Gradient animation

Hello, I'm pretty new to after effects so bare with me. I was wondering if it was possiple to take a 4 color gradient and basically animate it. You have 4 points that overlay, and you can move around to create custom gradient, but I couldnt figure out (maybe you cant) how to take keyframes when the points are at specific places on your composition. The effect Im trying to achieve is basically a moving (somewhat random) gradient flowing from left to right, in and out of the frame. Maybe there is a better way to do this?
One other question, using the plug-in partical world I made some particles that look pretty nice without the trapcode suite... I havent tried yet because I couldnt figure out the top question, but I want to take these "particles" and have them follow the gradient sliding animation. is it just a simple matter of key framing it at different points?
Sorry if those questions were confusing, I dont know how else to ask what Im looking for. Thank you for the help!!

To help you out in the future, if you edit values a lot, you can use this tool above your layers in the composition.
That red stopwatch auto-keyframes any changes you make so you don't have to go back and press the stopwatch as directed above all the time. I leave it on and it proves itself to be a big help.

Similar Messages

How would I go about making a gradient overlay in AE

So, I recently made the move from Lightworks over to the Creative Cloud suite and I'm trying to figure out how to accomplish some of the same effects that I had produced in Lightworks. I can figure out most things that I need to do in Premiere Pro on my own, but I'm having trouble trying to figure out how to reproduce an animated image overlay. Put simply, the steps are:
1. Gradient slides into the viewing area and the entire height of the screen from the right side and goes about 35% of the way from right to left during the animation.
2. While the gradient is fading in, icon images of game materials are slowly fading in.
3. Text describing the amounts of each item needed are are also slowly fading in during this time.
4. After about 2 seconds, the gradient stops advancing from right to left, the text is @ 100% opacity and so are the icon images.
5. This lasts about 6-8 seconds with the information fully visible on the screen.
6. The process reverses itself, and everything fades out over the same 2 second time period.
An example of exactly what I'm referring to is here (linked to correct timecode just before animation @ 1:12 seconds): Gradient Overlay Animation in Action
Its a very simple animation at its core. I may just be looking around in the wrong places or using the wrong keywords (I'm very new to Adobe overall) so I'm not sure exactly where to start with these kinds of effects. Really, what I need to know is what tools or animation effects do I need to acomplish the gradient portion. I assume the other items are just titles and image keying, but the gradient I haven't figured out.
Also, is this simple enough it can be done in Premiere, or am I better off using AE to accomplish this. Ideally its something I would want to reuse as a preset if possible to use in future videos and I may pretty it up and make it more stylized, but I really just need to figure out how to go about making the gradient animation for now.

I would create a shape layer with a gradient fill. The gradient would have both color and opacity adjustments so that the opacity on the left edge was 0 and on the right was somewhere between 50 and 80.
Then I would add a soft edge linear wipe on my text layer.
Place both layers in their final position and adjust blend modes if necessary to get the look you want.
Parent the text layer to the shape layer
Animate the shape layer position to move it off screen to the right
AE BASICS are the only things used in creating this kind of effect.

Animated gif and gradient color problem

Hi there,
I have been trying to create animated gif with gradient background. My animation works alright but the problem is that when I preview either in browser or in the preview mode, the gradient doesnt look smooth. I want to know if there is a way to work around this? I have seen some on other websites and it looks perfect. I'm wondering how they do it.
I'll appreciate anybody's help.

