Liquid Fill Effect in After Effects

Download Project Files here.

Shape Layer Setup

1. Double click the purple layer, Bubble Drink Logo, to go inside that Precomp.
2. Go up to Layer > New > Shape Layer.
3. Drag out a rectangle wide and tall enough to cover the liquid in the cup.

Wave Warp

1. Head over to the Effects panel and type in Wave Warp.
2. Drag and drop the Wave Warp effect onto the Shape Layer.
3. In the Effect Controls panel, change the Wave Height to 20.
4. Adjust Wave Width to 300.
5. Set Wave Speed to 3.
6. With the Shape Layer selected, hit Cmnd-D (Mac) / Ctrl-D (PC) to duplicate the layer.
7. Rename the original Shape Layer to Liquid Fill.
8. Rename the duplicate to Liquid Bubble Drink.
9. In Effect Controls, change Liquid Bubble Drink’s Speed to 5.
10. Set Liquid Bubble Drink’s Phase to 45.

Animation

1. Drag and place Liquid Fill above the Liquid layer.
2. Place Liquid Bubble Drink above the Bubble Drink layer.
3. Move the Playhead to 0:00:00:15.
4. With Liquid Bubble Drink selected, hit P for Position.
5. Set its Position to 1000,2095.
6. Hit the stopwatch next to Position to set a keyframe.
7. Move the Playhead to 0:00:01:18.
8. Change the Position to 1000,1590.
9. Move the Playhead to 0:00:00:22.
10. Select Liquid Fill.
11. Hit P for Position.
12. Set its Position to 1000,1590.
13. Click the stopwatch next to Position to start keyframing.
14. Move the Playhead to 0:00:02:00.
15. Change Liquid Fill’s Position to 1000,1000.
16. Select all the Position keyframes on both layers.
17. Right-click on any selected keyframe and navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.

Activate Track Matte

1. If Track Matte switches aren’t visible, click Toggle Switches/ Modes on the bottom of the layer stack.
2. Click the dropdown Track Matte list on the Bubble Drink layer.
3. Select Alpha Matte “Liquid Bubble Drink.”
4. Now click the Track Matte dropdown on the Liquid layer.
5. Click Alpha Matte “Liquid Fill.”

Video Transcription

Hey, this is Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop and the. I'm gonna show you how to make a quick liquid fill effect Adobe after effects. We're going to be making these boxes here that cover up these stacks over here. And we're going to be applying a wave warp effect to them. And that's going to become the track mat for both our boba tea and the text That way it'll look like those layers are filling up with liquid, as you can see over here.

That's what the project looks like when we're done. And this liquid flow effect is just it's a great and quick way to have your objects transition smoothly, especially if your project revolves around a liquid of some kind, you know, drink water or whatever you can think of. And as you can see, this works on text and images alike.

It'll even work on photos and video. So it's got great range as well as, in fact, for external assets. We'll just be using the logo here. It's all set up already in this file, and you'll be able to find that in the video description below. So let's get started. So to start with, we're going to be double-clicking inside this purple layer over here.

That's a pre ramp that we're going to be working with. And as you can see, it's not quite finished, you know, the animation, but everything else is just kind of standing there. So that's where our liquid fill is going to come in. So the first thing that we're going to be doing is making two shape layers. Let's head up to layer, new shape layer, please.

Thank you very much. And let's draw a rectangle wide enough to cover the fact. Let's make it nearly almost as wide as the whole composition. You'll see why in a moment. And the color doesn't matter. It just has to be a rectangle. And the reason being is that this is going to be the track mat that will hide a layer.

When we turn on that effect. So let's head over to we. Sorry. Let's head over to our effects and presets over here and type in wave for the go. You can click and drag that to get that or to our shape layer. And let's explain the different settings over here. So wave height and wave width is pretty self-explanatory.

And how tall are the waves? How wide are the waves? Science where triangle? What effects like the shapes. We want a pretty basic sine wave over here. And the speed is how fast is this wave going to be moving along? As you can see, when we script through the timeline, it's moving along We also have a phase. So a phase in this particular context refers to a position on the wave itself.

Like a period of a wave, what it repeats. And so when we change the phase, we're basically telling it like keep moving along, keep moving along, keep moving along. And we're asking it to start or at a certain location on its phase. OK, so we said that. And yeah, I think that's about it. So let's get started with that, turning this into a liquid filter.

So for this layer, let's change the height to 20. And let's put that with at 300. Now, these are my settings. You don't have to follow them. Exactly. But this is the general look that we're going for in the wave speed. Let's put that at three. So we're going to be making a duplicate of this rectangle. I'm going to hit command or control d to duplicate this shape layer.

And let's give them different names. So the first one I want to name it, I'm hitting, selecting my layer into a return to rename it when we're calling this liquid fill. And the second one, I'm going to be calling it a liquid bubble drink because these guys are going to be hiding two different layers. So I want to be able to label them appropriately and also to know that they are track maps.

I'm going to make them both yellow. I like color coding my layers so I can tell they are at a glance. And since their track marks, these guys have to go above the respective layers. So liquid bubble drink is going to be right above the bubble drink layer. And the liquid filter is going to be above the liquid layer.

There we go. So since liquid bubble drink is a duplicate of the first layer, let's change the settings slightly on this thing. I want to keep the way within my height. So I'm just going to change the speed, I think, to five make it go a little faster. And phase let's put that at 45 degrees, I say.

So just a slightly different look to it, but I do want to keep the dimensions more or less the same. So that's my for animation, I'm going to hide liquid fill for now. So I could just focus on not liquid bubble drink going to with that layer selected I'm going to hit P for position. And again, I know that it looks like there's a big block of blue over our image over here.

But once we turn on track mats, that's not going to be an issue. So with the Playhead at the origin, let's see, let's move in about 15 frames. So at 15 frames and I'm going to hit the stopwatch to set it keyframe and let's see, I want to drag the slide all the way down. So, so I put in my position over here at about 1000 2095 to start with and then about a second and 18 frames in, let's get that position back at maybe like 15, 20, and as you can see it's covered with text over here we're going to see keyframes right click keyframe assistant is easy.

That's going to give it more of an organic feel to this animation then let's do the other rectangle. So I'm going to put my playhead about 22 frames, then I'm going to grab my other liquid. So my other layer I'm going to hit paper position like before hit that stopwatch to set a keyframe. Then over here I want its location to be about a thousand and then 1520 as well.

Basically idea is to have it drag right below this image that we want to hide because it's going to have to slide up and move your play it over to 2 seconds in and now the locations like at a thousand, a thousand. So like before everybody uses those keyframes so they have a nice organic feel to them. OK, another trick mattes.

So if you don't see track mats, hit toggle switches and modes so they're visible and then liquid filters the track mat, liquid bubble drink the track mat and then we want to activate alpha mat liquid and we want to activate a format on bubble drink so they know where to take their alpha mats from the track from and in scrubbing through, I notice that the mat for the drink itself is a little bit too high.

You can see it over here. So let's actually pull that thing down a little more now than we did before. There we go. That should be it. All right. This is what it looks like. Remember to turn on the visibility on the graphics that you want to show, but leave the track mats invisible as they are. That's just how they work and that's how the liquid filter animation works.

So you can use this default text character by character, or you can do wine glasses, pools, even as a screen wine. You could even layer with other shapes to create some pretty cool transition effects as well. So, yeah, let us know if you have any comments or questions below. We'd love to hear what you're working on right now or if you have any topics you like us to cover.

I hope you enjoyed learning how to make a liquid fill effect after effects. This has been Tziporah Zions from Noble Desktop.