how to make a line wiggle in after effects expression

This is the minimum price of admission if you want to work with expressions. The good news is that when it comes to expressions, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. So you’re going to need to understand just a little bit about the language before you can leave the Batcave If the expression you create breaks these syntax rules, you won’t get further than a few confusing error messages. JavaScript is a language with its own syntax. But this won’t help you to debug and make edits to an expression to get the results you want. Sure, you can follow a step-by-step tutorial and copy/paste blocks of text to the parameters of your layers. We are talking about learning a new language after all. If you’re new to this topic, it’s easy to become discouraged if you pick the wrong starting point. And who doesn’t want that super power? A little goes a long way They can be amazingly complex, containing paragraphs upon paragraphs of code, or they can be as simple as a single word or number.īut regardless of the size, they all have something in common: they’ll save you a ton of time. Not only can they simplify your motion design workflow, but they open up limitless creative options. They might not sound as cool as a kryptonite spear, but they’re just as effective in the right hands. So what is an expression anyway?Įxpressions are lines of code (JavaScript) that allow you to control values in Adobe After Effects. You just need the right tools in your utility belt. While this article can’t make you the world’s greatest billionaire crime-fighting detective, it can help you on the path to becoming one of the world’s greatest motion designers. (Or he’d get Lucius or Alfred to do it, but that’d ruin my metaphor.) He’d streamline his animation workflow with expressions.

So if you sat him down in front of After Effects, you wouldn’t see him brute-forcing a bunch of keyframes around. Instead, he shows up with a kryptonite spear. And he knows better than to fistfight Superman. Whichever flavor of Caped Crusader you prefer, it’s fair to say he’s best known for the nifty gadgets he calls upon to get the job done.

(He’d also have a special UI brightness setting labeled Really Dark, but that’s a different topic.) If Batman used After Effects, he’d definitely use expressions.

How to make a line wiggle in after effects expression