Cobby Fred wrote:
I have to thank you all for your assistance so far. I must say I only know how to put some few things together and I do not understand some of the technical words you used such as dither, geometric dithering, blending mode... But in all I understand that if I blend colors that are close I'll get something close to smooth.
Here's Wikipedia's page on dither: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dither Scroll down till you see the images of the cats on the right-hand side. It's a little over half-way. In the original, the cat's pretty much a gradient. If that image is saved as a .gif, see how you get wide areas of color? It almost looks like a paint-by-number picture. This similar to what happens to your radial gradient when you save as .gif. I used the word "geometric," because the radial gradient will produce arcs of grey colors. The third image of the cat has dithering. This means that, instead of setting the colors in the original image to the closest one in the restricted palette, the software tries to figure out how to speckle the image to produce an average that would look better at a distance. Turning on dithering when you go to output your gradient will help make your image smoother, just as the third cat image is smoother than the second. Here's where you turn on dithering if you go through File > Image Preview:
Here I have my unflattened .png file
No, it's flattened. It's a single bitmap.
Here's a noisy image I created. It has a radial gradient at the bottom then a texture layer that has it's visibility off, because I copied it to make a greyscale version to use. I've set that to have 25% opacity and a blending mode of Multiply. Both the opacity and blending mode controls are at the top of the layers panel. This is a FW .png (Edit, no, it isn't! The forum has stopped supporting that! ):
If I export the gradient alone, without the texture layer, I can get this (settings are "64-color" greyscale palette and no dithering):
or this (turning on dithering):
While the dithered image is better, it still shows the arcs. If I set the texture layer back visible, and export with dithering on, I get this:
The noise in the texture breaks up the geometric arcs, which makes the image look smoother. Any small texture will do that. Choosing the 64-color greyscale palette gives me either 22 or 26 colors.The 32-color palette gave me 12. You should experiment with the .gif palette settings to see what you like best. Remember that the more colors you assign to your background the fewer colors you have available for your foreground objects.
As a final point, the red text looks blurry. When I zoom in on it (400%), some of the lines are partially "broken," specifically the verticals on the L, T, and N. You might want to try a different font or adjusting the size so that the aliasing (mapping) to the pixels is cleaner. Italic text in small sizes is difficult to use.

Smooth animation involving multiple gradient objects

Hi,
I have an animation that contains 3 rectangles with gradient
fill on 3 separate layers, overlapping each other(basically making
a glassy capsule sorta thing). In the beginning of the movie, the
rectangles fade in, in more or less the same timeframe. The
animation speed becomes choppy during this part of the movie,
irrespective of the framerate I specify. (It's currently at 50)
I also have some cacheBitmap() functions(for dynamic masking
later on in the movie) taking place in the first keyframe. Tried
removing them to test the speed, but no visible difference can be
seen.
Would be great if someone could tell me how I could fix this
problem.
Thanks!

Thanks a lot guys. I looked into the runtime bitmap caching
issue, but it didn't seem to solve the problem. Although, there
definitely was a noticeable performance increase when I did so. I
enabled it for the background on which the rectangles were drawn. I
haven't done the SVG thing though, as the gradients themselves were
vector data, drawn in Flash. I could try grouping them and making
them a single SVG file though -muses thoughtfully-

IMovie '06 bug - Titles - Animated Gradient

I couldn't find anyone else who asked this question under iMovie '06 so I'll post it here.
It appears that whenever you have created a title with multiple lines, and then click on the Animated Gradient title under Clip to Character, or any of those transitions, iMovie will crash. Once it opens back up, if you haven't previously saved the project immediately after working on a multi-line title, you can use it just fine. Otherwise, you have to work on or create a single-line title in order to use one of these transitions.
"Save early, Save often" is not a phrase I usually associate with Apple, nor is quit and restart, but both have become regular practice in this version of iMovie.

I'm actually having problems now duplicating the problem on cue in a new project. I can get it to crash, but it's kind of hard to give the exact sequence. The project I'm working on is a DV/NTSC/Full Screen (4x3) mode movie. It consists of photo stills, transitions and titles, with a music soundtrack.
For example:
Take a song purchased from iTunes and place it in the timeline.
Take a photo and place it into the timeline set at 00:05:20 duration
Copy and paste that clip
Apply the black and white effect to the first clip
Create a 2:10 cross-dissolve between the two
Add a 1:16 Fade-in before the two and a 1:16 Fade out after
Using Edwardian Script ITC font (if you have it on your machine)
Put in a multi-line Centered title over black, largest size
Put in a multi-line scrolling block over black, largest size
In the Titles Pane, click on a different Title type, just not a Clip to Character.
Click on another clip then click back on one of the title clips after it has rendered. Make sure the titles pane changes to the appropriate Title.
Test 1) Try to select one of the Clip to Character transitions, specifically Animated Gradient, as if you were going to update that title clip to an Animated Gradient.
Test 2) Click on one of the multi-line titles and add several lines (4 or 5 pairs)
Keep going back and forth between title types, both with a current title clip selected, as well as without.
This is the type of situation where I am running into trouble. The kind of text doesn't matter. I typed in several lines of gibberish and it did the same thing as the "clean text." Punctuation doesn't seem to be an issue. I thought maybe a ' I was using was throwing something off. That doesn't seem to make a difference. The fact is I can get the title put in, but only if I am careful about how I go about it. That is frustrating.
Hope this detail helps.
Thanks for looking into this.
Sean

Bogue dégradé animé - Bug animated gradient

Bonsoir,
Je rencontre actuellement un bogue dans l'utilisation d'Edge Animate. je veux faire un dégradé animé. Je fais le dégradé et si je l'oriente à 0° (timeline 0s) et que je vais sur une autre image clé (timeline 1s) pour modifier l'orientation du dégradé, le dégradé à 0° se bloque et j'ai ce message : "Une erreur s'est produite. Veuillez enregistrer votre travail et redémarrer Edge Animate".
Si je met l'angle à 1°, ça fonctionne. J'ai essayé de poser l'angle à 0° sur d'autre images clés, c'est pareil. On ne peut pas utiliser l'angle 0° dans un dégradé animé.
Merci de vos retours.
Hello,
I currently encounter a bug in the use of Edge Animate. I want to make an animated gradient. I do the gradient and if I directed at 0 ° (timeline 0s) and I go to another keyframe (timeline 1s) to change the orientation of the gradient, the gradient at 0 ° crashes and I have this message: "An error has occurred Please save your work and restart Edge Animate.".
If I put the 1 ° angle, it works. I tried to ask the angle at 0 ° on other keyframes, it's the same. You can not use the 0 ° angle in a lively gradient.
Thank you for your feedback.

Merci pour votre réponse
j'avais imaginé de contourner le problème à votre manière. J'avais aussi imaginé de faire pivoter l'élément contenant le dégradé, mais ce n'est pas la même chose, car si l'élément est rond, ça va, mais s'il est rectangulaire, ça ne donne pas un rendu visuel intéressant.
Je fais confiance au développeur pour nous trouver une bonne solution.
CrazyLarry
Thank you for your answer.
I imagined workaround in your way. I also imagined to rotate the element containing the gradient, but this is not the same thing, because if the item is round, okay, but if it is rectangular, it does not give a visual rendering interesting.
I trust the developer to find us a good solution.
CrazyLarry

How to add a gradient or 50% transparent fill to an .ai imported path?

Hello All;
I need some help. My task sounds simple enough but not sure how to accomplish it.
I created the following path in Illustrator (See attached illustration - the top one). This is actually for a lower-third graphic.
I have been successful at importating that into .ai. Though should I be using a solid or a shape layer or doesn't it matter ?
I can add a stroke which affects the color and thickness of the outlines OK.
However, I can't figure out how to add either a gradient fill or one that is 50% transparent ? Can anyone help ?
Oh ... I'll mention I'm using After Effects CS3.
Thanks.
Tim

Rick;
I've used Illustrator for quite a while both at home and at work but I really havn't had to do anything that complex yet. Same goes for Photoshop. I bought DVD tutorials for most of the productivity software I use and when you gave your first explanation, I watched the DVD tutorial on Importing into AE so I know what you're referring to when you say to import as composition. So far, I've only tried to import into AE by copying and pasting. I think that's why I just got the path and not the background. I'll try importing a composition shortly and see if I get the fill too. I actually found a tutorial on making the type of shape I need to in Photoshop so maybe I'll try that instead of Illustrator and then import that into AE.
Btw - It may not actually be a gradient fill I need to use but instead a solid fill with the top half lighter and buttom half darker.
In case you're interested, here's actually what I'm trying to create for a video project. I could actually buy the animation for $8 but I figured that this can't be that difficult and I need to learn this stuff anyway ... http://videohive.net/item/lower-third-15-different-colour-schemes/145337?WT.ac=category_th umb&WT.seg_1=category_thumb&WT.z_author=berol
Tim

Animated GIF - Animation slows after save CS3

Hello,
When Saving an animated GIF in Photoshop CS3 the animated frames slow when viewed after the save. Therefore any gradient fades etc seem to stutter, about 25% slower than the frame rate set initially.
When the animation is played in photoshop it plays at the right speed, only slows when viewing the file after saving...
Any ideas?
Many thanks
Andy

I just experienced the same problem in Photoshop. 22 frames with "no delay" selected in all of them. When opening the animation in IE6 and Firefox it runs slower than the original.
Therefore, would you be kind to post it if you found a solution?
Hope to hear something soon.
Thanx!
s

Fireworks CS4 animated gif - ghosting - Help Please!

I have creadted a skyscrapper ad using Frieworks with a gradient on the background. When it is played on a PC (I use a Mac), there is ghosting of the text. Does anyone know how to get rid of this? It looks fine on my Mac. When I save as an animated gif, I select dither to make the gradient look smoother. Help! Please!

