Blinking Eyes in After Effects

Hello!
I am working on my first all out animation video in After Effects. I have a vector graphic of a person and I want to make him blink frequently throughout the video.
I am going to create several different versions of the eyes (all the way open, half way open, closed etc) and then place each of these images next to one another in the timeline to create the effect.
But...I will probably need to do this hundreds of times throughout the video and I am looking for a faster way. Is there a way to attach the different images of eyes to a slider and keyframe the slider? I think that would speed up the process I just can't figure out how to do it.
If anyone could help me out it would be greatly appreciated. Below is a picture of the vector I am working with.

See these resources, which go into detail about how to use time remapping for lip synching:
003 Using Time Remapping for Lip-sync on Vimeo
Lip Sync in After Effects by Rich Young
The same technique works for blinking and other such animations, not just lip synching.

Similar Messages

After Effects Color Correction Eye Dropper

I use the Color Correction Eye dropper for clothing videos and recently it stopped letting me select the dropper. I've tried restarting the program and computer. Would I need to re-install After Effects?

We are going to need a lot more information.
What exact point number version of AE are you using? 12.2.1? 11.0.4?
What effect are you using?
How are you using it?
Screenshots showing things like your comp window, timeline, and effects panel would all be helpful in demonstrating your issue.

After Effects eye dropper crash

Hi, I am using After Effects. I updated to Yosemite. Ever since then when I click on the text eye dropper to change the color, After Effects crashes. I am using OS X Yosemite Version 10.10.2 I am on a Mac Pro (Mid 2010). I am using Adobe After Effects CS5.5. I greatly appreciate any help here. Thank you.

As Todd says, it's not supported. Be happy it's working at all.
That being said, you can try switching the preferences to use the system color picker instead and see if that fixes the crashes.

Eye Dropper tool in After Effects Not working Properly

I am using Adobe After Effects CS5 on a mac. And most all of the eyedropper tools in the software are not working properly. They always select a way different color than it should be. What is wrong?
One day they just all decided to not work. Its really frustrating. Its been a few weeks now.

Well, For some strange reason its working just fine today. I did restart my computer yesterday and after that it seems to be working.
I haven't recenitly messed with my hardware acceleration/graphics card or monitor color profile. So if that was it, then it did it on its own.
None the less its working now. Thank you for your help!!!

Best place to install After Effects, and best place to have AE Disk Cache

Hey, I have a new Samsung 840 EVO 250gb which I know I am already gonna install my OS on it, but not sure what to do with After Effects. I have heard it is good to have your Disk Cache on an SSD for better write performance, but should I have After Effects also installed on the SSD, or have AE installed on the Seagate Mechanical 1TB hard drive that I have now?
Thanks,
Jacob

I'd put the OS & application software on the hard drive. The reason: once launched, there aren't nearly as many read-write instances as there would be for an AE cache. You launch the OS... what, once a day? How about applications.... maybe 3-4 times a day?
On the other hand, when the AE cache is on the SSD, it it reads & writes to it all the time. That's where you want the real speed.
It might be nice to launch in the blink of an eye, but you're taking up valuable -- and pricey -- SSD real estate with OS & applications, things that aren't used all that often in comparison to the AE cache.

How to loop a composition within a composition in ( not a movie ) After Effects ?

Dear all,
I'm on a mac trying to learn after effects.
I'm trying to make a very simple stopmotion of 30 sec. Writing with a squiggly line
I want to learn this because when I do bigger projects I can easily loop things like walking sequences or blinking eyes within a long movie.
Maybe because I'm used to animating in flash maybe i'm thinking wrong, looping like a movie-clip.
I've made a jpg sequence by hand of 4 images, because i can control how long each image will last. In my case I choose 1 image = 3 frames. I did this because I don't want it to be hyper active fast. The jpg sequence now lasts about 12 frames, I named it day3. Because it's so short to fill a 30 sec movie I want to loop it for a duration of 30 sec.
I tried placing my composition day3 within a new composition named nervous with a duration of 30sec. By pressing enable time mapping hoping this would work but it does not.
I also tried finding the Expression Language menu, because someone said it would help but it's nowhere to be found. I found it odd that my time line in the main composition nervous displayed frames instead of seconds.
Can someone help me with this?
Thank you so much

As Szalam said, pre-compose, time remap, and the use a loopOut() expression.
Here's the steps in detail.
First make sure you comp is exactly the right length to make a perfect loop. This means the last frame of the comp must perfectly line up with the first frame of the comp. You can test the loop by doing a RAM preview with the Loop option enabled in the Preview Panel. When your loop is perfect it's time to pre-compose. Make sure you move all attributes to the new comp.
Now you must change the duration of your original comp to allow time for the loop to run. Now enable time remapping. You'll see two keyframes, one at the start and one at the end. If you move to the end keyframe by pressing the K key you'll see that there is no image. Use the page up key to move back one frame and manually set a new keyframe. Delete the last keyframe now. Pressing the J and K key should now show you the first and last visible frame. Now extent the out point of the pre-comp by going to the last frame of the composition, select the pre-comp layer and then press Alt/Option + ] to set a new out point. Now hold down the Alt/Option key and click on the stopwatch for Time Remapping and type in loopOut() and your'e done. You can also use loopOut("cycle"), cycle is the default, or type in loopOut("pingpong") which will make the comp play frontwards then backwards, then frontwards. There are also some other properties you can include in the brackets but let's not get into that now.
There you go. EZ as pie once you know what you are doing.

After Effects CS5.5 - Using *OLD* stabilizer?

Hello all. We recently moved up to the new after effects at work, and as much as I love the new warp stabilizer, I want to use the old version for a particular shot (with the position and rotation track points). The reason being is that I want to stabilize the shot around a particular point in the video (around somebody's eye) rather than letting the warp stabilizer work on the shot as a whole. Obviously whenver I click on stabilize motion, the warp stabilizer opens and begins to work the shot. Has the old stabilizer feature been completely removed in favoure of this new verison, or is it just hidden somewhere?

This page in AE help covers it. There may be more info there that would be useful as well.

Problems with lighting in After Effects CC using Mavericks

I recently upgraded to Mavericks this week and installed the Adobe patch so that AE CC will work properly. I am having issues in a comp where I have an ambient light placed in the comp with no keyframes throughout the comp. As I scrub through the timeline, the light suddenly shuts off at a specific point in the timeline. When I render the comp into a .mov file, the light is definately shut down at that point with no keyframe.
In addition, I have added a spotlight to a different comp, moved the start and end of the light to the place I need it. When I scrub through the timeline, the light is coming on about 5 seconds in advance of where I directed it to come on. When I go to a point before the the light is initiated via a keyframe, and the light is on, I click on the "eye" to disable the light and it does shut off. Neither of these were issues in AE CC before Mavericks as far as I am aware.
Can anyone confirm that they have had a similar issue or is there a known fix yet! Thanks to all of the engineers at Adobe for your amazing assistance!
Jeff Hilliard
Compudigital Industries
Rocklin, CA

There MUST be a simple answer to this problem....
There is a simple answer indeed.
Here it is:
The highlighted button in the Comp panel enables Pixel Aspect Ratio (PAR) Correction.
So, instead of stretching the footage horizontally, you create a Composition with the same frame aspect and Pixel Aspect Ratio as your source footage (just drag the clip to the New Comp button in the project panel and AE will automate this) and then enable PAR correction and After Effects will give you a corrected (deanamorphized) preview so you won't see it squeezed at all on a computer monitor. When you export it, it will look squeezed until you take it to the target video application. Any professional video application will handle this correctly.Millions of people do this every day, since non-square pixels are still dominant among the most popular video formats.
Even Photoshop has had support for non-square pixels (and PAR correction in the document panel) since CS (ie. Photoshop 8.0).
Note that when you turn on PAR correction (just like when you use odd magnification levels) AE switches to a draft filtering mode, which makes type and other elements look a bit jagged. Don't worry, it's just a preview.
The ideal solution, and the one video professionals rely on, is adding video output hardware to your computer, so you can connect a professional video monitor. After Effects can provide a live preview using such a set-up.
For more information on PAR, see Pixel aspect ratio and frame aspect ratio in After Effects Help.

