18 time-saving tips for motion designers to work smarter in Adobe After Effects!
Setting up your workspace is key to efficiency. Find all of the panels under Window, including scripts and extensions you’ve installed. Drag and drop panels to rearrange. Save your workspace by going to Window → Workspace → Save As New Workspace.
If it’s taking a while to preview your animation, lower the resolution from the dropdown menu at the bottom of the Composition Viewer. This won’t affect the quality of the file you render out.
To focus on just one, or a few layers, hit the solo button.
Or, instead, you can turn off the eyeball on layers you don’t want to see.
To hide layers from the timeline, click the shy toggle, then turn the shy guy on. To reveal those layers again, turn the shy guy button off.
Use markers to keep organized. The keyboard shortcut is control 8. Markers can go on layers (select them first) or the whole composition (have nothing selected). Double click a marker to leave a note or set a duration.
See the title/action safe guide and center of your composition by hitting the quotes key on the keyboard. Or, find this and other grid and guide options from the dropdown menu icon at the bottom of the Composition Viewer.
To create a guide line, hit command or control R to bring up the rulers. Then drag out from the rules to create a guide line. These lines won’t be visible when the comp is nested or rendered. Remove the guide by dragging it back to the ruler.
Use adjustment layers: basically a see-through layer that you can add effects to and it will apply those effects to all the layers below it. Create a new adjustment layer by going to Layer → New → Adjustment Layer. Applying effects to an adjustment layer renders faster than applying the same effects to multiple layers, and it’s faster to make adjustments to.
To center the anchor point on a layer, make sure it’s selected, hold command or control and double click the Pan Behind tool in the top toolbar.
Learn more about anchor points here. Plus, solve common anchor point issues with this video.
Here’s how to make a layer move smoothly along a motion path: First, click and drag over the keyframes to select them, then right click on one of the keyframes and choose Rove Across Time.
This smooths out the animation because it keeps the spatial interpolation information of all the keyframes but only uses the temporal interpolation of the first and last keyframes. Not sure what I'm talking about? This class explains everything you need to know about motion.
From here you could adjust the timing by moving the first or last keyframe. And, you could add something like add easy ease to the first and last keyframes to make the animation more interesting.
To make a layer move in alignment with its motion path, right click it, go to Transform → Auto-Orient and choose Orient Along Path.
Animate lines drawing in and out by creating a line with the Pen tool (top toolbar). Then toggle open the layer and click the Add button (circle with a triangle in it) and choose Trim Paths. Keyframe the Start, End, and/or Offset properties of the line.
Instead of animating the transform properties for text layers, or worse, breaking the text into multiple layers to animate each letter, use text animators. You can find presets in the Effects & Presets panel under Animation Presets → Presets → Text. Learn how to create your own custom text animations in this class.
Change the color of your layer by clicking the color tag. You can color code your layers to visually organize your timeline, or based on what they are, like all controllers are red.
Another reason to color code your layers is that you can easily select all layers of the same color by clicking the color tag and choosing Select Label Group. This makes it easy to manipulate a bunch of layers that go together at once.
You can do the same thing with colored keyframes. You can select multiple keyframes by clicking and dragging over them, then right click on a keyframe to get the color menu.
If you can’t find a composition in the in the Project panel that’s open in the Timeline, right click it, choose Reveal in Project.
You can also reveal files in Finder or Explorer, by right clicking, and choosing Reveal in Finder. Oftentimes, you can open this file, make changes, save it, and then see the changes in After Effects. Not all kinds of changes are possible - learn more in this video.
I hope these tips help as you learn After Effects! If you’re serious about becoming a motion designer, the best way to learn is to create actual projects. I’ve put together an entire curriculum of project-based classes to take you from complete beginner to efficient and professional animator, while building your portfolio along the way.
Watch with a Skillshare membership or just a one-time purchase. Check out the curriculum here!
Learn how to create custom text animations with text animators: After Effects’ built-in system specifically designed to animate text.
