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Question

after effect Temporal interpolation

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
June 10, 2022
6 replies
2155 views

I am animating an object in After Effects 22.4. I want it to move very quickly into the frame and have it slow down as it appears to go into the distance, as a car, for example, would appears as it comes into frame in wide angle, very fast at first. Keyframe interpolation on the graph doesn't seem to want to change the incoming speed enough to have the object (at 148% of its size) move fast at the beginning. And it does weird things, like backs the object up, making it bigger, then slowly gaining speed. Any ideas? I tried setting the speed manually, but it doesn't seem to have any affect.

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R

Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Select Scale in the timeline so that both scale keyframes are highlighted. Go to the Animation menu and select Keyframe Assistant, then Exponential scale. Exponential Scale will give you a similar size reduction over time that you would get with a camera and a standard lens.

Step two: Select the Position property and turn on Graph Editor. Make sure Edit Speed Graph is enabled. Grab the handles for entry and exit speed and drag them to give you an exponential curve. Fiddle around until you get the scale and position properties to look right.

If you want to simulate a wide-angle lens, you can spend all afternoon fiddling with the scale and position speed graphs, or you can make the layer 3D, add a wide-angle lens, then animate the position. That's how I would do it. It will take seconds instead of hours to get it to look right. This screenshot gets close to the right look*:

If you want to, you can also open up the Graph Editor and tweak the speed graph to emphasize a change in velocity. I've uploaded a comp that shows both workflows. Maybe it will help.

* The "Drag & Drop here..." area is a pain to use and should not be used to share images. Please use the toolbar or drag or copy and paste your images to the reply field so we can see them without downloading them.

scale_vs_3D.zip

lawrencejohnson999Author

Participating Frequently

Rick! Thank you so much. It took me a while to figure out how you got there, not knowing what cameras did, but when I finally realized how simple it was, setting only the position in 3d space, I was able to duplicate what you did. I really appreciate that you took the time to make the comps.

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Rick Gerard

Community Expert

Does this tutorial I made help?

B

Byron Cortez

Community Expert

I suggest you record your screen and upload a video capture to see what exactly is happening. An explanation works but in these cases it is best to show the entire procedure to see if there is something really weird or not.

Byron.

lawrencejohnson999Author

Participating Frequently

Thank you. I'll do that when I get back to the office tomorrow.

Larry

Mylenium

Brainiac

There are no easy answers for keyframing. It all comes down to practice, practice, practice. All of what you describe seems perfectly normal if one is to assume you over-cranked your tangents and try to do everything with just a handful of keyframes, which may simply not be possible in your scenario. anyway, without a screenshot of your graph editor and your comp nobody can advise on specific tweaks and fixes.

Mylenium

lawrencejohnson999Author

Participating Frequently

Thanks for your suggestions. Here are screen shots of the action. In one set I use two keyframes since the object is going in a straight line. But this appears time-wise the opposite of what it would in real life, which should be fast at the beginning and slow at the end. Editing the time interpolation is beyond AF's capability apparently. Then (shot 4) I tried making several keyframes along the route, but the movement, dimishing in scale and moving across screen, is bumpy. Is there a better way to do this?

ShiveringCactus

Community Expert

A great shortcut and way to see how others might use keyframes and the speed graph is the Smoother. You'll find it under the Window menu. The Smoother has a few settings to play around with, but what it will do is reduce your keyframes while maintaining the overall shape of your motion.

nishu_kush

Community Manager

Hi lawrencejohnson999,

Welcome to the community.

Using the Graph Editor to animate the car should help. If I were you, I would use the Value Graph in this case. Please share a screenshot that could help us to understand the scenario better.

Looking forward to your response.

Thanks,

Nishu

lawrencejohnson999Author

Participating Frequently

Hi everyone. Thanks for your suggestions. Here are screen shots of the action. In one set I use two keyframes since the object is going in a straight line. But this appears time wise the opposite of what it would in real life, which should be fast at the beginning and slow at the end. Editing the time interpolation is beyond it's capability apparently. Then (shot 4) I tried making several keyframes along the route, but the movement, dimishing in scale and moving across screen, is bumpy. Is there a better way to do this?

Peru Bob

Community Expert

I've moved this from the Using the Community forum (which is the forum for issues using the forums) to the After Effects forum so that proper help can be offered.

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