Trim Paths in After Effects

Download Project Files here.

Intro

Trim Paths is a small but extremely useful tool within After Effects, used to manipulate shapes and lines for a wide variety of effects. It’s often used as part of a few different animation techniques, but it can stand alone as well, as seen in this tutorial. In particular, it’s great for both transition and liquid animations, which is what we’ll be doing within this project.

Overview

Alright! So the first thing we’ll be doing is making a new shape layer. After naming that layer, we’ll move on to drawing out our liquid shape. Once that’s done, then we’ll finally add the Trim Paths animator, set keyframes and finish it all up!

So let’s get started!

Creating the Shape

1. First things first, go up to the top toolbar and click on New > Shape Layer.
2. Click and drag this layer below the Pitcher layer.
3. Hit Return (Mac) / Enter (PC) to rename the layer. Call it Lemonade Liquid.
4. Click on the colored square on this layer and select Yellow to differentiate it.
5. Go back up to the top toolbar to select the Pen tool.
6. Make sure the Fill is set to No Fill by clicking on the word Fill first.
7. Then click the box with a strike-through to set it to No Fill.
8. Now click on Stroke, and click the second box to the right on the options for a Solid Color.
9. Click on the box to the right of the word Stroke to choose a color.
10. Put in #FCFEC8 or choose a light yellow.
11. Hit OK.
12. Change the StrokeWidth to 30 px. It’s the setting just to the right of the Stroke Color.
13. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;00, just to get a visual on where the Pitcher will be when it’s pouring.
14. In the composition window, draw out a curve from the top of the liquid, to the tip of the Pitcher, down into the mason jar itself. This should be about three points, and remember to click and drag on each point to get bezier handles if edits are needed.
15. Now go into the layer stack. On this new Lemonade Liquid layer, toggle open its options by clicking on the arrow to the left of its name.
16. Toggle open Contents.
17. Now toggle open Shape 1.
18. And finally, toggle open Stroke1.
19. Find the settings for Line Cap, and change them to Round Cap.

Animating the Liquid

1. With all these settings still open, go up to the top right of the layer within the layer stack to find the Add button.
2. Click on it, and navigate to Trim Paths.
3. Once added, a new effect will be added to the layer contents. Toggle open Trim Paths.
4. Move the Playhead to 0;00;00;21.
5. Hit the stopwatch next to End to begin keyframes.
6. Change End values to 0.
7. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;04.
8. Now change the End values to 100.
9. Hit the stopwatch next to Start.
10. Change the Start values to 0 if they’re not already there.
11. Move the Playhead to 0;00;01;12.
12. Now let’s change the Start values here to 100.
13. Almost done! Select all the keyframes by either dragging a marquee box over them or Shift-clicking on them.
14. Right click on any selected keyframe.
15. Navigate to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
16. Last thing! Toggle close all the options on the Lemonade Liquid layer.
17. If the Switches aren’t available, then hit Toggle Switches/Modes on the bottom of the layer stack.
18. Click the Motion Blur option, the square with the three circles, on the Lemonade Liquid layer. This will give it a bit of blur as it moves.

Conclusion

That’s it!

Trim Paths are pretty easy to start using. What’s great about them is how they can be used as parts of larger animated effects. Try using them as transition effects, to punctuate another movement on screen, or even on more complex shapes. They can even be used on text! Anything is fair game, as long as it’s a Shape Layer with a Stroke.

Happy animating!

Credits

Orange vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com

Food vector created by freepik - www.freepik.com

Background vector created by brgfx - www.freepik.com

Background vector created by vectorpocket - www.freepik.com

Video Transcript

Hi everyone, it's Tziporah Zions. We're going to be learning how to do a Trim Paths tutorial today, which is very useful for animating liquid essence in this tutorial is for some transition effects. So the first thing that we're going to be doing is go to the top toolbar, go to layer, new chip layer, and we're going to hit if you have Mac Return and see where selected to rename it.

We'll pull this lemonade and we're going to click on the square and make it yellow to differentiate it from the other ones. So we're going to click and drag it in the layer stack to bring it below the layer now back up on the toolbar and we're going to use the pen tool. And if this is not already filled, click on your options click this box that strike set snowflake on strokes.

If it's not, if it's not a color, then click the box, OK, and choose color. We click on this color box. If it's not already a white-yellow, now we navigate through the clipper to be yellow where you explode over here. And lastly, the settings for the stroke is three white. Now that it is all done, let's move our player to about one minute in so you can get a visual of where the picture is going to be when it falls.

And we're going to be drawing a liquid. Let me see from a little bit below the liquid line over here, I click and drag one point and I click and drag and another point that I sort fixes exploiting just because it's trying to draw. And then another one directly in the if I want to change it a bit, I can alter my points over here just a little bit.

That's doing OK. There we go. Now, the second thing is we are going to then change some settings within the PIN tool within this stroke over here to toggle open the eliminate liquid, toggle open contents, toggle open shift one and toggle open stroke one and where it says line cap one, change that to round. So very good. Now our shape is set.

Now we're going to be animating. So I am going to go up to push up a little bit. Here we go. And we're going to find add within these settings for any liquid. We're going to find trim paths. This is what we're going to be mainly using now. We are going to double open trim paths of course. And let's see with a stopwatch, let's put the playhead at around 21 milliseconds in and we're going to change.

Well, let's start with the next end to start animating that, and let's change that in value to zero. And let's add stopwatch next to actually first, let's move the player to one. Once we're going to that one second in and hit the southwest next to start and change that to zero. If it is not already there, then we're going to go down to one second.

12 and now should start values to 100. And let's actually move back a little bit to one to four and we will change the values to 100. Now let's marquee all of these right-click on I keep I'm going to keep is, is that smooth that our innovation let's just toggle those all those options and let's see no switches aren't available the trouble switches modes now we have our switches open we're going to hit this box for motion worked enable motion blur and this will give it a bit of blur as it moves so that's all there is to it just a pretty simple effect to use and I hope you enjoy using it.

This has been Tziporah from Noble Desktop.