Creating Dynamic Equalizer Graphs Using Shape Layer Effects in After Effects

So I'm going to work on an effect, one of the shape layer only effects called Repeater. I'm going to use that to make this little equalizer graph. So I'm back in my main shape animation HUD, and it's one of these, and I did actually name them, so it made it easier to figure out which is which.

But in case I didn't do that, I can always right click right in my comp window. At the bottom is select, and it's going to give you a list of all of the layers currently underneath where your cursor is. So instead of having to deal with 20 of these, I can just deal with a couple.

And again, graph equalizer. That's what I wanted. It's selected.

I can see that this is what I want. I'm going to pre-compose it. If you don't like using the keyboard shortcut or right click, layer pre-compose right down here definitely works.

So I'm just going to change the name to get rid of the one. I don't know why it adds one to this. I'm going to use leave all attributes because again, I want to make a comp that matches the size of this layer source.

And I'll say OK. Then I'm going to jump into it by pressing tab to get my mini flow chart view. Graph equalizer graphs right there.

I'm going to zoom in. That's period on my keyboard a couple of times. And I'm looking at this, and I got to figure out a way to do this.

So I'm thinking there's like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 columns. There's an outline too, by the way. It's nice.

So if I convert this into shapes, each of these little boxes is going to be its own shape. And I could probably find one of them and just do it and repeat it. But that's a lot of work.

So I think a better bet is just to use as a reference. So I'm going to do a couple things on this layer. One, I'm going to go to its properties and lower its opacity by about half.

That'll make it dimmer, easier to trace. It uses a tracing reference. That's all I'm doing.

I'm going to right click on it. I'm going to turn on guide layer. What does guide layer do? So guide layer allows this layer to be visible here in the comp it's used in.

When I go back to the parent comp, wherever it's used, it's actually hidden. That way, if I forget to turn off the visibility, I don't matter anymore. It's never going to be seen right outside of here.

So it's going to reference this for here. Then I'm going to lock it. This prevents me from accidentally selecting it and moving it, which makes it really hard to trace something if it moves.

That's good. That's all set up. I like that.

Let's do the outline first. So I got to figure out a color for this. I'm actually going to use the color for the original graphic.

I'll go to my rectangle tool. I don't need a fill for this. I'll put in the word fill.

That's going to open the fill options and none. So no fill. For the stroke, I want to use this color right in here.

Yes, I know that I've lowered the opacity. It's gotten darker. It's not going to matter for this effect.

So I'll click on the color box to pop it up. That opens the stroke color picker. I'll use the eyedropper here.

I'm just going to go to one of those bars. Okay, right there. And even though, by the way, it was lowered the opacity, it doesn't care.

It takes the original color minus the opacity change. So I'll say okay and that's a gray. I will recolor this a little bit later.

That works out pretty well. I like that. That is good.

Okay, I like this. I like this a lot. So to make a rectangle in the exact shape of the comp, all you got to do is double click on the rectangle tool.

That's it. That's all it does. I will change the stroke so it's a little smaller.

I don't think I need to be this big. Let's go down to three maybe. Ah, that's pretty good.

I like that. I'm going to rename that layer by highlighting it. Right clicking rename or return it to your keyboard.

I'm calling this outline. I don't plan to use move it so I'm going to lock it. So anything you're not using, you're not moving, you're not changing, not adjusting for a while, lock it.

This makes it a lot simpler. So you can actually move it, change it, delete it, add an effect to it you don't want. Just keeps it safe.

I'm going to hide its options like that. So I'm just going to zoom in on one of these boxes. I'm going to press the Z key and hold it.

And then I'm going to click and drag. And in the current versions of the program, it has this infinite zoom ability. Kind of like the scrubby zoom feature in Photoshop for those who use that program.

If you have an older version, then when you click and drag, it's going to make a zoom box and whatever's in that box is what you zoom in on. But the newer ones are great because they allow any arbitrary zoom value pretty much. So it's a lot easier to get to the, see what you want exactly when you want it.

So for this, I'm going to go back to my rectangle tool. I am going to in fact turn off the stroke. So stroke to none, I'll put on the word stroke.

I can choose none in the options or if I hold down the Option or Alt key and I click on the color box itself, the one I would normally use to choose the color, it's going to toggle through the options. So none, solid color, linear gradient, radial gradient right there. One more time, none.

I am going to put the color box for fill, eyedropper and I'm just going to pull the color from one of the boxes. Like so. So if you click on the color box itself where you pick the fill or stroke, it opens the color picker.

Option click on it will actually toggle between the four choices. So that is good. I like that.

I'm just going to draw this little box right here. Click and drag. And I'm just going to approximate it.

I'm then going to go into the size properties right here in properties panel. I'm going to turn off the link. I'll make it exactly 25 for the width and I'll make it exactly, let's say four for the height.

Okay, I like that. I like that. That's good.

It works out pretty well. But now I need more of them. So I'm going to use this shape layer.

I'm going to call this column one and I'm going to use for this shape layer one of the shape layer only effects under add. And the one I'm going to use is repeater. It repeats a shape layer.

So I click it. I get a box to the right. And by the way, if I zoom out, there's another box to the right as well.

The default settings for repeater give you a row of boxes, 100 pixels apart from each other. But we're going to change that. So in the repeater effect, I'm going to open this up.

And yes, I have to do this in the timeline. This is also not something I can edit in the properties panel. So number of copies three, I'll leave that for now.

But I'm going to find the transform of the repeater. This controls how they repeat. And the position by default is 100 to the right.

So I'll turn that to zero. So by the way, right now they're on top of each other. I'm going to just change the vertical and it's going to go up.

