Hi everyone and welcome to the overview tutorial of iExpressions 3.
iExpressions is an extension that includes over 100 expressions for After Effects and
they all have intuitive interfaces, so you don’t have to read or write any code to
use them.
By default, this basic wiggle expression is loaded but let’s start with another expression
now.
So we click on library and choose the expression we want to use.
The expression I want to start with is under “Movement Modifier->Marker” the “Play
Animation at Marker” iExpression.
You can also search for expressions here and iExpressions can search either only in the
names of the expressions or - if you choose “in everything” here, it will also search
in the description and the code of the expressions.
Here I animated the head of this plant with some puppet pin keyframes and we want to repeat
this animation at markers.
So each expression has those parameters here that are specific to the respective expression.
And for this particular expression we need to set where our keyframed animation starts
and where it ends.
So it starts at the beginning of the comp, so this parameter can stay at 0, and it ends
here at frame 36, so we set the end frame to 36.
Now we select all properties that the expression should be applied to and click the apply button.
As you can see, those numbers have turned red now, which indicates that expression is
active.
If we now set a layer marker here, you see that the same animation plays at this marker,
too.
Even better: if we double-click the marker and enter “200%” as comment, it plays
again as before, but this time twice as fast as the original.
So you can even control playback speed at each marker individually.
A great thing about this expression is that it does not only work with puppet pins, but
with any kinds of properties.
So no matter what kind of animation you have, you can easily repeat it at markers.
Here you can specify that the animation should look for composition markers, for example
- which is very useful, if your animation includes keyframes on multiple layers.
If you do any changes in the parameters, it is important to understand that those only
take effect, after you applied the expression again.
So now the plant is still reacting to layer markers and I have to make sure all my properties
are selected, apply again and now it reacts on comp markers instead.
If you plan to do a lot of parameter changes, you can also click on this auto apply icon
here.
This also applies the expression and will remember the properties and instantly apply
it again to them as soon as you change any parameters.
But we will use this later in the tutorial and now let’s take a look at how you load
expressions.
In this example, I also used another expression to rig the stem of this plant.
The stem can be moved by moving this null and this this can be done with an “IK Arm”
expression on the rotation of the different stem segments.
If you want to go back to this expression to change it, you can simply select the property
and click on “Load”.
Now here is the user interface for this IK arm expression.
And if we want to go back to the “Play Animation at Marker” iExpression, we can simply select
on of the puppet pin properties that we applied it to and load it from there.
So it is very easy to tweak expressions also at any later point in time.
Some iExpressions have a huge wow effect and others are just those little helpers that
make your life easier like wiggles, links or also the “Snap 2
Grid” iExpressions.
Here I already animated the rotation of the clock hand with two simple keyframes.
Now this is not really how the clock hand should animate.
We want to travel the 360 degrees of a full rotation in 60 steps, and 360/60 is 6.
This is a very nice extra feature of iExpressions by the way, that each parameter has its built-in
pocket calculator and when you enter a formula, it calculates the result.
Anyway, let’s apply this expression to the keyframed rotation and now it looks like this.
Pretty cool, but not yet perfect.
Let’s set the smoothest to 20% and apply again.
Now we created a pretty realistic clock hand in no time.
Of course you could have done the same with a lot of keyframes but this way it is much
faster and in particular much easier to modify.
So if you want to tweak the smoothness later, it can be done in no time.
If you ever wonder how to use a particular expression, you can click the help icon here
or also in the library on the “Online Help” button.
This will open a web page with a documentation of this iExpression.
So here you can see some examples, and as you can see, the “Snap to Grid” cannot
only be applied to rotation but also to positions, for example, to create this kind of effect
here.
And below you also find some tutorials with more detailed information.
Now let’s move the clock out of frame with two simple keyframes.
Another great little helper are the “Rotating Wheel” iExpressions.
We choose the one for linear motion, because we want to move in a straight line only, and
it renders faster than the variant that also supports curves.
We enter the diameter of our clock, which is 620 pixels in this case, and apply it to
the clock layer.
Now the clock rotates automatically based on its position change.
