Enhancing Animations in After Effects with Custom Ease in the Speed Graph

So for this lesson, we'll be working with the speed graph part of the graph editor. A little bit different. So I'm just going to move my work area bar here at about eight seconds.

I'll press spacebar to preview so we can see what we're working with. And as you can see, it's basically just some text, animated text layers. That's all, it's just sliding up.

If I press U on my keyboard, I'll see the keyframes are positioned. This is vertical position in this case. It's all it is.

It's all it is. It's not a big animation. It's pretty cool.

The animations themselves reach one second long. And the layers are just staggered. So they all start a little differently.

They all start off screen and end up in this position. And yes, that does in fact say Klingons jive awkwardly in zero gravity. Okay.

So what I'd like to do is get myself a custom easing. So I could just grab all these keyframes. I could right click, keyframe assistant, easy ease them.

And I'd get some slightly more interesting motion out of that. If I press this again, you'll see it's a little more interesting motion. Okay.

But it's not really what I want. I want an actually a lot more aggressive movement. I want it to really jump up fast and really slow down really fast.

So I need something more than easy ease can do. I need to make custom ease for this. Okay.

So I still have those keyframes selected. I could undo them. But command or control, if you hold it down and click on the keyframes.

We'll turn them back into linear keyframes. So linear keyframes, the diamonds have no easing. There is no easing at all.

They simply move at the same speed throughout the entire motion. Okay. They start at a certain speed, then the same speed.

There is no speed change. What easing does. It simulates acceleration and deceleration.

Okay. So again, I'm going to do this one at a time. Because I can really do it one at a time.

I'll highlight the property. I want to use the easing graph on. In this case, that's position.

But this would also work any other property, scale, rotation. Or even the properties in your effects that you add. No problem at all.

Pretty much everything with keyframes can be eased. Unlike when working with the value graph to add easing. I don't actually need to separate the dimensions.

This will work actually on anything as is. So I've got it highlighted. I'm going to click on the view editor, graph editor display.

I'm going to zoom in again. I'm going to do that using the magnification bar at the top of the timeline. Just makes it a little easier to zoom in on a specific area, I think.

Okay. Again, I'm seeing both the x and y position here. But I'm going to make sure I switch to the speed graph.

Because the speed graph doesn't have different ones for x and y. It is simply a representation of the speed this is traveling over the time of the animation. So first keyframe, second keyframe. And if there are more keyframes, you'd see more of those squares.

I'm going to click and drag to select both of these keyframes. And there's actually an easy ease button right there. That is easy ease.

It basically is giving you a nice, easy, smooth curve. Start off moving at zero pixels a second. Pick up speed.

And at the middle of the animation, you're moving the fastest. And then slow down again. Very, very, very, very smooth.

Which is part of why we call it easy ease. Okay. Now, by the way, I want to get rid of that.

That's easy ease. Easy ease in. Easy ease out.

One of these buttons right here converts them back into linear, the diamonds. If you hold over it, you'll see that there's a little hint for it. It's actually the second to last one here.

Back to diamonds. Okay. So, I could actually add easy ease and then just adjust it.

But you can also do this manually. If I actually grab the keyframe and pull it around, that adds easing. Okay.

Now, if I want to make sure it stays in the same position, I'm going to, as I drag it, hold shift. Okay. So, now that's actually easy.

I'm going to, again, move the work area bar so I can preview just this area. It's not quite as smooth as easy ease, but it's there. That's what it does.

Okay. So, the position of the keyframes, the little squares of the keyframes, up and down, control the speed. But what controls the shape of the graph are actually the handles.

They actually control what's called the influence of that keyframe. So, easy ease is more along the lines of something like this. The handles are considerably stronger so that the highest speed point is actually in the middle of the animation.

If I preview that, I can see that that did, in fact, change the movement a little bit. Okay. But I'll go for something a lot more aggressive.

I want that point right in the middle to be far tighter. So, I'm going to drag both handles out really far. And now, I get something more like a really sharp burst.

And when that previews, that's what I get. A really fast jump up and a really fast slowdown. Okay.

Now, that's not bad. That's actually what I wanted, but that's not bad. But it can be changed.

What would happen if the easing wasn't equal on both sides? Maybe the right handle is a lot smaller. That would be the movement. So, again, it slows down, picks up speed, and then really quickly stops.

And if I made that left handle even longer, I'd get this behavior. Slow down for a long time, then really rapidly advancing, picking up speed. Like so.

Okay. And if I reverse that, because I can, and all of this is happening in real time, I might add, by the way. Let's shorten this one.

Lengthen the second handle. It starts off really fast and slows down for a very, very long time. Now, all of these are right.

There's no right or wrong in this. It's simply a matter of what type of motion do you want. Are you trying to have something maybe jump out really fast and slow down over a long period of time? Are you trying to make something more balanced? Are you trying to make something that slows down, that speeds up very slowly, like a car accelerating, and then really rapidly picks up speed? It's all up to you.

The easing is used to control the viewer's attention. That's all it is. Okay.

Now, again, what I was going for was something a little more balanced, where the main speed was in the middle. Something like that. Okay.

So, I'm just going to adjust this handle like so. Now, the problem with what I'm doing is it's a little hard to actually do this exactly. So, another way to use this is to simply double click on one of the keyframes.

That opens a dialog box where I can actually see the values of the speed and influence. Okay. So, outgoing velocity, zero.

That's the starting value. The influence says 78. I'm going to make that 75.

And I'll say okay. So, it's the speed and influence of the handle as it leaves the keyframe. I'll go to that last keyframe, double click again.

And now it's the left side I'll control. So, again, the influence will be 75. And again, the speed is actually going to be zero.

So, it stops. And if I move that to the side, now I can see the movement. And I've now made sure they're the same exact strength.

So, that middle point is exactly in the middle of the animation, like so. So, I can do it by eye or I can make the adjustments numerically. The incoming velocity is the ease in.

The outgoing velocity is ease out. I only have two keyframes. The first one can only ease out.

Second one can only ease in. If we had a middle keyframe here, they'd be able to set both values for them. I'll say okay.

And I've got my adjusted graph now, like so. And that's the speed I have. Again, the weakness of this is there's no built-in way to copy easing from one property to another.

There are add-ons that can do it. But natively, it doesn't have that ability. So, I'd have to turn on the include property option.

And when I go to the next property, that's Jive's position. I've got it here as a reference. Okay.

So, again, if I drag them straight down. Okay. I could then either double click.

0, 75. It is, for the record, probably easier just to type in the numbers like this. And then 0, 75.

If I do it by eye, I'm going to try to match them manually. And now I have the two layers that move in the same fashion. And then I'd have to do that for all of them.

I basically keep adding the easing properties. Like that. Okay.

If you want to make sure you don't accidentally adjust the ones you finished, lock their layers. That prevents you from changing them. So, I would add Jive now.

Lock Jive. And then I can move on to the position for awkward. In order to see them, you have to actually have the property selected, not the layer.

The graphs are specifically property by property. When I've done this for all of them, I can go back to my main... When I'm finished with adding my easing, I can go back to the main keyframe display. Just turn off the graph editor button.

And I'll have a series of ease layers. Like so. Even though I didn't add easy ease, the diamond shapes have changed because I've added easing manually.

And that is how you use the speed graph part of the graph editor.