Animate line for smooth moving anchors

For something like that I would use the Create Nulls from Paths/Points Follow Nulls script, have the path set to rotobezier and then animate the position of the nulls. Just draw a straight line with 4 points, run the script, then animate the Y position of the nulls. It will take about 2 minutes:

Hi Tobi,

Thanks for reaching out.

I agree with Mylenium that there is no shortcut to make the animation look better. Graph editor is one of the many other things which can help you in making it smooth. Here's a video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbyQ-VQfUtA&ab_channel=Skillshare

Let us know if there are any other questions.

Thanks,

Nishu

As Mylenium said, you should get deeper into the tangents to increase the look of the path. This requires a bit fine tuning, instead of keyframing status 1 to status 2. Go to the point where the line looks worst and adjust the tangents there. And repeat this necassary.

The next thing is easing. To get a smooth motion, you need to ease those keyframes. Get an overview about AEs easing options online (in the help section or just google it - this is basic and there should be plenty of ressources). There are differnt kinds of keyframes for different applications. Learn the differents and when to use what.

Spend your time this is speed graph editor. It is confusung at the beginning, but starts to make sense after you played around with the curves for a while. Alternativly, get a script like Flow.

If easing alone won't do it, you might retime everything a bit and add keyframes to stretch or shring speeds.

For example, you have 3 keyframes: 0, 50, and 100%. You put KF1 at 0f, KF2 at 20f and KF3 at 25f. This will give you a smooth start and a fast end.

You can create keyframes for 0, 40, 50, 60, 100%. You put all keyframes 5f apart, and now the middle part is slower than the rest.

To get a smooth end, you can just add a keyframe at 90% and move the last keyframes far away. So you have one speed for 0 to 90 and another, slower speed for 90 to 100.

You can literally spend hours working on easing, but this is exactly what makes the different between a chunky motion and a designed motion.

*Martin

No magic buttons, no shortcuts. You simply have to learn how keyframing works and how to tweak stuff to look nice by actually trying. Practice makes perfect. This is nothing anyone can explain academically to you nor will it fix itself by pushing buttons. In your example the first obvious thing to to is of course working on the spline tangents themselves to avoid all those kinks and bumps. I would suggest you actually start by reading the online help on basics of keyframing and masks/ shape layers. a web search will of course be unproductive if you haven't the basic lingo and workflows down.

Mylenium