In this video, Jackson Brehm covers how to make objects move in After Effects.
Transcript:
First of all, if you make a scene in Illustrator, if you keep them in separate layers, you can just import that file and it will retain your separate layers, so it's easier to work within after effects. So I'm going to just start by unlocking this picture. What we're going to have happen is we're just going to try and make it look like this coffee is being poured into this cup. So we're just going to hide this for the time being, and we're going to rotate this coffee picture up at an angle, so it's like not pouring yet.
What we do is we open this here and then we want to try and get the anchor point to be right here so that it will turn on that angle. What we have to do is double click on that shape. And then we drag this thing here to where it's going to be turning from. That's the anchor point. And it just moves the thing, so we got to move it back there and get it all lined up to this point.
From there, you can change the rotation and it will swing on that thing. We're just going to start it up here, then eventually, we're going to want it to get down here, and then it will pour. What we're going to do is we're just going to turn this back on. But, now we're going to create what are called keyframes so that it works on a timeline and is animated. All you have to do is, for any of these properties down here, you just have to hit the stopwatch. We're going to hit rotation for this one.
It's going to start up there and then, as our timeline goes on, we can zoom in here to get a smaller time frame. If in one second, we want it to go from the starting position to our finishing position, all we have to do is get this little time head here and now do what we want to it. We're going to want it to be right there. Now, if we go back and hit play, it's going to do that.
But, we don't need our actual coffee to show up until one second here. So we're going to go back and unlock this. And then all you have to do for that is just grab this little thing here and just put it right there, so it only shows up then. So it'll look like that. And we can get that exact. So it'll be like that.
And then if we want to make this coffee look like it's actually moving, all we have to do is do a [/education/tutorials/smoke-effect-using-wave-warp](wave warp effect). All you have to do is click on this and then you can go to this. And it's called wave warp. And we can play with the settings, the direction, and the speed. We'll speed that up. Probably not that fast. Alright, here's the whole thing, that's it.
Here's the final result: