I have a more simple way to connect lots of dots together with out the needs for heaps of pickwhips. On your first Beam effect layer add the expression control "Layer Control" and rename it to 'Start Point'. Duplicate it and rename this one 'End Point'. Then you need to type in the expression window for starting point - effect("Start Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -and for the ending point put in - effect("End Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -. Now you can just select the layers you want to connect together from the drop down boxes. So 3 beam layers would make a triangle if you connect Dot 1 to Dot 2, Dot 2 to Dot 3 and Dot 3 to Dot 1.
Hi can somebody explain where can I put the effect("Start Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -and for the ending point put in - effect("End Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]);
Hold ALT and click the stopwatch on the property you want to animate. Then copy and paste it into the expression window. Haven't gone through the tut but guessing its for the "layer control" property?
Hey Evan! Just wanted to say thanks for all of your videos. I teach English as a second language and I wanted to make a visually appealing way for people to learn English grammar. I never used Adobe After Effects before watching your videos but because of your tutorials, I am now able to start a video project with a friend of mine. I think you will probably see my many attempts at your handiwork here: Present Continuous (Present Progressive) Thanks Again!
Always watch your tutorials cause they are just so well done. i used to be nothing but sony vegas pro, but in the path like 4 months i would say i just learn so many things and it cut down work in a big way and i can thank you for that! I also just paused the video at 2 minutes and opened up my after effects so i can follow along cause i've never done that before and i think it would help me in my own creative ways. anyways thanks alot! you also look/sound so much like SEANANNERS!!!!!
The opening title was sweet, it would make a nice tutorial. I know you've covered the individual components ins other tutorials, but what we sometimes need is a tutorial to understand the work flow of putting it all together. Text, Shape layer and then the connected dots set to the follow the audio, very nice as always
Thanks Evan dude i figured it and yeah u was right it was the expressions i was missing a couple of slight quotations ...... I'm dyslexic so i missed it love your tutorials though really intuitive and easy to follow
somehow I did thing exactly right up until 7:40 and when I click on the graph editor my tangents are different. they make a upside down "V" shape rather than your sideways "S" shape. it doesn't make any sense....
When I duplicate the shape layers it doesn't randomize the position of the dots, so I still only get one dot moving around. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?
Acording to AcAnimate this is going to safe me 25 bucks, so thank you for that! ;-) It's a great way of animating stuff. Again an amazing tut, Evan. Keep up the good work!
ok great I just found the fix further down - here it is... the graph editor can show you speed over time or values over time. Likely you are looking at the other view. Change the view of the graph editor settings by clicking on the bottons at the bottom of the graph editor.
+TheRecomhuProd You can, but we call that parenting. You can parent any layer to any other layer. So if you have a dot layer, or a null layer, or any other layer, you could make some text and parent that text to that dot to wherever he dot goes the text goes. However the dot scales, the text scales. They being unhealthily inseparable, like a needy child and a helicopter parent. You can also use expressions to make the positional values of one layer reference the positional values of another so they are always in the same position.
+ECAbrams How would you show/hide the text upon collapse and expand of the dots? Example: If you wanted to have a word next to each dot when it expanded and then the text would hide when the dots re-centered, etc?
+Alex Maeland I would recommend to use the amplitude keyframes and translate them to the opacity of your text. In the example of +ECAbrams the amplitude animates from 0 to 540 and back to 0. put this expression to your text's opacity: i = thisComp.layer("Crtl").effect("Amplitude")("Slider"); linear(i,0,540,0,100); If you want the show/hide to be a little softer you could change the first 0 to e.g. 200 ("linear(i,200,540,0,100)"), so when the amplitude value is at 200 and goes to 540 then the opacity starts increasing its value. Works fine to me. Cheers.
I wrote a program in Processing once that did something similar to this. It allowed the user to click on the screen, adding a dot, and every dot would automatically get connected to every other dot. Maybe something similar would be possible in AE, as opposed to buying expensive plugins such as Plexus.
The plugin you talked about is most likely Plexus :p and it definitely worth the $25 since it can do multiple connections, like connection everything, which would be really really complex and hard to pull off by doing this, also, Plexus is 3D, and it actually also have the ability to render triangles between the lines connection the dots... which is pretty neat :D But, that being said, this is a perfect way of doing it if you don't want or can't afford Plexus..
Plexus is presently sold at 199. The one I was talking about is certainly no plexus. Plexus is great at what it is made for: rendering highly advanced particle systems. Connecting some dots with some lines using plexus is like using a back hoe to plant tulips.
