Essential Properties in After Effects

Download Project Files here.

Adding Properties

1. Double click on Bubbles 1 to go inside the Precomp.
2. Go up to Window > Essential Graphics.
3. Click on the circle layer in the layer stack.
4. Hit S for Scale.
5. Hit Shift-T to open up Opacity as well.
6. Hit Shift-P to open up Position also.
7. Drag and drop Scale into the Essential Graphics panel.
8. Drag and drop Opacity into the Essential Graphics panel.
9. Drag and drop Position into the Essential Graphics panel.
10. Toggle close and open the circle layer in the layer stack to access Contents.
11. Toggle open Contents > Ellipse 1 > Fill 1.
12. Drag and drop Color into the Essential Graphics panel.
13. Hit E on the keyboard to open up Effects.
14. Toggle open Echo.
15. Drag and drop Number of Echoes into the Essential Graphics panel.
16. Name the Essential Graphics group Tube Bubbles.

Editing Properties

1. Go back to the Main Comp by clicking on Main Comp in the Project Window.
2. Select Bubbles 1.
3. Hit Cmnd-D (Mac) / Ctrl-D (PC) twice to duplicate the Precomp.
4. Select Bubbles 2.
5. Toggle open Bubbles 2 > Essential Properties.
6. Double click on Fill color and change it to pale blue.
7. Change Number of Echoes to 3.
8. Change Scale to 80.
9. Drag the last Opacity keyframe to 0;00;02;05.
10. Shift-click all the Position keyframes and delete them.
11. Move the Playhead to 0;00;00;10.
12. Hit the stopwatch next to Position to set a keyframe.
13. Change Position to 350, 575.
14. Move the Playhead to 0;01;00;
15. Change Position to 700, 350.
16. Move the Playhead to 0;02;00.
17. Change Position to 820,85.
18. Select all the Position keyframes and go to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.

1. Select Bubbles 3.
2. Toggle open Bubbles 2 > Essential Properties.
3. Double click on Fill color and change it to dark blue.
4. Change Number of Echoes to 4.
5. Change Scale to 65.
6. Shift-click all the Position keyframes and delete them.
7. Move the Playhead to the origin.
8. Hit the stopwatch next to Position to set a keyframe.
9. Change Position to 580,370.
10. Move the Playhead to 0;01;05;
11. Change Position to 750,220.
12. Move the Playhead to 0;02;00.
13. Change Position to 800,150.
14. Select all the Position keyframes and go to Keyframe Assistant > Easy Ease.

Video Transcription

Hey, this is Tziporah Zions from Noble Desktop. And this tutorial, I'm sure he uses central properties and Adobe After Effects. So what we're going to be first doing in this project is heading into this bubble pre comp over here. And after that we're going to be isolating a skill property position, opacity effects in the Central Properties panel. Finally, we're going to use this properties of the pre top level to make some of those bubbles different from each other.

So you see this is what the project looks like when it's all done. This technique is great, so just copy pasting a pre top usually is issue since changing the objects inside the pre comp changes every copy of that pre you don't get individuality here. I'll show me what I mean by that. So like the typical problems with like duplicating a pre comp is that like I can't change the path of this thing and I can't change the opacity of it.

Like it's hard to change the timing and the fill color, but those are a bit roundabout ways to do it. So that's why this technique is great. It allows us to have copies of pre comps and to be able to control and change details at that level. This means we can have like a bunch of copies and each of those copies can have like their own individual animations that can be made differently on the fly without having to make entirely pre comps for most of the race protocol.

And so like the only external asset they're going to be using here is this test tube graphic and that asset is included in the product file linked in the description below. So yeah, with that, let's get started all right. First thing we're going to be doing is heading inside this pre comp over here bubbles one click and narrow in here and you see basically that singular bubble.

Now what someone's doing basically is you can see that it's got some positioning animation on it, see, and it's got some opacity animation on it. It's not this echo fact that's those like bubbles in the back, like you see those bubbles following it and, and then we're going to be just in the full color with this thing. This is just a guide later layer like you're not worry about it's not going to appear in the final render.