After Effects CC 2014 problem: Image from frame from the last Premiere CC-After Effects link permanently burned into new project compositions.

One frame from one of the clips I sent from Premiere to After Effects through "replace with After Effects composition" was permanently burned in After Effects and now it appears in every new composition of every new project I create as the background of such composition.
For example, I sent from Premiere a clip of a building to After Effects for color correction with Finesse, and warp stabilization and then after rendering, finishing, and closing all the applications, now, every time I open After Effects for any other project, whether already-created or brand-new, every existing or newly created composition (in a Mac Command N) you see the image of the building as the background of the composition. If you create a new composition, while it remains empty of any layers, you see the image of the building. If you have an already-created composition with layers, when you turn off all the eyes of the layers, you would expect to see black (nothing) in the composition window (if that's the color you assigned to be as the background of the comp), but instead you see the building. If you change the color of the comp's background in Composition Settings, you still see the building as the background. If you render such empty composition (no layers) you render out the image of the building, not black. I tried clicking everywhere and going through the preferences, and even uninstalling the application and re-installing it, but it seems to be permanently burned in into every comp's background.
Please, any ideas of what's going on and how to get rid of it?
Thanks so much for your help,
RR.

Thanks so much Dave. It fixed the problem.
Raoul.

Render problems and fed up with after effects

Hi all,
I'm I the middle of trying to do a very simple pan and scan corporate video, the crux being its in stereoscopic 3D. First I've tried using cineform plug ins and have had numerous problems and basically don't think highly of their product. Since after effects has plug ins for stereoscopic I've moved to try and use them. All seems to be going alright for most of the footage. But I'm have some issues with a very import pant part of one video.
My set up
Mac 2x2.4 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon
12GB of ram
Mac OSX 10.7.2
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024MB
NVIDEA Quadro 4000 2048MB
After Effects CS5.5 (10.5.0.253)
630GB free on 1TB boot drive
1.8TB free on 3TB external drive 1
100GB free on 3TB external drive 2
My comp is 7 layers. Duration 1:46:00 output is Side by Side
Layer 1- animation with alpha clip. Opacity is keyframed to do a 'dissolve' at the beginning and end of the clip. TC in 53:11, out 1:05:01
Layer 2- comp. stereoscopic 3D. Made from using a camera and Create Stereo 3D Rig. It's a mask of the earth in space. 1:46:00
Layer 3- animation with alpha clip. Opactiy keyframed same as layer 1. Clip aniamtionwas done in the original comp. TC in 1:25:09, out 1:45:10.
Layer 4- animation with alpha clip. Opacity key framed same as layer 1. Clip aniamtionwas done in the original comp.TC in 1:03:2,' out 1:16:10.
Layer 5- animation with alpha clip. Opacity key framed same as layer 1. Clip aniamtionwas done in the original comp.TC in 31:12, out 48:11.
Layer 6- animation with alpha clip. Opacity key framed same as layer 1. Clip aniamtionwas done in the original comp.TC in 6:06, out 21:14.
Layer 7- animation codec clip. 1:46:00 duration.
Now when I attempt to render this out to a ProRes 422 file so that I can join it up with the other footage in Primeire Pro, I basically sit around for 2 hours and then I get a nice little dialog box stating "an output module failed. The file may be damaged or corrupted. (-1610153464).
This is maddening to say the least.
Other issues
After Effects basically is Pathetically slow in rendering out a ProRes or Animation or any type of mov file. A simple 30sec clip takes 1 hour 47 minutes. All the clip contains is a tiff left eye and right eye and the 3D glasses plug in. That's it. I know my system isn't the biggest out there (I bought what I could afford). But these render times are ludicrous. If I turn of the multiprocessing it doesn't help. I have the openGL turned on. That doesn't seems to do anything. I have it set up to use 10Gb of ram, yet the system says I'm only using 37% of my ram, none of my processors and I have no idea about the graphics card. Am I totally missing something about how after effects actually does rendering? I'm from the old school of Jaleo and Shake and Nuke. However I set out on my own as a freelancer and I can't really afford Nuke (besides I don't like that it doesn't have a timeline). So I purchased Adobe production premium thinking it can do the job I want, however it seems to act like a spoilt brat software. Yes im ranting had really having thoughts of buyers remorse.
If anyone out there has any advice or thoughts on how to get this to work I'd be more than grateful to hear from you.
Cheers
James

