Creating a moving timeline

[saraha51547062]

I'm relatively new to ae so apologies if this is a silly question or I haven't explained very well.

I'm creating a timeline with different animations for each year event as it moves. For example for 1993 the timeline will move into frame from the right and an animation for the year will start. The timeline and animation will then exit to the left. 1993 is in a pre-comp and I've keyframed the position of the pre-comp so it exits to the left.

What I'm trying to do is link the position of 1993 pre-comp to the timeline layer within the next pre-comp (1994) so that when one exits, the other follows it seamlessly.

Does anyone know how to do this?

[Andrew Yoole]

Parenting allows you to join After Effects layers to other layers.  If you parent your animation precomp layer to the timeline layer, when you change the position of the timeline layer the "child" layer will follow it.

I don't know much about your project, but typically these timeline-style animations are easier if you add a Master Null layer, and parent everything to that Null, so you can animate the whole timeline and all attachments by animating just the Null layer.

[Rick Gerard · Accepted solution]

I find the easiest thing to do is lay out the timeline as an Illustrator document that is comp height (1080 typical) and wide enough to include the entire timeline. You add all of the elements that you need in your timeline where they should go and put everything you need to animate on its own layer. Then you import as a comp and nest that comp in a standard sized main comp. All you need to move down the timeline are a few position keyframes. You can add additional elements to the main comp or just jump into the nested comp to animate the various elements as they come by.

Parenting is also a really good option. If I add something like a video or an animated graphic to the animated timeline it would just go into the main comp, the in and out points would be set and then you make the nested comp the parent and it will keep it moving right in sync. The initial design and layout of a timeline is the most difficult part. Deciding where you should cut to a different angle or transition to a new element should be based on the narration that goes with the timeline. Each of those cuts or transitions should be a separate comp.

Almost all of the timelines animations that I have ever worked on had a minute or more of copy to cover but most of my comps did not cover more than a sentence or two and were around 10 seconds or less. It's a lot easier to break things up into manageable pieces than to work on a five or ten-minute comp with a couple hundred elements arrange.

If you are very new to AE I suggest that you spend a couple of days learning Basic AE.​ You need to be very familiar with layers, nesting comps, pre-comps, preparing artwork for video and the basic principals of animation to avoid frustration and do a good job.

[saraha51547062]

I tried to parent the timeline within one pre-comp with the position movement of the next years pre-comp. It just doesn't seem to be working across two pre-comps, or maybe it's not supposed to.

I think adding a full-length timeline and adding position keyframes to move along would work best at this point. Thanks for the suggestion, I'm going to give that a go.

[Rick Gerard]

You cannot parent a layer in one comp to a layer in another comp but you can parent any layer in a comp to another layer. This is an extremely important technique to master and it's not that hard. I suggest you spend a few moments in the help files and community resources and study up. Info is easy to find. Just type Parenting in the Search Help field at the top right corner of AE and you will be directed to some excellent training materials.