Note that we only selected the clock layer and no property.
When you do that, iExpressions applies the expression to the default property - which
is the rotation of the layer in this case, and in general depends on the expression you
are currently using.
So if you are not sure which property an expression needs to be applied to, it is often a good
idea to just select the layer itself and go for the default property.
And again, this animation is not super complex or fancy, and you could have keyframed this
by hand, but now let’s say you decide to change the easing or add some more keyframes.
Without the expression you would need to tweak the rotation keyframes each time you change
the position keyframes and now all of this is automated.
Now let’s create this effect with the “Unfold” expression
I already created a shape layer from a text.
And if you don’t know how to do that, you can simply select a text layer, and then use
this menu command “Layer->Create->Create Shapes from text”.
Now in the library we go to the Path bundle which contains some really powerful expressions
that you can use for Shape Layers and Masks.
Some of them create new shapes, so you can attach arrow heads on lines, for example,
connect multiple layers with a line and the sine wave and trail iExpressions are super
cool too.
I have no time to show them here, but let’s quickly take a look at their documentation.
So with “sine wave” you can create and animate these kinds of wave-like object very
easily and with full control.
And the “trail” iExpression analyzes the movement of a layer and creates these speed
lines that follow the layer.
And as you can see, you can create speed lines with all kinds of different styles.
But now we want to choose a Path modified - so these expressions don’t create new
path, but change existing ones.
And the one we use now is the “Unfold” iExpression.
The unfold takes a path and literally unfolds it step by step into a straight line.
And this first parameter here is like the progress.
We need to keyframe it from 0 to 100 to see the entire unfolding animation.
To keyframe a parameter, you need to link it to a slider.
So we select the layer on which the slider should be created - and now we click the Link
icon here and confirm that a new slider should be created.
When you want to create a new slider that way, make sure that before you click the link
icon, really only the layer itself and no property on the layer is selected, because
otherwise, iExpressions will not create a new slider, but link to the selected property
instead.
Now we select all paths on the layer and apply the expression by clicking the auto-apply.
We use auto-apply, because we plan to change the other parameters here in a minute, too.
Of course, also without auto-apply, the expression would still react instantly on any change
we do here on the slider, but with auto apply, we can also change the other parameters here
without the need to reapply manually all the time.
If we now keyframe the slider from 100 to 0, it starts with a straight line and folds
into the final shape.
By default, it folds everything at once.
but if we set this gradually parameter to 90%, for example, it becomes more of a directed
process that starts and one end of the shape and ends at the other end.
You can also connect sliders at any later point in time.
So if we select the layer again, and click the chain link icon for the “Gradually”
parameter - now we have a slider for this one, too.
Note that if we didn’t enable auto-apply before, we would need to reapply the expression
now.
So like for any other change, we do here in the user interface, also after we connected
a slider, we need to reapply to update the expressions.
The linking system of iExpressions is very powerful.
It cannot only link to sliders, but also to any other properties.
So if you click the chain link here on the “Closed” option, for example, it would
create a checkbox control.
But keep in mind that in general, expression in After Effects tend to slow down if they
have a lot of links.
Therefore, it is a very cool feature that with iExpressions you can minimize the number
of links by only creating sliders for parameters that you plan to keyframe.
And since we want the paths to be closed all the time, we don’t link it to a checkbox
control, and instead simply enable it here.
Finally, property links also have options.
If you enter a value of 10 as “Offset” here, for example, the expression would take
the value from the slider and then add 10 to it.
So effectively the completion would always be 10% more than what the slider says.
Time Offset works similar and allows you to look at the slider value at an earlier or
later point in time.
Let’s say the first letter should fold with a delay of 25 frames.
So we first disable auto-apply, since we don’t want the change to affect all shapes, then
we set a time offset of 25 frames, select only the first path and apply again.
Now the first letter is still connected to the same same slider, but thanks to the delay,
it folds later than the other letters.
The other link options are rather advanced, so you can also link to the speed instead
of the value of the slider.
Note that you can also link 1D values like this completion parameter to 2D or 3D values,
like the position of another layer.