Hi,
Animated gif backgrounds with gradient would definitely look ghosted or distorted because of the way GIF images are generated. Take a look at the solution suggested in this tutorial http://www.smartwebby.com/free_tutorials/website-design-how-to/GIFs-optimization.asp - I think using the Exact setting might make your Animated GIF with gradients smoother.
- Anita

Animated gif from flash

CS4, AS3.Windows XP SP3.
I've created a pretty simple flash animation with some text that fades in and moves around a bit. Nothing fancy. It runs just fine both locally and on my client's site. I need to turn it into an animated gif so that non-flash viewers will see the animation. But I can't seem to get it to come out right. It needs to have a transparent background and it needs to run just once. Like I said, all that runs fine as an SWF.
When I choose the export option in the file menu (export movie as gif), it does export and I can run the gif but the background is definitely not transparent and the thing loops continuously. Yes, I've checked the "transparent" checkbox and also set the repetitions to 1. Neither of those settings do anything.
I also tried "publishing" the gif. That's even worse. The resultant animation doesn't even resemble my SWF. It's a blocky mess when it runs. It does appear to have a transparent background but it loops over and over and again it's a blocky mess (not sure how else to explain that).
The whole thing is just about 10 layers of different lines of text that are tweened in various ways to get the effect I need.
You can see the animation on the right hand side of this page: www.ssrights.com. It's the one that says "FREE! Consultation..."
Hope someone can help.
Thanks,
Keith
PS: The gif is not in place. I currently have it set to just show a static image if someone does not have flash.

Look, I appreciate that you are making an effot to help, but I hope you realize that most pages like that are just there to attract advertisers. They are mostly nonsense. Filled with fluff and little that's actually helpful. Often copied verbatim from the help file of some application. Not the least bit beneficial. There are tons of "how to" sites out there that say next to nothing and still use a lot of words. I run into them countless times each day. It's beyond irritating when you're trying to learn how to do something. This paragraph on that page you referred me to is a perfect example:
Set other options for your animated GIF publication. Optimize the color of the GIF to remove unused colors so that the image size will be reduced. Set "Dither Solids" so that the colors will be mixed in the current existing palette. Other options you have to set up are Interlace, Smooth, and Remove Gradients. Set all of them very well so that your animated GIF will be published at its best quality.
Just look at the grammar in the last sentense. It doesn't even make sense and offeres zero useful information. Probably came out of the entirely useless Adobe help system that's fond of defining a term with the term itself.
Back to the GIF settings. I've chosen nearly every combination of settings on the GIF publish tab. Nothing I do works. The only thing that solved the problem (and it's a crummy solution) was to change the text to a broken apart graphic. I'm sure you are more expert in Flash than I am and so you likely know how to solve this. Have you created a simple example with text and successfully published it as a GIF? You don't even need to tween the text. It can be sitting still on it's own layer and it still fouls things up. If so, what settings are you using to make this work right? That inforamtion would be very helpful!
Again, is there anyone out there that has specifically dealt with this problem and can offer a specific, viable solution?
Keith

Animated Gif Optimization (exporting)

I'm attempting to export an animated GIF using the Export
Wizard. My problem is that I used high quality pictures and
gradients and now i cannot seem to find an export optimization that
will display these correctly. I tried everything from Adaptive down
to Custom but everything gives me blurred pictured and less than
acceptable results. I'm using Fireworks 8.
If anyone could please help that'd be great! Thanks!

jmosier14 wrote:
> I'm attempting to export an animated GIF using the
Export Wizard. My problem is
> that I used high quality pictures and gradients and now
i cannot seem to find
> an export optimization that will display these
correctly.
The GIF format, including GIF89a, is designed for flat,
poster-like
images. It does not compress gradients or Photos very
successfully.
You'll end up with a better looking animation if you export
in SWF
format instead of GIF. Click on the Quick Export option menu
at the top
right of the document window and choose Macromedia Flash >
Export SWF.
In the Save As dialog box, click on the Options button to
customize the
export settings.
Linda Rathgeber [PVII] *Adobe Community Expert-Fireworks*
http://www.projectseven.com
Fireworks Newsgroup:
news://forums.projectseven.com/fireworks/
CSS Newsgroup: news://forums.projectseven.com/css/
http://www.adobe.com/communities/experts/

Best quality animated gif export

Hi
I was doing just fine exporting animated gifs (in terms of quality output) and all of a sudden on an update to my fireworks png my exports (no matter what options I change) are just not as good quality as before.
Essentially, I am trying to get as close to the JPEG 100% quality (best quality) I can get - drop shadows on items just don't like that great at moment.
Could someone please advise what is absolute optimum setting for best quality output for an animated gif - I am not concerned about file size.
many thanks
Jeff

