Adobe After Effects Tips #5

Animation Methods, Graph Editor, More Shortcuts

Extracts from the book Adobe After Effects 7 Studio Techniques

- Hold down SHIFT when animating (moving objects, adjusting a value etc.) and the value will be changed at ten times the normal amount of change. (When animating objects it's 10 instead of 1).

- Hold down CTRL + ALT to change a value at one tenth the normal amount.

- Select the Show Audio Waveforms option in Graph Editor options menu (the eye icon in the bottom) to show Audio Wave in the Graph Editor. You can do the same this with expressions. I found it quite useful when compositing a video into music.

- You can flop a layer horizontaly just by selecting the Layer, hiting S for Scale, unchecking the Constrain Proportions (the little icon to the left from the 100% value) and write -100% for the horizontal value (the first one). You can also flip it verticaly. Just - to the second value.

- Hit a keyframe and press F9 - you add Easy Ease Bezier Interpolation to the animation curve. Hit Shift + F9 and you add Easy Into the Keyframe animation (bezier into the frame, sharp edge out). Ctrl+Shift+F9 adds Easy Out of the Keyframe (the other way around).

- To reset the Keyframe from Easy Ease to linear, just Ctrl click it.

- In the Graph Editor, the Y values indicate the speed of an animation, while the X values represent the time.

- Hold keyframes are useful to stop video at a certain point in time. Just Right-click a certain keyframe and click Toggle Hold Keyframe (Ctrl + Alt + H).

- If you want a certain effect options to be visible even when you start working with different composition, just hit the small Lock icon on the top of the Effect Controls tab.

- With a layer selected, hit U to reveal all the keyframe data this layer contains. Hit U again to hide them.

- Hit UU with all the layers selected and you see all the transforms made in the project. Great tool!

- Hit E to see all the layer's applied effects.

- You can set a keyframe for any Transform value (Position, Anchor Point, Scale, Rotation, Opacity) by hiting Alt + Shift + propertie's shortcut (P, A, S, R, T).

- Deselect keyframes by hiting Shift + F2.

- Wit a set of keyframes selected Alt-Drag on the corner ones to lenghten or shorten the animation.

- You can adjust Anchor Point without changing the animation (for when you move it after you've animated a position, it changes the animation also). Just Alt-drag it and your animation remains the same, even though


- Martin