ECAbrams 199? Well haha, there you have it... I know nothing about what it costs.... In general I don't know much about it, I've only seen few videos using it, and all I saw was lines and points rendered between lights :p
Actually I just did. I see you responded to the comment I made before watching it in 1080p. I immediately edited the comment after that. Sorry. False alarm. I'm good now. Thanks.
Hi ECAbrams and thanks a lot for this tutorial. I am a beginner with expressions but it was easy to build the dots following your instructions. I was even able to attached some text to one of the dots position. My question is: How can I move all the elements to the left without losing all the settings already build? I tried to add a null to parent all of them but at the time that added it all of the lines got disconnectd from the dots. Thanks in advance for your time to answer.
Nice tutorial ! But I wandered if there is also a technique to have curved lines or bezier type lines connect with the dots, instead of straight lines. And so when you move the dots, you can animate the lines wobbling with it or they automatically wobble.
and if you dont/cant help me out with your amazing skills then i have a quick question, would it be hard to do this on a video and make the lines move with my hands??
Hi Evan, I totally dig the simple typographic transitions you have in your intro. have you covered his sorta stuff in earlier tutorials? Okay, now for connecting the dots. Dude in he beginning of this particular tutorial you mention that one can use any other type of shapes. Well i only wanna use three different shapes. is it as easy as importing all the different shapes from Ai, and just following all your steps? By the way, keep up the good work. Truly appreciate what you do.
Yeah you can import shapes from Ai. Or draw shape layers. Or use images, psd, jpeg, whatever. Because the technique is applied to the position properties of the layers it doesn't matter that those layers are.
At the end of the demo video the dots and the lines are moving at a very slow speed and it looks like they do it in a 3D space. How did you achieve that?
ECAbrams hahahaha, you sure have a great taste of humor, but for sure, when i watch that movie, first thing that came to my head is....is that Evan Abrams? hahahaha...once again, thanks Evan for make a great tuts.
i love your tutorials by the way and I'm currently doing a graphic design course at college in my second year and doing a motion graphics module and your my go to guy so please please help
hey, very interesting tutorial, beautiful and clever technique. but i am new to this whole expression thing, I am following you step by step, but it seems that i am missing something, so it would be great if you can share with us the scripts that you used. thank you
Doesn't work for me. The Random Seed slider isn't doing anything and my curve at 7:30 looks like a V, not an S shape. Maybe something changed in the updated version of AE?
When I move the amplitude slider, on your screen goes to the right, on mine goes to the left side, any tips on how to fix this? or why it goes the other way? Thank you. ps. I love your tutorials !! They're rellay cool and helpful!
Do you have any suggestions for learning the basics of the code you are using? I can't get past the coding section, and would love to know what's going on in those lines a bit more.
Great and funny tutorial, thank you! I would love to make this, but I'm doing something wrong. My graph after applying the easy ease to the amplitude animation is a parabola rather than a sinus curve and as a result, the dot doesn't move like yours. I triple-checked the expressions and they seem to be correct. Any suggestions on where my mistake is? Thanks again!
Hi Evan. Long time viewer, first time commenter. Do you know if there is a way to apply this same time of random index expression to a shape layers color? So the color would change by X amount every time the layers is duplicated. Would make a great tutorial. Thanks for all the great tuts!
For sure. The tricky thing is that colour is a 4 part attribute. So it's like [###,###,###,###] so you just need to be adding something to that or multiply it or whatever math you do. Play around and see how it goes. It will however be a little hard to get good looking colours using this method.
1 minute in and this is now my favorite AE tutorial person. What the heck. Much humor, very wow.
exactly what i was about to write great work
Really good tut.
"Probably the dumbest thing you'll ever see"
Also the rampant use of "Idk, who cares" kills me.
I have a more simple way to connect lots of dots together with out the needs for heaps of pickwhips. On your first Beam effect layer add the expression control "Layer Control" and rename it to 'Start Point'. Duplicate it and rename this one 'End Point'. Then you need to type in the expression window for starting point - effect("Start Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -and for the ending point put in - effect("End Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -. Now you can just select the layers you want to connect together from the drop down boxes. So 3 beam layers would make a triangle if you connect Dot 1 to Dot 2, Dot 2 to Dot 3 and Dot 3 to Dot 1.
Thanks..Very effective!!!
This done changed my life! I told others about it at work and they just shot me down. NO MATTER, I recognized the greatness!