If you do that, you could choose here in the options if the X or Y component of this position
should be used for the link.
Finally, this scale option here allows you to change the range.
So if you set scale to 200%, for example, when the slider goes from 0 to 100, the result
value goes from 0 to 200.
This is useful if you want to connect several parameters to the same slider but still want
some of those parameters to change more than others.
The last example in the library I want to show you before I explain you how to import
your own expressions, is the mirror iExpression.
One thing I find very annoying in After Effects is creating symmetric shapes.
Let’s say we want to draw a mouse cursor.
So we create a new shape layer path like this and then we select the path and apply the
mirror expression to generate the second half of the arrow.
This is a very powerful technique, but there is one little stumbling block and that is
that After Effects essentially locks path once an expression is applied to them.
So you are not able to change a path anymore by clicking on it.
If you want to change a path, you would need to deactivate the expression temporarily,
do your change, and then enable the expression again.
But iExpressions has a much better workaround.
We delete the expression again and duplicate our path.
Now we link the first copy here with this button and then apply the expression to the
second copy.
Now the second copy creates our final result, but as input shape it uses the first copy.
Since there is no expression applied to the first copy, we can change it however we want
and the mirror expression on the second copy updates instantly.
Of course, you can also animate the path.
Just add keyframes as usual, and the expression does its job!
In the iExpressions promo video, for example, this entire canon here was designed and animated
with the mirror iExpression and in particular if you plan to animate shapes, this can really
save you a ton of time!
iExpressions can also convert your expressions into keyframes.
So let’s set the work area here to the first two seconds, select the path which has the
expression applied and click the “Bake” button.
Now the expression is disabled and we have a keyframe for each frame in the work area.
Sometimes you only want to create a single value and no keyframes.
If we undo and click bake again, this time with the shift key pressed - instead of creating
keyframes for the entire work area, iExpressions just bakes the current frame.
Therefore the path is not animating anymore.
We can delete our first copy of the path now, since the expression is deactivated and is
not relying on the first copy anymore.
The result is a normal path - as if you had drawn it by hand - and therefore, you can
also change both sides of the arrow independently, now.
So now you’ve seen just a few of the more than 100 expressions that are included in
iExpressions and I encourage you to explore the other ones, too, but the last thing I
want to show you in this video is how you can use your own expressions with iExpressions.
So let’s say on this great website from Dan Ebberts you found this pendulum expression
which creates a kind of swinging movement.
We copy & paste it and apply it to the rotation of this layer here.
Now if you want to change the expression, but don’t want to touch the program code,
make sure the property with the expression is selected and click the load button.
What now happened is that iExpressions analyzed the code and figured out which parameters
it contains that you might want to change.
So if we want it to swing less intense, we can simply change the amplitude here from
80 to 10, apply it, and now it swings much less.
Also for expressions you imported like that, you can use the advanced features like linking
the parameters using the chain link icon.
Currently, iExpressions says that this is an “unnamed expression” but this changes
when we save it in your library.
We click on “save” and let’s say we create a folder “Dan” for Dan Ebberts
expressions and name this one pendulum.
Now the name changed to “Pendulum” and if we open our library, inside the “User
Library” section we now have a subsection”Dan” with this “Pendulum” expression inside.
So it is really easy to build your own expressions library.
To manage your user library, you can click this “User Library” button here.
This opens the library folder in MacOS Finder or Windows Explorer and as you can see, the
user library is simply a folder with subfolders and one text file for each expression.
So if you want to rename expressions, move them to different folders or whatever, you
can do this right here in your file browser.
If you want to share your expressions with your friends, just zip the contents of this
folder and send it to then, sync it with Dropbox or use whatever other method you prefer to
share files.
One little detail: When you changed the library and go back to After Effects, if you have
the library still open, you have to close and reopen it to actually see the changes
you made.
Now we are at the end of this iExpressions 3 Overview.
If you got excited, please download the free trial or watch the tons of mini tutorials
we have for all the individual iExpressions.
Here we were able to really just cover a few of the over 100 included expressions, but
now you understood the basic principles and are well prepared to go and explore the rest
of the iExpressions library.