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Filed under: Motion Graphics •Tips •

After Effects Tips 5: Going for a Scroll

Option 2: Using the Motion Tile effect

The advantage of using Effect > Stylize > Motion Tile over the Offset effect is that Motion Tile can use the comp’s regular motion blur settings, if you need blur. Motion Tile has more parameters at first glance, but the only one you’ll need for an animated banner is the Tile Center parameter. You use this parameter exactly like the Shift Center To parameter in the Offset effect (see page 1).

The Motion Tile effect can be used instead of Offset; in this effect, you animate the Tile Center parameter. The other parameters can be ignored for a simple scrolling banner.

To use motion blur, toggle on the Motion Blur layer switch and then toggle on the Enable Motion Blur main switch in the Timeline. Adjust the amount of blur in the Composition Settings > Advanced > Shutter Angle.

Option 3: Using the Autoscroll Animation Preset

The Autoscroll animation preset is basically the Motion Tile effect with an expression controller added. The controller allows you to set the speed in pixels per second. And again, since it uses Motion Tile, you can also use the regular motion blur controls rather than a blur effect if you need to.

The two Autoscroll presets can be found in the Effects & Presets panel in the Animation Presets > Behaviors folder. (If Animation Presets are not visible in this panel, toggle them on from the panel’s options menu.

There are actually two Autoscroll presets: one for horizontal and one for vertical scrolling. We’ll use the former to create our banner:

• Create your setup precomp as discussed earlier.
• Nest the setup precomp into the Final Comp, and position it as needed.
• With the setup layer still selected, in the Effects & Presets panel, search for “auto” or twirl down Animation Presets > Behaviors and locate the “Autoscroll - horizontal” preset. Double-click the preset to apply it to the selected layer.
• In the Effect Control panel, you will see the Autoscroll controller effect followed by Motion Tile. In Autoscroll, notice the Speed (pixels/second) parameter; the default is “100” pixels/second.

Applying the Autoscroll - horizontal preset will add the Autoscroll expression controller and the Motion Tile effect to your layer. Now you can easily set the speed in pixels per second.

• RAM Preview and you’ll notice the layer will scroll from left to right. In the Autoscroll effect, change the Speed to “-50” and the layer will animate in the opposite direction at half that speed. Adjust the speed to taste.
• Toggle on motion blur switches if desired (see Motion Tile above).

Making the Banner Wrap Seamlessly

If the project calls for you to render a short animated movie that be seamlessly looped in an editing program, then you’ll need to be a bit more precise in the keyframe values you use to shift the layer using either Offset or Motion Tile (the Autoscroll preset can’t loop). In our example project, both the Offset and Motion Tile examples loop seamlessly over 15:00. Here is how we did it:

• At 00:00, toggle on the stopwatch for the Shift Center To parameter in the Offset effect (or the Tile Center parameter in Motion Tile), and set the X value to “0”. (Don’t worry about whether words are being cut off on the left side - it will seamlessly loop remember!)
• Move to where you think you’d like the loop to end (say, 10:00), and change the Shift Center To (or Tile Center) value to exactly the negative of the width of your precomp (in our example, that would be “-1200”). The layer will now shift by one full width exactly, and the image displayed at both keyframes should be identical.
• RAM Preview. If the speed is too slow or too fast, adjust where the second keyframe falls in the timeline, but don’t adjust its value. To check if it is looping seamlessly, set the Work Area so that it ends one frame before the second keyframe (you don’t want to see the second keyframe or you’ll get a repeating image). For example, if the second keyframe is at 15:00, move to 14:29 and press N to end the work area here.
• RAM Preview again. The render should be seamless. (If you need to check the rate of change in pixels/second, you can do so using the Graph Editor.)
• Once you are happy with the speed of the loop, trim the comp to the work area by right+clicking on the Work Area bar and selecting “Trim to Work Area”. (Hands up who knew that was there!) Now when you render, you won’t need to remember to render the Work Area only.
• Render the comp with an alpha channel and you’ll now have a seamless banner you can drop on top of any other footage. If you want to use it back inside After Effects, import the render and set it to loop in the Interpret Footage dialog. (Your favorite editing application should have a similar feature.)

To create a seamless loop, the work area is set to end one frame before the second keyframe, and then the comp is trimmed to the duration of the work area.

The Offset effect was used to animate the banner seamlessly.

Summary

The benefit of all of these approaches is that you only have one layer and one property to animate (and in the case of Autoscroll, you don’t even have to set a keyframe!). Plus you don’t need to create a super-duper-wide layer to make it appear infinite - it is infinite! Hope you can put this to good use in your own projects.

The content contained in the CMG Blogs and CMG Keyframes posts on ProVideoCoalition are copyright Crish Design, except where otherwise attributed.

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