That doesn't seems to do anything. I have it set up to use 10Gb of ram, yet the system says I'm only using 37% of my ram,
AE only takes what it needs, as do any programs with dynamically managed memory. It's not cramming everything into RAM when it doesn't have to.
none of my processors
Secondary processors/ cores will only be used, if you enable the sad excuse that is the "Render multiple Frames simultanuously" feature. As Todd suggested, read that article on "optimum" settings. Just keep in mind that what works well for one project may not work at all for the next one when the balance of footage I/O vs. pixel processing vs. memory consumption changes. You're gonna learn to really hate this...
I have no idea about the graphics card
AE doesn't use it for the most part. Even if you enable all of the hardware acceleration features, AE may turn them off behind your back, one such condition being the use of MP rendering. Can't have both. Conversely, MP rendering might be turned off just the same, if specific effects or features are used. That's also expleianed in teh help. Your only chance of halfway benefiting from hardware acceleration is buying some third-party plug-ins that have their own implementations of OpenGL and CUDA. Still, since you use two different cards i nyour system, that may also be problematic...
Mylenium

2009 & 2010 MacPro upgrading for today´s Video-editing (Premiere Pro CS6 & After Effects)

I have now two MacPro´s: MacPro4,1 (Early 2009/Nehalem) and MacPro5,1 (Early 2010/Nehalem) and I was wondering how to get the best of them for video-editing with Premiere Pro and After Effects (CS6 or later CC) for todays standards.
The specs of the machines:
MacPro5,1
Early 2010 Nehalem
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-quad-core-2.8-mid-2010-nehalem -specs.html)
2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon W3530 (256k level 2 cache, 8 MB of "fully shared" level 3 cache)
32GB RAM "1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM" (PC3-8500) modules (4 x 8GB)
ATI Radeon HD 5770 with 1 GB of GDDR5 memory is installed in a double-wide, 16-lane PCI Express 2.0 graphics slot.
single 1 TB (7200 RPM, 32 MB cache) Serial ATA 3Gb/s hard drive.
+ I have added a 480GB SSD-drive via PCIe (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID )
The 480GB PCIe SSD-drive is now the boot-drive and gets writes over 500MB/s and reads over 600MB/s testing with "BlackMagic Speed Test"-application. The 480GB SSD-drive that is connected via PCIe-card has also two eSATA ports on it. How could I take advantage of them? Is this just a bottleneck, what would you think. Would I get the same results if I had just Samsung 840 SSD installed with adapter-device to the internal drive bay 2.5" SATAII connections?
What about the graphic card?
What would you suggest to do for the setup to maximize it´s potential (For now it´s working fine)? Would it be good idea ome 7200rpm hard-drives for media and cache storage or do I need that or can I see significant improvements over it since there is still 3 3,5" internal hard drive bays with SATA II connections (and the two eSATA ports).
MacPro4,1
(Early 2009/ Nehalem)
(http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-eight-core-2.66-early-2009-neh alem-specs.html)
- 8-cores: powered by two2.66 GHz Quad Core 45-nm Xeon X5550 (Nehalem) processors with a dedicated 256k of level 2 cache for each core and 8 MB of "fully shared" level 3 cacheper processor.
- 34GB 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
-NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512 MB of GDDR3
A lot like the MacPro5,1 but does have a bit different graphic cards and more memory and cores.
Any ideas?

