Learn how to create and work with responsive design - time in After Effects. The Responsive Design - Time feature allows you to author adaptive motion graphics. The feature enables adaptive time-stretching when a composition is nested or when it is exported as a Motion Graphics template. Using the GoPro CineForm codec in After Effects; Working with other applications. Dynamic Link and After Effects; Working with After Effects and other applications; Sync Settings in After Effects; Collaborate with Team Projects; Share and manage changes with Team Project collaborators; Creative Cloud Libraries in After Effects; Plug-ins; CINEMA. Regardless of the number of Adobe After Effects torrent-files you have come across, the only way to test After Effects Mac and Windows software for free is to download Adobe After Effects Trial. Check out How to Get Adobe After Effects for Free. This will be an excellent option for those, who are still using CS 6 standalone version.
The Responsive Design - Time feature allows you to author adaptive motion graphics. The feature enables adaptive time-stretching when a composition is nested or when it is exported as a Motion Graphics template. Adaptive time-stretching means that the the protected regions animate in the same amount of time even if you time-stretch the unprotected regions.
You can protect the intros, outros, and any arbitary region of a composition, and save the responsive design templates and reuse them in different projects to avoid duplicating and retiming.
With this feature, the animation pins to the graphic or sequence and adapts to the edits you make to them. This enables you to create complex animations and Motion Graphics templates that can responsively retime to align with a sequence in a project.
For example, you create a lower third and animate fade in/out and add responsive design-time. Responsive design preserves the animation time regardless of when the duration of the clip is extended or trimmed.
Take the following example to illustrate the problem: Mac laptop store.
You create a text animation with a fade-in/out and you need the animation to be as long as the sequence. The animation comprises of two sets of text that fade in against a black background.
Add the same animation to a different sequence. Every element of the animation such as the font size, and the start and end time of the fade in/out, should match with the sequence. One way is to duplicate the animation to align it with the length of the sequence. However, this approach can be time-consuming as you need to move the animation keyframes to align the fade in/out with the sequence.
This is where you can use responsive design – Time. You can protect the fade in/out regions (comprising of keyframes) and extend the animation. This attaches the regions to the sequence and the amount of time they take to animate remains unaffected even when you time-stretch the animation to match the length of the sequence. Once attached, the animation dynamically adapts to the length of the sequence.
You can apply Responsive Design – Time in the following three ways:
Option 1:
In the Composition menu, select one of the options from the Responsive Design – Time sub-menu:
- Create Intro: Creates a protected region for 15% of the composition duration, starts on the first frame of the composition.
- Create Outro: Creates a protected region for 15% of the composition duration, ends on the last frame of the composition.
- Create Protected Region from Work Area: Creates a protected region with start and end points that align with the work area bar. The protected regions are shaded in blue.
Option 2:
Drag the work area bar to select the region you want to set as protected region. Right-click the work area bar, then select Create Protected Region from Work Area.
Option 3:
Click the marker icon at the right-side of the timeline and create a composition marker.
In the Timeline panel, double-click the marker to open the Composition Marker settings dialog, and set a duration and enable the Protected Region option.
Once you set the protected regions, outros, and intros of your animation, you can add them to different compositions or sequences.
Refer to the following example to illustrate the process:
- Name the animation with protected regions, for example, Comp A.
- Name the composition you have to add the animation to, for example, Comp B.
Open Comp B in the Timeline panel.
In the timeline, drag and place the Comp A over Comp B. Mac computers and laptops.
The timeline displays the protected regions as shaded in blue. Free apple program. Hold the end point of Comp A and drag it to match the end point of Comp B.
When you preview the comp, the protected regions in the animation take the same amount of time to animate and only the unprotected regions are stretched.
Work with nested composition with multiple protected regions
- When you drag the in and out points of a composition that has one or more protected regions and it is nested into another composition, it time-stretches the composition instead of trimming. The feature preserves the duration of the protected regions. For example, when you time-stretch a clip of 5 seconds that has protected regions of 2 seconds, to make it 10 seconds, the duration of the protected regions remains 2 seconds long.
- To trim the in or out point of the layer instead of time-stretching, hold the Option (macOS) or Alt (Windows) key and drag the in and out points.
- Protected regions are composition markers with the Protected Region option enabled, with different handle icons to make it easy to identify. Protected region markers behave the same as other composition markers, except that when you nest a composition with protected regions, those markers can not be modified. Instead, the layer bar for the nested composition is shaded to indicate the protected regions.
- If you modify a protected region after you nest a composition, the protected region marker on the nested composition layer does not get automatically updated. To update markers on a nested composition layer, select the layer and choose Layer > Markers > Update Markers from Source.
- You can also access the Protected Region option through scripting or expressions using the protectedRegion attribute of composition markers.
Export a composition with protected regions as a Motion Graphics template
When you export a composition with protected regions as a Motion Graphics template and add to a sequence in Premiere Pro, you can adust the length directly without doing time remap.
You can drag the in and out points of the clip to time-stretch the composition instead of trimming the in or out point. The duration of protected regions is preserved.
- When you export a composition containining audio as a Motion Graphics template, it does not not time stretch adaptively in Premiere Pro.
- Compositions that use the CINEMA 4D renderer and contain 3D layers, or that contain a CINEMA 4D layer that uses the CINEWARE effect, could face issues in smooth animation of non-protected regions when the composition is time-stretched.
Create incredible motion graphics, text animation, and visual effects with Adobe After Effects. Design for film, TV, video, and web.
The After Effects time expression is a great way to add movement without setting keyframes. Here’s how it’s done.
If you’re new to expressions in After Effects, one of the most helpful and easy to use expressions available is the time expression. Essentially, the time expression returns a number value related to your current position in the timeline. For example, if you were at three seconds, the time expression would return a value of three.
How to Use the Time Expression
The time expression can be thought of as a variable in itself. Like we said before, it will return a value related to position of your playhead in seconds. For most motion graphic circumstances, you will likely want to multiply the time expression so that it returns a larger value. In that case, we will have to tell After Effects to do some basic math.
In order to use the After Effects time expression, select the property in which you want the time value to affect and option click on the corresponding stopwatch. For example, if you wanted to set the expression to affect the position, simply click the stopwatch to the left of the position text.
Next, you will need to add in the time expression into your expression. You can simply replace the default text in your expression with the word time or you can have it interact with the time expression by using basic math icons like (+,-,/, & *).
After Effects Timeline Shortcuts
Position
To link your position to the current time, simply option click on the stopwatch next to corresponding position property. In the example above, we separated the x and y position so we could apply the time expression to just the X position. Once you hit the stopwatch, you can simply type in time* any value.
Rotation
To link time and rotation together, simply click on the stopwatch next to rotation and replace the current expression with time*any value. In the example above, we have a five second loop. So, using some simple math, we figured out that we would need to multiply the time by 72 to create a perfect loop.
Exponential Values
You can also multiply time by itself so that it will increase exponentially. Simply option click on the stopwatch next the the property you want to effect and type in time*time. In the example above we multiplied time to the power of four.
Text Values
You can also link the value of text to be that of the current time. Simply option click on the stopwatch and add in the time expression. By default, the numbers will include numbers beyond the decimal point, so it is recommended that you use the Math.round() function to round up to the nearest whole number.
Want to learn more about working with expressions in After Effects? Check out a few of the following articles:
Have any other tips for using the time expression in After Effects? Share in the comments below.
Sign In
After Effects Time
Register
After Effects Time Remapping
- Access to orders in your account history
- Ability to add projects to a Favorites list
- Fast checkout with saved credit cards
- Personalized order invoices
Create Account
Comments are closed.