Dissolve Transitions in After Effects

Looking to make your own transitions? Need something quick, cool, and current? Learn how to make a Dissolve Transition effect in this tutorial from Noble Desktop!

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Masks

1. Create a new Solid and name it Dissolve Layer.
2. Use the Shape tool to draw out 3 or 4 differently-sized circles.
3. Toggle open the Mask settings on all the new Masks.
4.  Select all of the Masks.
5. Hit the stopwatch next to Mask Expansion to start animating.
6. Set Mask Expansion to -255.
7. Move the Playhead to about 0:00:02:00.
8. Change Mask Expansion to 300.
9. Select all of the keyframes.
10. Right-click any of the selected keyframes then go to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.
11. Click anywhere in the interface to deselect the keyframes.
12. Offset the animations by moving the keyframes a few frames later or earlier on the Timeline.

Metaballs Effect

1. Create a new Adjustment Layer.
2. Name it Metaballs Effect.
3. Open up the Effects and Presets panel then type in Gaussian Blur.
4. In addition to Gaussian Blur, add Simple Choker.
5. Finally, add Roughen Edges to Metaballs Effect.
6. In the Effect Controls panel, change Gaussian Blur to 50.
7. Change Simple Choker to 45.
8. Change Roughen Edges’s Border to .2.
9. Select Metaballs Effect and Dissolve Layer and Precomp them.
10. Name the Precomp Dissolve Transition.

Applying Transition

1. Back in the Main Comp, place the new Dissolve Transition over the jump cut in the footage.
2. Trim the ends of the Dissolve Transition with Alt-[ / Option-[ and Alt-] / Option-] so just the animation itself shows.
3. Make sure the Dissolve Transition is positioned right above the initial footage layer in the layer stack.
4. Set the initial footage layer’s Track Matte to Alpha Matte (Inverted).
5. If the transition is too small to cover the screen, resize it with the Scale property.

Video Transcription

Hey guys, this is Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop. And in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a dissolve transition in Adobe After Effects. So we'll be starting with the shape layer on this project and cutting a few holes in it with some masks. We'll animate those masks, expand the outwards, then create an adjustment layer with a few effects on it to make it look like the circles are combining.

I was like, Whoa, finally we'll actually apply the finished transition effect with Matte so you can see this is what the project looks like when done. And yeah, we're going to be making everything ourselves pretty much so you can use any two pieces of your own footage and if you've been following the channel. So we've been doing a couple of these transition effects on this channel already.

So you may have heard this explanation, but a transition effect essentially allows us to disguise or drum cuts when editing scenes together and Gaza viewers eyes towards what you want them to see or away from what you don't. This transition or WIP in particular thematically fits with any project that has a lot of like an industrial feel to it.

Some transitions have a few more steps in their creation, but this one is pretty simple. You can get it running in no time at all. So yeah, let's get started. So as you can see, we've got our two pieces of furniture. I'm actually going to rename them, let's say name screen A and let's rename this one to screen B.

And the first thing that we're going to be doing is making a solid soup to layer new solid. It really doesn't matter the color name, it dissolves layer. I'm going to change my color from white just because I associate white mostly with backgrounds. There we go. It's kind of a soft blue. And then we're going to grab the shape tool over here and click and drag till you get the Ellipse tool and now what you're going to be doing is draw a couple of circles.

So it's just clicking a dragon. I want to do like four of these and the size doesn't really matter. Try to vary them basically. So then we're going to toggle open all of these guys. We're going to look for an option called expansion. You can see it right here. In fact, I want to make this a little neater.

And you can see I typed in like started to type in mask expansion over here and that allowed me to like isolate the properties that I'm going to be animating. Okay, so let's start animating this. So I'm going to put my play head up like 15 frames in about I'm going to select all of these mask expansions. Yes, yes.

Hit that stopwatch and all them to start key framing. And the first thing that we want to put down is -255. That's because we're going to want this to go from basically being invisible to growing and growing and growing till it overtakes the screen. So a few seconds and we're like 2 seconds in. I'm going to change it to positive 300.

So now you can see it's pretty much covering the screen. I actually want to grow even more. So let's put it at like 430. There you go. So the whole screen so the whole screen is like covered in this color. Now we want to offset some of these animation. So I move at different rates. So I click and drag a couple of them like out of out of place, maybe like, you know, slide them to cluster together to taste.

So select all those keyframes and right click on any of those selected keyframes and head over to keyframe assistant easy, easy. So check it out. So far we you just expands into a whole solid of that purply blue. Okay, now we're going to be doing something that will make it look like they're actually, like, bobbing into each other.

And we're going to be making an adjustment layer and creating what's called a minimal effect. And we actually have a tutorial on how to do that. We can look at below in the description if you're interested on how to make that work just on its own. So create a new adjustment layer. We're going to rename this to Metal Ball Effect and I'm spelled effect.

Let's go over to Effects and Presets and we're going to be applying a couple of effects to the adjustment layer. Now, if you're not familiar with adjustment layers, basically an adjustment layer is kind of like an umbrella layer, everything applied to the adjustment layer effects everything under under it. Okay. The first thing that I want you guys to put in is causing blur.

So let's put that down. Doesn't matter which one. Simple choker. You may have seen me typing it before, and the last thing I want you to put down is rough and edges, which I know is a little bit counterintuitive, but it will make sense. So the first thing is we're going to want to actually move the player to where you can see the circles together, you know, so you can see what the effect is looking like.

So set the blurriness here to 445 and the simple choker to 50 and the rough edges border 2.2. And I'm going to explain why, because the goddamn blur blurs it. The simple choker constrains that blur. And so as they expand, they'll kind of like meld into each other. Now the rough and edges is a bit strange, but basically reference edges can either rough edges or it can simplify and make it smooth them down, which I know is a little bit counterintuitive, but that's what it does.

Okay, so now let's click on writable effect and dissolve layer, right click and make a pre comp because we're going to be using this as a central layer. So dissolve transition. Great. I'm going to change the color of that to like orange or don't like the sandstone that they give you automatically. And I know this looks pretty funky to start with, but we are going to select screen.

Let's actually put screen above here. So now with screen over here, we're going to hit track Matt and we're going to put it on Alpha Inverted Matt or inverted Alpha Matt, whichever you prefer and let's play it back. Woo! All right, so it looks pretty good. There's just one thing. The scales too small on the dissolves transition. That is a bit of a side effect with the metabolic effect effect.

But all you got to do is select that layer and let's size it up to like what, 115? Maybe that's your work. Nice. All right, so, yeah, that's a dissolve transition. Perfect for any, like I said, urban or industrial theme project, maybe anything like with chemistry, honestly, liquid would benefit from this kind of transition so much you layer so it's like real easy to replicate.

So yeah, try this out with different shapes like diamonds or the echo effect. You can even make concentric circles by duplicating your dissolve layer a couple of times. That's all for this tutorial. I hope you've enjoyed learning how to make your own dissolve transition in Adobe After Effects. If you have any questions or suggestions for future tutorials, let us know in the comments.

Tell us about any projects you're working on or any topics you'd like us to cover. This has been Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop.