keyframe and to time this
correctly I'll target the red line and then press the letter (U) on the keyboard to show properties
with keyframes. Now I need to jump the last visible keyframe so I press the letter (K) on the keyboard
and I'll set the Position property again to be exactly the same as the previous one. Basically
right now I have two identical keyframes with the same resting position so I will scrub the
Current Time Indicator to the very beginning and then click and drag and bring this up,
let's say around here. So when I press the Spacebar this is the animation. All right, now I'll go
ahead and marquee select those two keyframes, I'll change the Interpolation from Linear to Easy Ease,
I'll target this one, the second keyframe and inside the Graph Editor I'll change the Incoming Velocity
with an influence of a hundred percent (100%) and then again I press the Spacebar
to preview the animation. That looks good now let's go ahead and work on the Track Matte. So with the
Track Matte column visible, I will unlock the text layer, I will target it, select it and then I click
on the drop down menu and select the layer that I want as an Alpha Matte reference layer.
So the reference layer for me is the Box. Let's go ahead and do another RAM preview, press the Spacebar,
there we go. All right, so now I'm going to go ahead and just time this a little better and by
that I mean I'll bring the first Position keyframe just a little bit into the timeline, right here
and press the Spacebar for the RAM preview and I like this animation quite a lot.
So now let's go ahead and trim the entire composition here, I'm just going to
go right here, scrub the Current Time Indicator right there at the end of the animation and
then give a bit of a buffer space, let's say somewhere around here, I'll press the letter (N) on
the keyboard to set the End of the Work Area to this current time and then I will right
click to Trim Comp to Work Area and then just press the Spacebar again for the RAM preview.
It looks fantastic and this exactly wanted to show you for this animation. Elias Sarantopoulos 😊