TrentisN THANK YOU
Hi can somebody explain where can I put the effect("Start Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]); -and for the ending point put in - effect("End Point")("Layer").toComp([0,0,0]);
Hold ALT and click the stopwatch on the property you want to animate. Then copy and paste it into the expression window. Haven't gone through the tut but guessing its for the "layer control" property?
I enjoy how these tutorials aren't boring and you add some "spice" into it haha. Great tutorials! thanks for uploading as well!
Dude. You are so good it's absurd. Can't even tell you how much I have learned from this channel.
Well done man!
Btw i think you're the funniest teacher ever. Keep on!
Reliably you don't just do the obvious, you really build some smarts in all your tutes. Nice work!
Was looking for this tutorial not sure what I'd find but the moment I saw Evan Abrams I knew I was in good hands.
Hey Evan! Just wanted to say thanks for all of your videos. I teach English as a second language and I wanted to make a visually appealing way for people to learn English grammar. I never used Adobe After Effects before watching your videos but because of your tutorials, I am now able to start a video project with a friend of mine. I think you will probably see my many attempts at your handiwork here: Present Continuous (Present Progressive)
Thanks Again!
Listening to this guy is fun!
Always watch your tutorials cause they are just so well done. i used to be nothing but sony vegas pro, but in the path like 4 months i would say i just learn so many things and it cut down work in a big way and i can thank you for that! I also just paused the video at 2 minutes and opened up my after effects so i can follow along cause i've never done that before and i think it would help me in my own creative ways. anyways thanks alot! you also look/sound so much like SEANANNERS!!!!!
I tried this a year and a half ago with no success, but tried again today and finally got the hang of it! Thanks! haha
I love you. I have been looking for this so much!!! Your tutorial is the easiest to follow along with the best results
You're probably the #1 person for After Effects tutorials! Totally subscribed:)
I'd like a sound pack with all the WAAAUHH GNEEOOOWWW. haha, great tutorial
thanks for the constant uploads these tutorials help a lot
this channel rules. Thanx so much for sharing. been working for a few years with AE, i'm sorry i didn't found this before. Learning a lot.
The opening title was sweet, it would make a nice tutorial. I know you've covered the individual components ins other tutorials, but what we sometimes need is a tutorial to understand the work flow of putting it all together. Text, Shape layer and then the connected dots set to the follow the audio, very nice as always
Thanks Evan dude i figured it and yeah u was right it was the expressions i was missing a couple of slight quotations ...... I'm dyslexic so i missed it love your tutorials though really intuitive and easy to follow
Love the Shft+hotkey thing you mention there!
The introduction was very helpful, thanks!
You are the man. All of your videos are incredible thanks a bunch
New here and loving all these tutorials. Just wanted to say thanks!
Genius way of solving this visuals! Love the sound effects I also have this habit!! One love! Nice work!
somehow I did thing exactly right up until 7:40 and when I click on the graph editor my tangents are different.
they make a upside down "V" shape rather than your sideways "S" shape.
it doesn't make any sense....
Years later and this has still helped me!!!
Glad to hear it! Only evergreen Content over here :)
Best soft soft Introduction Ever!!
I love your tutorials man!
Wow, great tutorials, great sense of humor, great techniques. Thanks for contributing your awesome tutorials to the AE community!
wow i had no idea you could script in ae! that's awesome.
HA! 9:44 "probably the dumbest thing you'll ever see" you are a crack up!
I like the sound effects u make while teaching
(liked suscribed on 0.26 secs xD )
Awesome tutorial! I love how flexible and customizable this is :)
one of my favorite tutorial. thank you!
YES absolute genius, exactly what I was looking for thank you! :)
When I duplicate the shape layers it doesn't randomize the position of the dots, so I still only get one dot moving around. Any idea of what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks for the help! like your logo animation too.. nice clean simple.
love your tutorials
Cool tuto dude.
Keep up the good work
Now I really wanna grab me some sliders. Thanks ECAbrams.
Thanks very much for this tutorial. Was very helpful
For some reason if your beam flips or gone haywire, you can instead use shape path lines. Windows>Create nulls from path> Parent the nulls to things.
So happy that script exists now. It was a long time coming.
excellent tut, exactly what i was looking for!
Wayyyy better techniques then having to use expressions with custom code thanks!
you re amazing man..
what a tutorials.
booooooooooooooooom
can I just say that I love your narrating?
