best way to make this type of animated WWII campaign map in After Effects CC???

Report · Jan 16, 2020

Hello everyone,

I saw this really cool WWII animated map illustrating Operation Barbarossa:

The creator who made it does all his animations with Blender which I don't own.

What would be the best way to do it in After Effects CC???

Is there a way to control all the army units moving across the map with say a few null objects? Or would each army unit have to be its own layer?

Would the moving front line have to have many anchor points? Or is there a way to simplify animating it?

Are there plugins I could get that simplify creating this animation in After Effects?

Thank you in advance.

Report · Jan 16, 2020

To be honest I'm not sure what you hope to "simplify" here. The animation itself is basic every day animator's work with about 50 symbols and a bunch of lines. Assuming all the graphics exist this likely doesn't take more than an hour to animate, give or take a few specifics that may be required to make it 100% historically accurate. Yes, it's all just a bunch of keyframes on separate layers, but really not much beyond that that would require any deeper knowledge of AE or specific tricks. There's not even a requirement for the front line to be that complex. Looking at the example this could likely be expressed with around 30 points of which most of the time actually only a fraction is animated while the rest stays put. Again, really nothing complicated here, just a bit of tedious work ahead.

Mylenium

Report · Jan 16, 2020

Got it, thanks for your feedback Mylenium. Just thought I'd ask in case there was a faster or more efficient method I might not be aware of. Thanks again. 🙂

Report · Jan 16, 2020

First, Blender is an open-source 3D app and it's free. There is nothing to buy.

Second, as Mylenium said, there is not much to simplify. You could do everything in that video in After Effects by simply animating some shape and text layers. There are a lot more creative ways to make a more interesting map.

You can tie a path (the red line) to nulls using the Points Follow Nulls option in the Create Nulls From Paths.jsx that is included in the latest releases of AE. Animate the null's position to show the advancing armies and it will pull the path with it. That would probably be my approach. I would also probably choose RotoBezier for the path option, then just use shape layers for most of the graphics. Maybe this screenshot will give you some ideas:

It would also help us help you if we know your experience level with AE.

Report · Jan 16, 2020

Hi Rick, thanks very much for your input as well, much appreciated! I'll try your method with the nulls. I didn't know you could do that. I have a rather basic knowledge of AE. I know my way around the program and generally use AE for animated text, counters, infographics, animated masks for history maps showing invasions, etc. But I'm not really comfortable with expressions as I don't know the programming language.