So I made the height four. So let's say negative six. And I'm going to get that.

So now they are negative six pixels away from each other, which take the height, a little space between them. And now I've got to start to make this column. I'm just going to raise the number of copies.

There were three, four, five, six, seven. Let's say 10. Actually, I'll do 10.

Like that. And I'm good to go. So I've got my first column.

That's nice. I like that one. But I want to animate this so it varies.

So what I'm going to do is actually randomize copies. I'm going to hold down the option key on the stopwatch for copies. And I want to use the random command.

But again, the problem is I know that random runs at the frame rate. So it's really, really fast. So first I'll add posterize time.

I'm going to bring that down to maybe 10. So it's a little slower. I'm going to go to the end of the line.

Semi-colon, return to go to the next line. By the way, you can write the expression out as a single line. I just find it easier when I write it down.

And then random. So I'm going to have this pick a random number between, let's say, 5 and 10. 5 comma.

And then again, I'll put a semicolon at the end of that. I'll leave the field. And I got that.

That's what I got. So 10 times a second, it's going to pick a new random number. That's the speed I'm going for.

When it's slower, I can just lower that number from maybe 10 to 6 or 5 or whatever you want, by the way. Have fun with that. But I like 10.

I think it actually looks a nice speed for this. OK. And if I go back and look at this in Shape Animation HUD, I'll see that one bar.

And this is what it does for me. I like that. I think that actually works out pretty, pretty well.

1. Now, I like that. That's fun.

I need more of them. That's the problem. I need more of them.

I always need more of them. So I'm going to repeat this entire layer, actually. So column 1. So what I'm going to do is just duplicate this again.

So column 1. Duplicate. I'm just going to drag it over with my Move tool. So I went to the Selection tool.

Just drag it over. Now, keep in mind, the ones that are above the one with the outline are not real. So I can actually only drag this by going to the outline.

Anchor point not in the middle. OK. Let's fix that.

So I'm going to right click on that layer. Transform. Center anchor point and layer content.

Now, notice, even though the other ones aren't real, it still counts them when calculating the size for the layer center. I'll do that to 1 as well. Let's go with Transform.

Center anchor point. So it's going to be up there. They're not actually exactly aligned.

It's hilarious. So I'll duplicate 2. I'm using the keyboard shortcut Command D or Control D. It's the fastest way to do this. Otherwise, I got to go to Edit.

Duplicate over and over again. And I'm just roughly doing it and moving them over. I'm not even really trying to make it line up.

I am going to zoom out a little bit, which is the comma key to zoom out. If I press and hold the H key, I can get the temporarily hand tool to pan around so I can see them all again. And when I let go of that key, the H, it goes back to my selection tool.

So let's keep duplicating and moving them over. And then that. The only ones I care about lining up are the first and last ones.

Again, I'll grab all of the layers. I'm going to use a line just to sort them out. And I'll align that to the base of the composition like that.

Again, I prefer if these are in the listed order that they visually display in. So I selected them 1 to 6. I'll cut them and I will then paste them. You can use the keyboard shortcut or you can use the commands in Edit.

Again, that doesn't actually affect anything we're doing. I just think it looks nicer, easier to work with, easier to know which is which. So that's good.

It's pretty cool. Now, the only problem with this is that if I want to change the total number, I got to do it manually. So it does randomize each one individually.

But I go to column 2, E twice, EE. I'm just going to pull down the text field and make it bigger so I can see it. And I'm going to set new values for random.

So maybe in this case, 10 to 15. So now that'll have a much higher range. Close that up.

Do the same thing. Next layer, EE. And maybe I'll do this one 12 to 17.

Whatever you want, have fun. But yeah, I'm going to do that individually. Again, I'm going to zoom out so I can see everything.

Like that. I just want to make sure I don't go too high. That was 117.

That is way too high. Okay, so that's 17. The expression will not update until you click outside of the text field.

So I can just keep doing that. If I want more variation in them, no problem at all. And that's how they will build.

Okay, and when I go back to the shape animation, that's what I'll get. Okay, it all depends on how many you want. How much variation you want.

That sort of thing. But I also want to change the color of them. So I don't want to affect the outline.

So I'm not going to use fill in this case. I'm actually going to do it right in here. So one, I'm going to take the outline layer.

Unlock it. I'll put it on top. So it's going to be my topmost layer.

So it's above everything, which is nice. I'll relock it. I'm then going to add an adjustment layer.

Layer, new, adjustment layer. Adjustment layer exists to receive effects. I'm just going to call this one colorize.

Okay, now I'm going to drag it below the outline. Because it only affects the layers below it. It has no effect on what's above.

So outline will be unchanged. But every column layer will get the effect I add here. And the effect I'm going to add.

And effects and presets. I'm just going to clear that search field. Is gradient.

Okay, and I'll find a couple different things use gradient. But what I want is gradient ramp. Gradient ramp, I'll double click, is a two-color gradient.

One to the other. Start of ramp, I'm going to click on that little point selector at the top. It's already there.

And the end of ramp is at the bottom right there. That's good. So it goes top to bottom.

I'll click on the start color. I'm going to make this one red. I'll click on the end color.

Make this one blue. Or whatever color you please, by the way, it's fine. So now I get a range from red on top to blue on bottom.

So the higher it is, the closer it gets to red. And again, it is colorizing the template. But it's irrelevant because I simply don't see.

So I go back to Animation HUD. That's what I end up with. Like that.

It's kind of cool. And if I want more things to go red. I'd have to go to each of those expressions I wrote.

And basically add in another higher value. So again, the higher they are, the more red they are in this case. And that's how I can get a colorized animated HUD.