ProVideo Coalition.com: Creating Motion Graphics: Keyframes by Chris & Trish Meyer

At the 2005 NAB show, Trapcode - creators of the much-loved Shine light ray plug-in - previewed a new effect they created in conjunction with the studio Belief called Echospace. It presents a lovely evolution of the slinky effect we just discussed in that it allows the user to control delay time, position offsets, rotation, scale, and opacity of the slave - or “echoed” - layers all from one plug-in (see figure at right). You can delay the slaves at the time you create them, or through separate Repeater and Transform Delay parameters which may also be keyframed.

The significant twist of Echospace is that rather than just play follow-the-leader, the echoed layers are offset in 3D space as if mirrored roughly around the center of the composition. This means when you animate the master from, say, the top left corner to the bottom right of the comp, you don’t get a stiff, obedient chain of slaves following; the slaves twist and move around, as if you are viewing them through a hall of mirrors. The result is a nice mix between being controllable yet unpredictable, quickly creating complex animations you might not have originally imagined (see below).

Animating the master layer with Echospace causes the copies to form writhing chains that are echoed roughly around a comp’s center in 3D.

Echospace can work on any single layer. Of course, a layer in After Effects can be a nested composition that contains several other layers. These layers can exist in their own 3D space. If you enable the Collapse Transformations switch for the master nested composition before setting Echospace to work, the result is all the 3D space transformations in the nested comp being echoed by Echospace, creating very complex animations. We look forward to exploring this effect in greater depth; it shipped right around the time this column originally appeared.

Digital Anarchy 3D Assistants

Another great tool for quickly arranging a large number of layers in 3D space are the 3D Assistants from Digital Anarchy. A Lite version came bundled with After Effects 6.5; a more detailed version is available from Digital Anarchy.

Many think of 3D Assistants as a way to arrange layers in a box, cylinder, or other shapes. However, they can also be used to randomly arrange 3D layers in space (see figure at right). A great trick is to create one arrangement, set Position keyframes for the layers, move to a different point in time, use 3D Assistants to make a new arrangement, create another set of keyframes, and continue. The result is a form of synchronized swimming, where layers seem to have their own group intelligence as they form new arrangements over time.

And don’t forget you can always combine techniques. For example, use 3D Assistants to arrange layers in space, and then use the wiggle expression to slowly vary their scale or rotation.

Replication and Arrays

In the next column, we will look at a pair of tools outside of After Effects for creating visual rhythms: the Replicator in Motion 2, and the Array in Cinema 4D.