Motion Trail After Effects

01-05-2021 admin

Motion Trail
- Effect

Another popular look is the trail effect.It looks like a combination between the echo effectand some heavy motion blur.You can create this effect using combinationsof several effects, or you can try to usethe CC Wide Time Effect, which is a temporal blurthat designed to enhance the motion appearanceof any object that is. Motion Graphics Adobe After Effects In today's Quick Tip I'm going to talk about how I created the intro animation for the 10 Tight Tips To Turn Out Terrific Typography series. We'll look at layer styles first then move into the how to use the Echo plug-in to create a nice fading motion trail for your text. With Adobe After Effects, the industry-standard motion graphics and visual effects software, you can take any idea and make it move. There’s even more to your free membership. The method we will consider today will enable us to make a motion trail with a fake 3D effect. And all this work without third-party plugins. Tagged as AE Tips, AE Tutorial, After Effects, animatoin, blue, CGI, colorful, DOWNLOAD, flip, jump, light streak, Motion, Motion Animation, Motion Graphics, motion streak, motion trail.

Note

Available in After Effects CC2018 and above only.

The Motion Trail tool draws the trajectory of any layer in a shape layer, and can make trails behind (or in front of) them.

Setup

Select the layer(s)
Click on the Motion Trail button

A Motion Trail layer is added to the comp. It is a shape layer used to draw the trails. An effect is added on this layer for each motion trail created.

Hint

As the motion trail is contained in a shape layer, it is easy to change it’s appearance and use it as you wish! You can add and modify everything in the content of the Motion Trail layer.

Note

To duplicate a motion trail, you can’t just duplicate the effect; the content of the shape layer needs to be adjusted too.
There are two ways to add multiple motion trails for the same layer:
- Duplicate the motion trail layer instead of just the effect.- Use the motion trail button in Duik to re-create a new motion trail for the same layer.

Effect

Use the effects of the Motion Trail layer to adjust all the trails.

The Motion source is the layer used to draw the trail.
You can set the start and end (in frames relative to the current time) to adjust the length of the trail. Note: long trails can have a big impact on the performance.

Basic Parameters

In the basic section, you can change and animate basic appearance settings. Keep in mind that Motion trails are standard shape layers and you can do much more with them by modifying the content yourself.

Advanced Parameters

When you activate the advanced parameters, the width of the trail can be dynamic and you can add a taper. But be careful as this mode requires a lot of computation and has a bad impact on performance.

When advanced parameters are enabled, you can add an automatic taper to the trail (which shape can be adjusted in the Taper Parameters section).

The Auto-width option will adjust the width of the trail according to the scale and 3D position of the layer, effectively creating a 3D trail (in a shape layer which is still 2D).

Note

The trail with advanced parameters turned on uses a filled shape instead of a stroke, so it is not possible to have dashes. Turning of the advanced parameters will hide the fill will allow you to adjust the stroke and add dashes.

Sampling

By default, the motion is sampled each frame of the composition. If the movement is very fast, you might want more samples for a smoother trail. In this case, you can switch to Automatic sampling which will try to adjust depending on the velocity and choose the best sampling while trying to keep better performance, or sub-frame sampling which is the calculation-intensive way to sample the motion. In Automatic and sub-frame sampling you can adjust the number of samples, which directly impacts the quality of the trail but can have a big impact on performance, too.

Additional panel

In the additional panel, you can choose to create a new layer when you create new motion trails, or to add them all on the existing layer if any.You can also set the color of new motion trails.

From the course: After Effects Guru: Time-Based Effects

Course details

One of the ways to add drama to video and animation is the manipulation of time. In this course Eran Stern shows different ways to control time in After Effects, from basic linear changes through time remapping and time warp. He'll review all the effects in the Time category and explore real-life usages of each one. He also examines methods to add synthetic motion blur, and use time-related effects to achieve unique effects such as morph, echo, and strobe. At the end you'll be able to use these techniques to add magical visual effects to your videos, titles, and motion graphics.

Instructor

Eran Stern is a teacher and motion designer with over two decades of experience in post-production.
Eran has established a track record of helping designers improve their skills with visual effects and motion graphics. As an Adobe Expert, he has spoken at international conferences such as Post|Production World at NAB Show, After Effects World, Keyframes, and Adobe MAX.
Eran has created a handful of resources and content that you can find on his site: SternFX.com. He practiced design for screen for more than two decades and served as the head of the motion graphics department at Shenkar. He is a collector of music, movies, books, and memories. You can find him right on the verge of both geekiness and coolness.

Skills covered in this course

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Course Transcript

“

- Another popular look is the trail effect. It looks like a combination between the echo effect and some heavy motion blur. You can create this effect using combinations of several effects, or you can try to use the CC Wide Time Effect, which is a temporal blur that designed to enhance the motion appearance of any object that is shot against a stationary background. This is one of the easiest effect to use, but you need to prepare the layers and separate them prior to using it to really get the most out of it. So this time I'll start by showing you the final version first. You can find it under the final comps folder. So I've already opened up number 3.3 Wide Time Final. Let's just see what we are going to create. Okay, it looks quite cool and it is very easy to achieve. I'm going to close this final state, and let's just see what I've already prepared ahead of time. So we have this layer of the footage itself. This is how it was shot, apparently using a fast-motion camera and then…

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