jsssi wrote:
What about the graphic card?
What would you suggest to do for the setup to maximize it´s potential (For now it´s working fine)? Would it be good idea ome 7200rpm hard-drives for media and cache storage or do I need that or can I see significant improvements over it since there is still 3 3,5" internal hard drive bays with SATA II connections (and the two eSATA ports).
First and foremost: keep an eye on that 480G PCI-E SSD that you dumped a lot of money into. Those OWC drives aren't known for their robustness or reliability (OWC folks will argue with that statement. Ignore them). Since OS and apps are easy to re-install, it may not be a big deal. But don't put any of your projects on it, even though it's a fairly quick device.
Second, start adding SATA drives to the other 3 bays. Fill them up with the biggest drives you feel comfortable buying. Make one of them a 10k RPM drive for your scratch space. The others can be 7200RPM drives; since you're limited to SATA2, there's not much use in trying to crank serious disk bandwidth through the system.
Video cards. Get rid of those OEM garbage cards. Drop them into a chipper/shredder, in fact. Contact this guy about getting flashed nVidia cards that will work in both Macs, and will help with Pr and Ae. Dave can sell you a flashed GTX780 that will boot (with grey Apple screen) and run in the Mac just fine. And it'll outperform anything Apple has ever sold for those Mac Pros.

How do you do this effect on after effects?

I want to animate a video making so as to make it look like a painting is painting itself in front of our eyes.
Take for example this picture
Starting from a white image, do you know a way, with after effects, to make it look as if an invisible brush was painting it before our eyes?
Please do tell me if i'm being unclear or imprecise about what i want and i will elaborate.
Thanks

You use animated track mattes. The trick is creating the track matte. You can use dozens of techniques but most if not all involve a bunch of hand work.
Here's what a Google search turned up as the first offering when searching "After Effects reveal painting tutorial." I didn't watch the tutorial but it should get you started. As I said in the first sentence, there are hundreds of different ways you can do this technique but all involve animated track mattes.

After Effects error: Could not launch Adobe Analysis Server (515) ( 25 :: 101) *POSSIBLE FIX*

Hi. Im New to the forums so sorry in advance if i do something incorrect
Since my Purchase of Adobe CS6, I was not able to use dynamic link, or the plugins that required you to connect to the Adobe Analysis Server (3d Tracker, Warp Stablizer ETC) It would always give me the error
After Effects error: Could not launch Adobe Analysis Server (515)
( 25 :: 101)
Or if i would use dynamiclink
The Importer created a generic error
Through hours and hours searching through the internet, and trying possible fixes, i found possible fixes that might help people with this error.
*Before attempting any of these fixes, make sure you reinstall CS6 Using the Adobe Cleaner*
This guide is for Windows OS Only.
If the error still presists, try these options
-If your windows account is not a administrator, Run Adobe After Affects CS6 As Administrator
-Disable your Anti-Virus and your Firewall
I know you have probably heard this over and over again, but this is mainly the cause of the problem. Some Anti-Viruses even when disabled, go into some sort of one eyed open mode, where it still monitors your computer ever so slightly, so you may want to uninstall the anti-virus. As for the firewall,
1) Go to your start menu search "Check Firewall Status"
2)Then to the left of the window, click Turn Windows Firewall on or off
3)Then tick "Turn of Windows Firewall" on BOTH Home or work network and Public Network.
-Close and Uninstall filtering and spyware programs such as Netnanny and Premiere Opinion. This might be using the TCP Ports that is needed for After effects, dynamic link and adobe analysis server to communicate
-Start up Adobe Analysis server Manually. This can be done by going to C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS6\Support Files and running Adobe Analysis server.exe as Adminisrator, Then starting Premiere, After effects, etc.
-If the Adobe Cleaner didnt already, Clean your registry. This can be done with free applications such as CCleaner.
If none of those options work, I would suggest a full format and reinstall of windows.
I hope this would help people with this issue.

captain_astronaut wrote:
I'm running the latest version. Just installed yesterday.
You can download and install the latest version (and older versions) of versions 11, 12, and 13 from Adobe right now. That is why I was asking for the exact version number with decimals. Just the other day, someone said they were running the latest version and they weren't aware that CC was even a thing. They were running version 11.0.3 (which isn't even the latest version of CS6 - it's 11.0.4). That's why I always ask.
captain_astronaut wrote:
I'm on a Mac so I don't have anti-malware, or other security software running.
That doesn't seem like a good idea. While there can't be anything technically referred to as a "virus" on the Mac OS (due to the underlying structure), there can be (and are) malware variants out there that do attack machines running the Mac OS. As Apple products have grown in popularity, developers have been creating more and more malware aimed at OSX.
I certainly hope you at least have your firewall running.
captain_astronaut wrote:
I tried launching Premiere yesterday and it crashed.
This points to a much more serious underlying problem. Thousands (if not millions) of people are running Premiere and After Effects on Macs. What sort of error messages did you receive when it crashed?
Try installing version 12 of AE and the previous version of Premiere as well and see if they run.

