in this video I'm going to show you my method
to quickly morph between any two shapes quickly and easily
so we want this triangle to morph into that square
the method I'm going to show you is super versatile it will work on any
shapes and you can apply lots of the principles to a bunch of non shape
morphing scenarios first let's open up our position property on our triangle
keyframe its current position and a few frames later move it over to where our
square is now the key to a good transition is anticipation anticipation
is the movement that happens before our main movement that builds up energy and
thus the viewer know hey look get your eye balls over here something is about to happen
adding anticipation is one of the biggest things you can do to improve your animation
for anticipation here, our triangle is going to move very slightly to the left
before it morphs across the screen to the right so let's add another keyframe
position closer to the start and then another one about the same distance
after because we're going to make our shape overshoot as well where it goes a
little further than it needs to and then settles back down into position
on our second keyframe lets nudge our position a touch to the left and on our third key
frame a touch to the right just using our arrow keys let's hide a square as
well we don't need to see that for now now the triangle moves over to the left
slowly zooms over to the right and comes back a little to rest to make that all
feel smooth and natural let's add some easing first I'm going to right click on
its position and click separate dimensions because we're only animating
its x position any y-axis information is just going to get in our way so let's delete
those Y position keyframes now let's select our x position keyframes and jump
into our graph editor by clicking over here this is a representation of a X
position over time it goes to the left goes to the right very fast and then
comes back left again let's select all of those keyframes and click the easy ease
button down here to ease that motion and get some Bezier handles
here's what that looks like
and now we're going to adjust these so
that they ease in and the ease out are really gradual so let's pull out the
beginning and end handles as long as we can
there that's looking better now
let's make this main movement a little quicker and more explosive we can do
that by facing these handles towards each other and making this curve a
little bit steeper but we don't want these edges to be that long so let's bring
those down a touch now let's take a look
good we're almost there I'm gonna tink around with these for a
few minutes to get that feeling a touch more natural because the better this
motion is the better the whole effect is going to be
there we are
I'm also gonna add some rotation to exaggerate that motion I'll play some rotation keyframes
in the same areas as our position keyframes
turn the second one a bit to the left
the third one a bit to the right then go
into the graph editor and make a similar curve to our position keyframes
if you haven't installed the free plugin is copy is very handy for copying ease
values now here's our animation
it's looking good but there's no shape
morphing nowhere to be seen so let's fix that at the end of this animation let's
make our square visible and then parent it to our triangle by using the pickwhip
here and selecting the triangle now they are both attached and let's drag the end
of the triangle layer to the middle here where the animation is at its fastest
and let's trim the start of our square to the same point as well so now our
shape switches in between these two frames let's take a look for a lot of
for a lot of scenarios this is all you need the anticipation and smooth easing make it
so you barely even see the cut but because all animators are show-offs and
want everyone to know we morphed a shape like a Big Damn animation hero we're
gonna draw their attention to it with some shape path animation let's search
for a path property over here in the timeline and I wanna select both their
paths and right click convert to Bezier path so they're both editable let's add
keyframes to both of those let's add an extra keyframe at the
beginning of this big movement on the triangle and one at the end of that big
movement for the square now we're gonna focus on the cutting point between the
shapes here let's zoom in a touch for the triangle I'm gonna select that pen
tool from up here I'm gonna move back this vertex here and with our convert a
vertex tool from up here in the toolbar I'm going to drag it out over that
vertex to create a rounder shape and I'm also going to round the other corners too slightly
here I want it to look like the back of this triangle is moving a bit
slower and leaving a trail behind it I'm gonna easy ease that first keyframe with
f9 on my keyboard let's take a look there not bad now let's adjust the path
of the square to make a similar shape
now that's a shape morph if ever I've see one but let's add some extra
elements and secretary motion to really impress those strangers on the Internet
and hope to scrape together some self-validation
we can add another keyframe to a square path here and then adjust this square path keyframe
so it looks like that trailing section of the shape has caught
up and it's deforming the square inwards there we go and let's add this blob that
flies off from a square because it just got too much momentum for us to handle
this is just a shape layer and I've got a few keyframes adjusting its position
rotation and scale appearing when our square is at its furthest point to the
right for this second blob section here that's attached to the square which I've
called blob 2, I drew the shape on a separate shape layer and keyframe its
path property each frame is touching blob one and then ease into a flat edge
going back into the square sometimes it's faster to just draw a shape for
four or five frames instead of some tricky After Effects morphing hack then
I've also added this squiggly texture which is just a comp with this shape
inside with no fill and then a pink stroke
I just parented that to my triangle and then selected to preserve underlying
transparency over here so it's only visible on already visible areas
underneath which is our Mighty Morphin shape last of all is this shading layer
which is just a pink shape that I've and a Gaussian blur to, parent it to my
triangle and then also added preserve underlying transparency as well so that
it is well is also confined to our existing shape layers then I've added
this whole comp to a dramatic space background because this is just the type of stuff
that happens all the time in space I've made a short playlist of some related
videos that'll think you'll enjoy if you've made it this far I'll see you in
the next video and please consider subscribing if you'd like more of these
videos every week
Subtitle: Zoe J Marriott