"0,50? yeah I can live with that" xD
Acording to AcAnimate this is going to safe me 25 bucks, so thank you for that! ;-) It's a great way of animating stuff. Again an amazing tut, Evan. Keep up the good work!
Really rad tutorial man. Good technique to know
Thanks Evan! That's a great tutorial!
ok great I just found the fix further down - here it is...
the graph editor can show you speed over time or values over time. Likely you are looking at the other view. Change the view of the graph editor settings by clicking on the bottons at the bottom of the graph editor.
Hi there, first of all thank you for all your awesome videos, I'm a french youtuber. I have a question : can we "attach" text to the dots ?
+TheRecomhuProd You can, but we call that parenting. You can parent any layer to any other layer. So if you have a dot layer, or a null layer, or any other layer, you could make some text and parent that text to that dot to wherever he dot goes the text goes. However the dot scales, the text scales. They being unhealthily inseparable, like a needy child and a helicopter parent. You can also use expressions to make the positional values of one layer reference the positional values of another so they are always in the same position.
ECAbrams Thanks for this fast answer, I will try ^^
+ECAbrams How would you show/hide the text upon collapse and expand of the dots? Example: If you wanted to have a word next to each dot when it expanded and then the text would hide when the dots re-centered, etc?
+Alex Maeland probably keyframe their scale. Would that work for your specific vision for the piece?
+Alex Maeland I would recommend to use the amplitude keyframes and translate them to the opacity of your text. In the example of +ECAbrams the amplitude animates from 0 to 540 and back to 0.
put this expression to your text's opacity:
i = thisComp.layer("Crtl").effect("Amplitude")("Slider");
linear(i,0,540,0,100);
If you want the show/hide to be a little softer you could change the first 0 to e.g. 200 ("linear(i,200,540,0,100)"), so when the amplitude value is at 200 and goes to 540 then the opacity starts increasing its value. Works fine to me. Cheers.
I wrote a program in Processing once that did something similar to this. It allowed the user to click on the screen, adding a dot, and every dot would automatically get connected to every other dot. Maybe something similar would be possible in AE, as opposed to buying expensive plugins such as Plexus.
Agreed. All the others just turn your brain upside down. Nice tutorials is simple.
You're hilarious -
Thank you for all your videos!
Thanks for the expressions, I just used them with a tweak to animate a grid of dots and lines random and back to organised!
Awesome! Glad it worked out!
The plugin you talked about is most likely Plexus :p
and it definitely worth the $25 since it can do multiple connections, like connection everything, which would be really really complex and hard to pull off by doing this, also, Plexus is 3D, and it actually also have the ability to render triangles between the lines connection the dots... which is pretty neat :D
But, that being said, this is a perfect way of doing it if you don't want or can't afford Plexus..
Plexus is presently sold at 199. The one I was talking about is certainly no plexus. Plexus is great at what it is made for: rendering highly advanced particle systems. Connecting some dots with some lines using plexus is like using a back hoe to plant tulips.
ECAbrams 199? Well haha, there you have it... I know nothing about what it costs....
In general I don't know much about it, I've only seen few videos using it, and all I saw was lines and points rendered between lights :p
ECAbrams linescreator.com/ this is the plugin you were on about I presume?
I'm pretty sure this is the new Newton plugin ;p
Well, you can tell the beam effect to connect this layer with the one above it, then you just duplicate the layers, boom, everything is connected.
Lively tutorial. Not slow and boring. it's upbeat but focus still remains on the subject. Thanks
have you tried watching it in 1080p?
Actually I just did. I see you responded to the comment I made before watching it in 1080p. I immediately edited the comment after that. Sorry. False alarm. I'm good now. Thanks.
Hi ECAbrams and thanks a lot for this tutorial.
I am a beginner with expressions but it was easy to build the dots following your instructions.
I was even able to attached some text to one of the dots position.
My question is:
How can I move all the elements to the left without losing all the settings already build?
I tried to add a null to parent all of them but at the time that added it all of the lines got disconnectd from the dots.
Thanks in advance for your time to answer.
This is fun. You make fun things and I thank you for it.
Well done and thanks a lot!
Any chance you got a tutorial on how to make that fancy intro?=)
Absolutely wonderful. Thank you.
Nice tutorial ! But I wandered if there is also a technique to have curved lines or bezier type lines connect with the dots, instead of straight lines. And so when you move the dots, you can animate the lines wobbling with it or they automatically wobble.
Great tutorial. Also I like your intro logo animation. How was that done?
