Random Shapes in After Effects

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We're making random shapes in After Effects! Who has to time to make or animate all the shapes all the time! Make the computer do it. That's what it's here for! If you want to make one path, and get variations of that path, we can do it! If you want to pick from a series of shapes randomly, we got that too! If you want a path to pick from a list of paths, we can do it all! warning we will be talking about expressions in after effects.
This is a much-requested follow-up to last month's Random Expressions in after effects video: • Random Expressions in ...
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[@LoganPinney]

Random from frame, brilliant Evan! Loving your random series and thoughtful explanations of expressions.

[@Megakid35]

Thanks for the vid. This reminds me of the Love, Death, and Robots into when all their iconography starts morphing and appearing randomly.

[@ECAbrams]

They have kind of a slot machine kind of movement right? Or does it just click through. I’ll have to watch that series again... and then some more times for good measure.

[@KundoKun]

You’re awesome, man. Such an inspiration! Thanks for the effort to communicate abstraction in a way anybody can understand. Thanks for the creativity you put in what you can show us in every episode, never being boring, ever being inspiring.

[@nicolas.kannov]

6:04 that was mind-blowing for me. Great video Evan! I love learning from your tutorials.

[@ECAbrams]

Awesome, thank you!

[@CatalinGulan]

Awesome tutorial Evan! A big thank you for sharing it! ❤

[@yelnats31]

Reminds me of Loki's title animation

[@ECAbrams]

To see that real Loki randomness you’ve got to check out Ben Marriott’s channel on here. He has a great tutorial on that look.

[@kedarjoshi8206]

Thank you for the video, i was struggling to do the same as i was doing it manually. This has greatly improved my workflow. Im really grateful.

[@NickDuplantis]

If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I’d be in the place I’d be today!! Your videos back in 2015 really helped me nail down some of the basics of After Effects!

[@vnc106]

So much knowledge to master in this short video ! Thanks!!!

[@TheSilvering4]

Awesome tutorial, it's so time efficient !

[@nematurd]

Thank you Evan. Just what I need for a project I'm busy with.

[@wrxsoldier]

Great video. Please continue to make them it. They open my mind to the creativity and possibilities I have when creating stuff for clients!

[@ECAbrams]

That's the plan!

[@nicogute]

How did I not know about this before. Thank u for your wonderful tutorial!

[@zohaibmalik819]

Thanks! these were really nice tips.

[@gregkrazanski]

essential graphics changed the game for me when it came out. being able to use the same precomp in different ways is so damn cool

[@Joeblax88]

Thank you Evan.

[@TheStringBreaker]

*Just discovered your channel! Phenomenal content!*

[@orkanbasar]

great content as always

[@khulekanimbatha3689]

Thank you for this video really appreciate, I'v have learn new technique skill

[@kyrojohn]

Pure genius, having control over random things, he must be a god

[@ECAbrams]

Only in the dimensional plane of After Effects I'm afraid.

[@anastasiiaandriichuk8732]

I think my mind just broke 🤯 It's sooo complicated! You are a genius, Evan!

[@ECAbrams]

I hope it was helpful. If you have any questions on it, get at me any time!

[@agcmotion8063]

I love the aeesthetic! Great tutorial

[@ECAbrams]

Thank you so much!!

[@chalvlad]

Awesome tut, DUDE you are the best

[@ECAbrams]

Thanks! 😃

[@2mamaev]

Thanks.

[@tagore4d]

Supperbb tutorial.. thank you very much.

[@ECAbrams]

You are most welcome

[@fcm3d]

Oh expression fun and randomness hooray!

[@MoschMie]

Jesus... at the beginning I was following, but after 2 min my brain melted

[@alializadeh8195]

Thanx

[@1234561ram]

I'm flying high after looking into those technics, Especially on key index random

[@denzmadden3523]

cool!

[@katjanka22]

Hi, I love this colors and visual style of layer. Is it just gradient with added noise?

[@ECAbrams]

The gradients are actually just large images from the tutorial's sponsor, Yellow Images. Sometimes stock elements like that can produce very pleasant looks.

[@malkiaziz1]

Thank you so much for this very high quality tutorial. Please is it possible to do the same with markers instead of "posterizeTime"?

[@ECAbrams]

For sure. Since each marker has an index number, we might use those indices as the seedRandom, which would get you a new random thing on each marker. You'll need to look at triggering things using markers more closely though to get things happening on markers in general though. You might also just have each marker add one to a variable increasing that seed by one and getting an new result. Does that make sense.

[@SalymGuer]

I would like to see a tutorial on how to make the background you are using on your transition, so smooth :!

[@ECAbrams]

The other tutorial on my channel about randomness might help?

[@SalymGuer]

@@ECAbrams thank you for your answer ! i'll give it a try, i just really like the background you are using in the intro at 0:02

[@djmintyfreshful]

Please don’t stop making videos, Evan

[@ECAbrams]

I hope I can always make videos... and that people actually want to see them.

[@private8718]

@ECAbrams How did go about learning so much about expressions? I feel like this knowledge would really help expand my abilities in AE but I've no idea where to start. Since you're so good at explaining your use of expressions would you consider a video that might help myself and similar folk out there get a basic grip on the use of expressions?

