After Effects Layer Random Position

[djlangleyy]

Hi, I'm fairly new to After Effects so I'm still learning the basics, but I wanted a little help with something I've been trying to achieve. I'm looking to create an animated effect where the different object shapes randomly move around within a set area, but don't show the movements so that they jump from position to position. I've attached a gif showing the approximate idea. This is something I've typically done in Photoshop and animated them individually as key frames but is very time-consuming and not quite as 'random'.

The two questions I'm facing are, is it possible to just get the objects to move around within a set defined area, rather than the whole comp size, and secondly, how do I create the jumpy/jittery movements and get the object shapes to change position?

 

[Mylenium]

Possible, but complicated, especially since you start off with fixed positions and the imaginary grid positions also need to be plausible/ logical on some level. You'd need a ton of extra code so two layers don't end up in the same positions from frame to fram. Distributing letters randomly on a contrained grid is easy, but the motion stuff is not. Dan's old example deals with this scenario, but would need massive modifications to work for your requirements:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/random-grid-movement.html

Mylenium

[Kyle Hamrick]

Approaching this with expressions is possible but complicated, though since you said you're newer to AE, I'm not certain that's what you're asking about. Here's another thread that may help if that's what you're after, though. 

You could totally create something like this manually using Hold keyframes, and ideally creating a reference grid of some kind so your positions look intentional.