After Effects CC???

Hi Adobe staff,
I just read this article: http://blogs.adobe.com/aftereffects/2013/05/introducing-the-new-after-effects-cc.html
As I understand this, there will be no more option to upgrade AE CS6 to the next version but it's either joining the cloud or being stuck with CS6.
As a long time customer who already put a lot of money into staying up to date this is quite a slap in the face. I really couldn't care less for Photoshop, Illustrator or Premiere and a floating license I don't need. What I do care about is that the price to stay loyal to your product just climbed over 200%, assuming that a regular upgrade wouldn't cost significantly more than it used to.
I'd really love to hear some clarification on this issue because right now I'm not pretty motivated to continue our long-time relationship when statements like "This is a very big deal. I’m really proud what we accomplished with Ae CC – and we’ve only just begun." scare the hell out of me.
Klaus

Hi Todd,
thanks for your answers and attempts to justify Adobes position in this case. I'm not very satisfied with the answers and will not continue to floow Adobe with their new business model for following reasons:
1. Adobes previous policy was that you make a big investment on the software itself and pay a reasonable fee to get new features, stay up to date and eligible for future versions. If I ever decided not to use your software anymore I wouldn't upgrade but keep what I have so far. Of course it was always more attractive to stay upto date (in reasonable intervals) than maybe having to buy the full license again. This is not the case anymore so my long-time gathered and protected value is going down the toilet and also my value as a long-time customer is not valued by Adobe compared to someone joining the cloud right now.
2. Adobe straight up lied when they announced that there will be no "3 versions back" upgrades starting from CS6. Since you are eligible for single cloud apps or the whole suit with any CS3 product Adobes previous statement just served to make everybody buy CS6 because they had to fear that not doing so would make them lose their upgrade eligibility. This alone is a good enough reason for class action but I will leave that to my courtroom-happy american fellows.
3. VAT is 19% but the price difference is more than 50%. What is the rest? Reparation???
4. None of the benefits Adobe mentions to justify the cloud are moot in my eyes. Either clients I'm working at already have AE or they don't because they don't need it. Even if they don't have AE I wouldn't dare to spam a lot of unsupported machines with your installers and updaters and whatnot in order to have it available there but without my plugins that also come along with hardware requirements and things like hardware-fingerprint protection. Also the point with bbeing able to deliver new features as their ready isn't new. Remember when AE had some .5 versions? So even when Adobe is doing salami tactics and is able to deliver some "early updates" this is going to fade pretty fast because innovation takes time no matter what.
5. Trying to force people into the cloud is quite dumb of adobe. If this would be a good business model (as in good for both sides) people would decide to join anyway. So if it doesn't "fly" then it was never meant to and you can't force that because customers will let their wallets do the talking.

EFFECTS OF OPTICAL ILLUSION IN AFTER EFFECTS

OPTICAL ILLUSION IN AFTER EFFECTS
Although optical illusion looks great in final composed video, however my major concern is on rendering time, I spent long time to create few trial videos of just 30 seconds due to rendering time.
Here below are the videos of my creations where I used optical flares. In the 1st video below you will find a missle strike scene, this took approx 20 mins to render. It is a very simple scene.
Comming to 2nd video, it had lot of details with 4 compositions (Eye, Left Eye, Right Eye, Face Modification) to work with. But still it took approx just 2 mins to render.
Both of the below videos have one thing in common that is particular effect.
My question is:::::
What would have made the rendering time to slow down in 1st video? And How to tackle this situation?
Here below are the links to above videos in youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUk7aT0kMas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWIxnyiBHdA

If you are having a problem with a VideoCopilot plugin, I suggest contacting their support team.

Blinking Eyes in After Effects

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for