Without seeing the image/animation, I can't make specific comments.
However. Keep in mind that the GIF format has an indexed palette of 256 colors, total, one of which can be transparent. If you have a still image of 256 shades of red, and a still image of 256 shades of blue, they'll look fine as GIFs. If you try to combine them as an animated GIF, then the palette will need to be 128 shades each of red and blue, so neither of the images as frames in the animation will look as good as they do as stills.
Also, Fireworks doesn't always give you the maximum amount of colors. If you have an image with 1000 colors, and you export to GIF, you probably won't get 256 colors in your palette. Go to File>Image Preview and see what your palette is. If necessary, add colors from your image where you notice banding (with dithering off).
Finally, the two image formats are not equally appropriate for all image content. GIF is good for line art of solid colors. It isn't good for photos or gradients. If you can forgo your drop shadows you'll probably get better quality in the essential parts of the images. JPEGs are good for photos and gradients (although I prefer PNGs for gradients, myself), and are not good for line art. Unfortunately, if you want an animation, you need a GIF or Flash.

How to export best quality gif animations in flash

how to export best quality gif animations in flash

GIF is a color restricted format with on/off support for transparency. There's really no settings you can tweak to output a better GIF. You have a drop-down during GIF sequence export to allow transparency, select the amount of colors (up to 256) and you can choose dither to save a little filespace. The only 2 things in there that really matter are dither and amount of colors used to export.
If your content is very similar (e.g. not a lot of complex gradients/shadows/etc) and is limited in color use turning down the amount of colors used and dithering is your only option.
Make sure you're exporting the GIF via "Publish Settings" so you get a single animated GIF and not file->export->movie because this creates a separate sequence of GIF images for each frame.

QT: Poor video quality for gradients when Motion JPEG A/B codec used.

Hello,
I have a problem using the Quicktime (7.6) and the Motion JPEG A/B codec.
My workflow is as follows:
1. Create animation with Quartz Composer. This animation should use gradients from dark red to white.
2. Export the animation as Quicktime film (MOV), set full HD (1920x1080), duration e.g. 2 minutes.
3. Open exported MOV with Quicktime(Pro)
4. Export again to Quicktime film, now choose Motion JPEG A for codec, set quality to best.
5. Check the exported film. The gradient is not smooth, I see bright and dark lines. The quality of the gradient is poor.
I checked the other codecs. When I use "Animation" then the gradient is smooth and beauty.
Unfortunately I have to use Motion JPEG codec due to customer requirements.
Does anybody have an idea, how I can improve the quality? Maybe internal QT settings? Other external Motion JPEG codec ?
Thanks in advance
LeKarmar

Hello QuickTimeKirk,
Thank you for your reply.
I need Motion JPEG A/B or PhotoJPEG This is my "final distribution format" required by the customer.
I have problems not only with the red color. Even using grey, blue or yellow gradients produces bad output.
You're right. Animation codec produces what I will accept and want, but the files are huge sized and my customer doesn't accept this format.
Please note, that I already set the high quality playback setting in Quicktime.
Regards
LeKarmar
Message was edited by: LeKarmar

Edge animation doesn't work properly or display properly in IE

I've created an animation using Edge CC. It contains a graphic created in illustrator which has a gradient in it. I've inserted it using the OAM method into my webpage in Dreamweaver.
My first issue is that the animation doesn't display in IE10 unless I allow Active X, however it takes forever to load.
If I choose not to load the animation, the Poster image doesn't appear in its place.
The second issue is that once it eventually loads, the gradient doesn't display correctly - it's a solid colour.
Is there a way to get my animation working properly in IE?
And if not, is there code I can use to display an alternative image - something that works in the newer versions of IE? I've tried using <!--[if !IE]> but it doesn't work.
Thanks.

I just did a simple test with an svg/ gradient, exported from Illustrator - defalt svg settings.
Imported (File > Import) into an Edge project file and it works, shows properly.
Is this the process you went through to add the svg file? When imported does the svg look as it should within the Edge Animate stage, at this point?
I then opened Dw, new html file; Insert > Media > Edge .oam. It imports properly.
Enable Live mode and I can see the edge file as well as the svg in all its gradient glory.
As for the Active X prompt, that is common IF you double click the .html to view or Preview in Browser from Dw because its not within a webserver space.
Darrell

Gradient animation

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for