After Effects Auto Orient Flips When Stopping Motion

Question

I have comp of an animal walking, then stopping, then walking again.  I'm keyframing the comp position and using auto orient to keep him facing the correct direction.  When he stops walking I keyframe the position and keyframe again at the end of his pause using the same position.  When he starts walking again, I resume keyframing his position.  During the time that he's not walking (no movement), the auto orient flips him in the wrong direction.  How can I stop the flip flopping?

BradH34 · Accepted Answer

Thank you Rick.  I figured it out.In order to have him face the correct way along the path, I had to rotate him 180 degrees.  When I stopped his motion, he wanted to go back to no rotation (facing the wrong way).  I pre-comped him, rotated him 180 degrees in the pre-comp, and when I keyframe his position in the main comp, he works perfectly. I was trying your hold frame trick and it wasn't working, which led me to figure out what was happening, so thank you!

Mylenium · Answer

This is to be expected. It's in the name - when there is no motion there's nothing to orient towards. You need to split up the layer and to get a good behavior you have to make the movement slightly longer and animate the opacity to "switch" the layers on and while getting stable orientation. At the same time the standing segment would be separate with no auto-orient used.

Mylenium

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