[@ECAbrams]

I've struggled a lot with making something comprehensive as a foundation. But it is in the works in some capacity. It just might not be a youtube video.

[@private8718]

@@ECAbrams Thanks for your reply Evan. I'll definitely keep an ear to the ground if anything would come up in the future. Hey, I forgot to add how much I appreciate your videos, they've helped me to more than I could explain here and I can't thank you enough for that. I appreciate the pace and clarity of your explanations throughout your tutorials and how much you base your videos on really learning the foundations of the software. Keep up the great work!

[@bastianyogos]

keren banget sih ini,terima kasih ya mister

[@noahowu]

thank you so much btw where do u get textures like that !

[@evanabrams2735]

In this case they come from this video's sponsor... Yellow Images.

[@juanmonge5937]

i have no idea how to hack the path property like that, i really appreciate ir

[@ECAbrams]

So many hacks! Also the "path to nulls" script is a winner if you really want to hack into that path.

[@fueroxamino9430]

great video but I still couldn't understand how can I apply this to let's say what I'm currently struggling with, a small grid of repeaters where I want to transform only couple of them to different shape ! could you please help me with this ?

[@ECAbrams]

I'm not sure it can be done with repeaters in the way you describe. We can't address certain instances within a repeater's outputs. For example, in a mograph cloner in c4d we could speak to only the 5th clone. But in an Ae repeater, we don't really have that ability. You might mask out the elements and have them be manually animated I suppose. But, I'm hard pressed to think of a repeater based solution.

[@fueroxamino9430]

@@ECAbrams okay at least you confirmed it to me that it can't be done with a repeater. Thanks a lot for man

[@ECAbrams]

@@fueroxamino9430 no worries. You might look into some plugins like moglyph or simple cloners that might help. Text animators can do some interesting things since we can address certain characters inside the layer for example.

[@richochet]

Nice tutorial. Can someone help. I have spent hours trying to work out the last line and exactly what it's doing. posterizeTime(1.2); r = Math.floor(random(0,6)); framesToTime(r) What is the "frameToTime(r)" line doing and why do we need a variable with this expression type?

[@ECAbrams]

framesToTime is a conversion of something that would be a number of frames like frame number zero, one, two and converts it into seconds. So in a 24 fps composition one frame would be .0416666 seconds. It is used when we want to talk to a property that understand time in seconds, but we want to input a time in frames. We could achieve a similar result by multiplying the value r we created by (1/24) but it's a little cleaner to use framesToTime. The argument in framesToTime is the value you want to change from frames to time. Perhaps this page can give more context and examples: ae-expressions.docsforadobe.dev/time-conversion.html

[@richochet]

@@ECAbrams brilliant, thank you

[@kahowong9982]

Hello, I have a question. There are 9 different images in the view and I need to rearrange their order. I don't want to repeat every frame of the picture, how can I make it with expressions. Thank you!!!

[@ECAbrams]

I’m not sure how understand. Can you elaborate more?

[@mko69]

posterizeTime(4); r = Math.floor(random(0,6)); framesToTime(r)

[@manavCreatesArt]

how to change each points of line randomly, created with pen tool.

[@ECAbrams]

I would recommend using the points follow nulls expression and then applying randomness methods to those nulls. Hope that helps!

[@manavCreatesArt]

Thanks , I was struggling a lot.

[@GuilhermeHenrique-ve8rq]

THIS AWESOME, FUCK

[@mattrossi7955]

Hello! Is there a way to make a grid of specific, random shapes without purchasing a plugin? Thanks!

[@ECAbrams]

Absolutely! Imagine that we can make grids of any comp using something like the reptile or motion tile effect. So, we might make one grid of each of our shapes, say 5 different shapes, 5 layers of grids. Then we need a way of selecting which cell of each grid we see, and we can do that with mattes. Create a mosaic grid with fractal noise and mosaic posterized to 5 levels, then use extract to make your mattes from that one mosaic. Then you can set each of your grids to only be seen in the cells you're interested in. Does that help get you started?

[@rykstudio]

what are the textures called

[@ECAbrams]

There should be a link to them in the description if you want to find the exact files.

[@rykstudio]

@@ECAbrams i din't find one

[@mukulsharma5738]

Ohh You're still making vids ..

[@ECAbrams]

True. pretty consistently for the last 10 years. I recommend subscribing and turning on notifications if you want to know when they drop.

[@mukulsharma5738]

@@ECAbrams I've been your subscriber for 4-5 years ... Your videos have helped me a ton getting a job , learned a lot...Idk if its YT algorithm ..but your vids stopped popping up after a year or so ! That's why

[@mukulsharma5738]

Again ..Have said it before ..Thanks so much for the tuts ..You're a great teacher and your vids are really easy to understand and follow ..Thanks again

[@ECAbrams]

I'm happy to hear it. The algorithms are strange sometimes. But with millions of hours being uploaded per day and my stuff not being particularly appealing across platform metrics, I can see how it wouldn't be rendered to people's feeds. Glad this one made it through for you.

[@blanquitito]

Did u really say 'älpler macaroni'🤣 Thanks for reppin my Switzerland. miss the motion design hotline 🥲

[@ECAbrams]

I was thinking “elbow” macaroni, but now that I’ve learned of this Swiss dish I’ll have to try it!