how to use wiggle expression in after effects

To make the bars look nicer and thicker, we’ll apply a stroke effect to the texture layers by going to Layer – Layer Styles – Stroke Next, to make the animation look more appealing, we’ll add 3 texture layers and place them under each shape layer and set the track matte to “Alpha Matte” Next, we need to add the expression to the other shape layers as well so we’ll select the scale property and choose Edit – Copy Expression OnlyĪnd then select the first two shape layers, pull down the scale property and highlight it and press Ctrl + V We’ll then select all the keyframes and right click – keyframe assistant – easy ease, to make the animation smoother

in the third line we are telling AE to use the give value for the X property and to only wiggle the Y property of the scaleĪt this point nothing happens as the amplitude is set to 0, so we need to set a few keyframes on the null layer

in the second line we define another variable that wiggle 2 times per second at the amplitude of the first variable in the first line we define a variable which is linked to the slider we’ve created earlier The expression that we need to add is: “a=” and then pickwhip the scale property with the slider property from the null object Next we’ll choose the first bar and press “s” to bring down the scale and alt+click on the stopwatch to add the expression. You can do that by pressing on the small lock icon. Lock the Effect Controls panel so that it stays in view. We’ll then create a null object by going to “Layer – New – Null Object”Īnd add a slider control “Effect – Expression Controls – Slider Control” and rename the effect “Amplitude” All the 3 bars have the anchor point set to the bottom and you can do that by pressing the Y key to select the anchor point and moving the anchor target to the bottom of the shape layer. In this example, we have 3 shape layers and we’re looking to animate the Y dimension using the wiggle expression. So let’s jump right into it and see how it’s done We’ll then add a slider for the amplitude so we can control the animation. We will use an expression to separate the x and y dimensions, something that we cannot achieve directly in the wiggle expression and apply the effect only to the y dimension. Wiggle is probably the most popular expression from After Effects, and in today’s article, we’ll take a look at an alternative way of using it to create an animation

How to use wiggle expression in after effects