I think it would great to have a tutorial on how you made the other part of the intro, the way that you had the shapes reveal the text.
Thank you!! Great technique and some laughs. Much appreciated.
Thank you dude. it works
and if you dont/cant help me out with your amazing skills then i have a quick question, would it be hard to do this on a video and make the lines move with my hands??
Thanks a lot! This one saves the day!
Thank you very much , now I will understand the
thank u helped me a lot
Hi Evan,
I totally dig the simple typographic transitions you have in your intro. have you covered his sorta stuff in earlier tutorials?
Okay, now for connecting the dots.
Dude in he beginning of this particular tutorial you mention that one can use any other type of shapes. Well i only wanna use three different shapes. is it as easy as importing all the different shapes from Ai, and just following all your steps?
By the way, keep up the good work. Truly appreciate what you do.
Yeah you can import shapes from Ai. Or draw shape layers. Or use images, psd, jpeg, whatever. Because the technique is applied to the position properties of the layers it doesn't matter that those layers are.
At the end of the demo video the dots and the lines are moving at a very slow speed and it looks like they do it in a 3D space. How did you achieve that?
i always forget to tell you this Evan, i saw you in the movie called "snowpiercer" :D
anyway, thank you for the tuts
I don't think I look that much like Tilda Swinton. Do I?
ECAbrams hahahaha, you sure have a great taste of humor, but for sure, when i watch that movie, first thing that came to my head is....is that Evan Abrams? hahahaha...once again, thanks Evan for make a great tuts.
Isn't it possible to parent a path point (like if you make a connect line between two dots) to a shape? :|
it keeps angry when i type in the expression, can you zoom in the expression code?
Hi Evan, great tutorial (as all of your tuts are).
Quick question: is there a way to change the beam into dotted lines?
Thanks!
Dimi
i love your tutorials by the way and I'm currently doing a graphic design course at college in my second year and doing a motion graphics module and your my go to guy so please please help
Great tutorial, thanks
hey, very interesting tutorial, beautiful and clever technique. but i am new to this whole expression thing, I am following you step by step, but it seems that i am missing something, so it would be great if you can share with us the scripts that you used. thank you
works, chock-full thanks!
Thanks. Could you also post the expression you used in the description.
Its difficult to make out from the video.
awesome tut.. But i cant dropdown the menu to select the line to let the start point of the beam follow the dot..
Cool Tutorial!
I don't see Effect slider contorl. Help me pls !!
Doesn't work for me. The Random Seed slider isn't doing anything and my curve at 7:30 looks like a V, not an S shape. Maybe something changed in the updated version of AE?
When I move the amplitude slider, on your screen goes to the right, on mine goes to the left side, any tips on how to fix this? or why it goes the other way? Thank you.
ps. I love your tutorials !! They're rellay cool and helpful!
I did exactly as you did and the expressions are right as well but it seems that while the amplitude is working, the random seed is not working :(
aw, the tutorial made me happy
And that makes me happy.
Thanks!!! Great work!
Damn! Beam! I should have guessed!) Nice tut man!
Nice Tutorial !
Thanks for all this goods, man. My boss loves me now!!!!
After a while it starts to sound like Seth Rogen is teaching me after effects lol. Great tutorial btw.
Awsome tutorials , one of my favourites, but , you dont explain the shortcuts and it drives me nuts sometimes ahhahah ! You make things way funnier !
Hi,My dots' shapes are changing in their movement it doesn't stay like a perfect dot. Any ideas what it could be ?Thanks in advance :)
Do you have any suggestions for learning the basics of the code you are using? I can't get past the coding section, and would love to know what's going on in those lines a bit more.
Love it. Thank you!
Great and funny tutorial, thank you! I would love to make this, but I'm doing something wrong. My graph after applying the easy ease to the amplitude animation is a parabola rather than a sinus curve and as a result, the dot doesn't move like yours. I triple-checked the expressions and they seem to be correct. Any suggestions on where my mistake is? Thanks again!
Hi Evan. Long time viewer, first time commenter. Do you know if there is a way to apply this same time of random index expression to a shape layers color? So the color would change by X amount every time the layers is duplicated. Would make a great tutorial. Thanks for all the great tuts!
For sure. The tricky thing is that colour is a 4 part attribute. So it's like [###,###,###,###] so you just need to be adding something to that or multiply it or whatever math you do. Play around and see how it goes. It will however be a little hard to get good looking colours using this method.