We're just going to be using the main comps tested. But yeah, so the first thing we're going to be doing is open up window central graphics. There we go. So the way to add properties to a central graphics, pretty simple. You're going to click and drag it. So it is in here circle position. And you can also do this you can like right click on it and then add property to Central Graphics.

That's another way to do it. You can also do this with keyframes, but that basically means that anything in here is going to be isolated and that's a property that we could control. On the second level, you'll see what I mean more as we go along if I wanted to and you like you weren't sure what you can put in Central Graphics, you just hit solid supported properties.

Well, something a layer and I'll just give you a whole list of everything you can put in here you control and that's you can see quite a lot. But we're only concerned with a couple of things here. Oh, I want to put in my eye contact, sort of toggle it open. I want to put in number of echoes.

I think yeah, that's what I want. So I'm going to click and drag there and I'm going to type in. So over here I want my fill color also to be controlled on the pre comp level.

Let's see. Oh, and yes, I want to name this, so I want to name the set of Central Graphics, simple properties, listening them to bubbles and when it says primary here, it's basically the program's being like, so this is where we're pulling those properties from, right? I could choose like the main comp or the, the test tubes, but what it's using for reference is bubbles.

Is the bubbles pretty calm. All right. With that, let's head back to the main comp. So now bubbles has the central properties isolated. Very cool. Now I want my first bubbles to be fine. They look how they look. I don't want to change anything about that, but I'm going to duplicate bubbles, too, and let's open up those central properties.

So the first thing I'm going to be doing is changing the style color. So I double click the full color within the layer that I'm trying to change and illustrate it to like near white and great. So I could already see that there's going to be some changes and that's going to help us be able to differentiate from the other bubbles up.

Here you are. I'm just changing the position. So there we go. I found it the last one to change the scale, scaling this thing. So when I head back into bubbles, I'm going to hit s for scale and that and drag it over there. So going to change the scale. See, now I could change the scale on my main pre complex for the 80 all right.

And I'm going to change the position of these keyframes. So I'm actually going to delete all these central property keyframes and I'm going to have it start, you know, let's say you want to move it maybe a little bit over there. I'm going to hit Stop Stopwatch so I could start framing it and I'm going to, you know, have it relaunch there.

And then finally I want to like float out of the test tube and I'm going to actually use all these you can do that by right clicking and go to keep your system easy. So like there's a nice smooth animation in and out and there you go. Now it has a different animation than the other blue bubbles. And oh, and I'm also going to change the number of echos to just two though.

And I'll pastie I think I'm going to keep that as it is now. I want to show you something, too. You see these little icons over here. This is the push and pull icons. And what that means basically is that if I were to use the pull icon, the pull will discard the changes that we made to our new bubble and it's going to set it to bubble one settings.

If I hit push it's going to apply the new changes to the base pre pop. So so if I hit pull over here, you can see it turned back into that other blue. But if you push it it then gave its own properties to the base pre pop. So if you decide that you actually like the look of your alter pre comps more and you want to that to apply to the base, you then can apply it back to the base pre comp or if you decide that you don't like what you did, you get rid of that.

All right. So I'm going to be making a third bubble with these very same techniques. All right. Let's see how it looks. All right. Really cool. You've got yeah. Different bubbles of different sizes, speeds, how many echoes? There are different capacities and was all done with one pre comp and just changing a couple of these properties. So this technique is really good for projects that require a lot of similar animations or slightly different details of cars, for instance, or a crowd of animated walking people.

It's excellent for making different versions of an animation like a logo with the change background, for instance. So that's all for this tutorial. I hope you enjoyed learning how to make a simple properties animation. Nobody after effects. If you guys have any questions, leave a comment. We also love hearing suggestions for future tutorials, so yeah, let us know.

This has been Tziporah Zions for Noble Desktop.