Morphing Letters in After Effects

In this video tutorial we'll learn how to create morphing letters in After Effects.
Download Project Files: www.schoolofmo...
Enroll for Free in the 30 Days of After Effects Series: bit.ly/2tu842p
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Partial, Auto-Generated Transcript Below 👇
Music (00:06):
[intro music]
Joey Korenman (00:17): Hello again, Joey here at school of motion, welcome to day nine of 30 days of after effects. What we're going to talk about today, it's kind of not the sexiest thing, but it's reality. What I'm going to show you, how to do is to morph the letter a into the letter B into the letter C and it may sound simple, but in order to really control it and to make it feel good and animate exactly the way you want, it actually takes a lot of manual labor. And that's something I find a lot of new motion designers kind of shy away from everyone's looking for the plugin. Everyone's looking for the trick. Sometimes there's no trick. You just have to do it. And in order to do that, you have to understand animation principles and you have to really understand after effects. So we're going to dive in and I'm going to show you some strategies, some ways to think about it and slowly but surely, we're going to beat this animation into submission until it feels good.
Joey Korenman (01:05): Now, if you really want to take your animation skills to the next level, please be sure check out our animation bootcamp course, which will pound these lessons into your skull over the course of several weeks in a fun way though. Now let's hop into after effects and get started. So there's a little bit of a trick to this. Um, but learning that part is actually the easy part. Um, what's a little bit more difficult and what really sells this type of morph is understanding some animation principles and, and using those to, to just make the motion feel a little bit better. Okay. Um, so first, why don't I show you sort of the, the basic idea of how to do one of these letter morphs? So let's make a new comp, uh, and we'll just do 1920 by 10 80. And the first thing you're gonna want to do is just, you know, type out a letter.
Joey Korenman (01:58): Um, and it, this doesn't have to be a letter, a, this could be any shape that, you know, you created an illustrator or after effects doesn't really matter. Um, as long as it's a vector shape. Okay. So you've got an a and a, we'll want to turn that into a B, so let's also type out a B, and then we'll want to turn that into a C. Okay. So those will be our three letters that we want to morph between. Um, and first thing you need to do is, you know, right now this is just a, this is just like a type layer. Um, and what we want to do is turn that into a vector shape because then we can use after effects is built in a twinning. So we can sort of morph between shapes. So let's select all of these, go to layer and just hit, uh, up.
Joey Korenman (02:49): I gotta do it one at a time, nevermind layer here. It is create shapes from texts. You gotta do it one layer at a time, apparently. So that's a, alright, and let's turn these off from it and look at this, all this is, is a shape layer. And if you look in here, um, if I open up the contents of that shape layer, you can see that there are two paths. And if I select them, you can see this path is this little inner hole here. And then this path is the outer, like, you know, the main shape of the, a below that there is a merge paths, uh, kind of, um, modifier right from this ad menu. Um, and that is merging those two paths together. So it's knocking out the hole in the ape. So that's the a all right, let's do the same thing with the B and the C.
Joey Korenman (03:36): So I'm going to say, create shapes from text there's the B, and you can see that the B has three holes in or three paths, the main path, and then it's got two holes. Okay. And then we'll do the same thing with the C C create shapes from texts. There you go. Cool. All right. So now the reason we did that is because, um, we're going to want to copy the path from each letter and in some cases, multiple paths and, uh, and copy that key frame and put it onto a new shape layer. And that way we're going to be able to morph between the letters. All right. So let's start by doing a, to B. So what I'm going to do is make a new empty shape layer, and I'll just call this a dash B dash C. Okay. So right now this shape layer has nothing in it.

[@lxee00]

Honestly, Joey and the School of Motion folks are the best teachers on Animation and After Effects that I've come across!

[@madiko]

Wow! What a gem of Know-how. Thank you a lot, Joey. For me and all my fellow students who want to come back and learn it, let me summ up the main steps and adding the respective time stamps of the video to follow along: [ 00:00 ] introduction [ 01:20 ] Basic idea of the animation [ 01:40 ] Setup and first steps (type layers) [ 02:34 ] Turning the typo into vector layers [ 03:54 ] Explaining the main principles that are used in the animation (basic rules and how it's done) [ 04:11 ] Transition from A to B [ 04:11 ] Create a new shape layer [ 04:31 ] Add a path and copy the main path from the "A" outlines [ 05:28 ] Add fill to the new path [ 05:55 ] Add the second path to the new shape layer and merge it with the first [ 07:45 ] Create the "B" and handling the problem of the 3rd path [ 09:23 ] Analyse the first draft of the animation and its perks [ 09:52 ] Dealing with the basic shape (1st path) [ 10:28 ] Changing the first vertex of the path of the shape layer to match B to A [ 11:27 ] Dealing with the additional paths (holes) - path 2 [ 11:41 ] Solving the problem with the missing hole of the "A" (3rd path of the "A") [ 12:53 ] Tweeking the animation with easy ease (F9) [ 13:16 ] Developing the animation further to give it a better look and feel and aplying some animation principles to it [ 13:33 ] Analysing the general direction of the animation [ 13:57 ] Moving the anchor point [ 14:09 ] Pronouncing the Anticipation of the movement with a major swing of the whole letter (rotation) [ 15:46 ] Tweeking the shape of the letters to give the animation a more organic look and feel [ 21:29 ] Summing up the principles of animation (reducing it to the fundamentals) [ 22:10 ] Transition from B to C [ 22:10 ] Analyse the main perks (holes in the "B" that are missing at "C") [ 23:00 ] Deal with the main path [ 23:12 ] Check the first vertex [ 23:37 ] Add the playful feel (rotation and anticipation) [ 27:28 ] Tweek the "funky shapes" during the transition [ 31:13 ] Take care of the holes of the "B" [ 35:28 ] Look at the whole animation and tweek it as needed [ 37:02 ] Summing everything up and call to action to the community

[@chriswoolf1491]

I recently started my quest to learn After Effects as a whole rather than repeating the same cheap tricks I learned via a few videos. Thanks for the content.

[@cherylscott8845]

Thanks for including the thoughtful parts of the process. Quick hit tutorials have their place for sure, but this is so valuable.

[@Jesdmalg]

Just wanted to stop by and thank you for pouring all of this hard work into free content, it is more than useful and I really appreciate you.

[@edwinpeacock6938]

I'm so grateful to have come across your lessons, I truly love them and learn so much in just a few minutes. Thanks so much for sharing.

[@ArchTeryx00]

This shows in great detail just how much the human touch enhances animation. For really simple animations the computer inbetweening is fine, but for a complex animation like this, you really NEED to intervene yourself to get the animation looking smoother, neater, and snappier - more pleasing to the eye and less mechanical. Great job here!

[@alexkrokus]

Hey! Thanks so much for sharing these amazing free resources. Just wanted to let you know that as of March 10th 2022, the project files for this tutorial mistakenly source "Day 3: Create a Gear Rig Using Expressions After Effects".

[@thearabicdp]

Ok I was going to say that I'm getting bored until you started adding the basic animation principles, that made it hot!

[@filipemecenas]

Thanks Joey , is actualy the first time some one , realy explain how fix bug on morph paths

[@tessaweber1839]

Thank you for the amazing tutorial!! Learned a lot and you saved me hours of work.

[@webweib8271]

Thank you for that! Now I know that I am not stupid because I spend so much time on keyframes and speed graphs. I used to wonder if there was a trick I didn't know.... but yes... the "trick" is just to do the work.

[@fabiantorres4668]

besides learning, it is really amusing to look at you working. thank you.

[@DcD240]

I am glad to learn this the normal way, because the plugin is just to easy indeed. And i'm all about learning.

[@fernandadutra5217]

Love it!!! Thanks school of motion! You guys are great!

[@SimonLewis1986]

This is ace. Thanks for this, some really good tips in here.

[@artifexrex1578]

Very well done. I gotta look into getting more control over my hands and what these other key frames mean. Bravo

[@manikhossain2191]

Great! Thank you for the amazing tutorial!!

[@khadijaomri6283]

Like to see experts working. Saludos desde España.

[@celialusma4618]

this went to 0 to a 100 very quickly lol let me cry before king this tutorial back

[@muhammadpk3851]

You channel is exceptional. Good quality videos

[@e2Dy]

Great tutorial, it really helped me a lot! I'm trying to morph a word from Roboto Mono to Dancing Script, but it feels like I have to link more anchors and not only set the first vortexes correctly. When you try to morph the letter t you will see what I mean. Would be great if you could give me a hint to solve my problem. 😊 Thanks

[@MegaMrDimi]

can you make a tutorial on how you did your opening intro? That would be sooo helpful!

[@27fitzgj]

Excellent tutorial!

[@Iluhastecenko]

Really cool tutor!

[@albalangedesign]

So so good! You're a great teacher. Thanks!

[@schoolofmotion]

You're welcome!

[@michayloblues]

Love it. Thank you!

[@MuVi_77]

learned a lot. thank you.

[@creativeallies7627]

This is awesome, thank you bro...

[@user-lj4gy7hg7p]

thanks a lot!!!

[@noicerone]

0:40 You are God damn right!

[@davehedric1543]

Say, when i put the A and the B paths it starts changing between them it keeps adding a middle vertex and goes uo and gets a funky look to it, unlike what's happening with your letters which the line stays straight when converting to the B. My line splits in the middle for no good reason and climbs up as the point on the top of the 'A' Slides to the right to make the straight line on the top. Why does it do that?! I tried to erase and to redo the outlines but the tweening does exactly the same weird thing... any help?

[@davehedric1543]

Also it made much more points than you have there... why is that?

[@OrincyWhyteDesigns]

Super cool!!!

[@heatherer_art]

Hi, from A to B, I can't seem to get rid of the right overlap :( , at the midpoint between the 2 curves in 'B', any tips? Thank you!

[@bartoszilkowski7611]

Hi, Great tutorial. There are always some small new tricks that I learn from your tuts. Question. When I'm creating my paths there are more vertex points than in the video, thus it is harder to control it. Is there a way to simplify the shape (reduce vertex points) similar to the Illustrator feature?

[@Dovahbormah]

you'd probably have to create and simplify the paths in illustrator and then copy the paths into new shape layers in After Effects

[@bartoszilkowski7611]

@@Dovahbormah Thanks!

[@Sayantanisrs]

The practice files are missing from the link provided. Can you please add them.

[@shizzlenizzle27]

Awesome! Quick question -- why do you use the value graph versus the speed graph?

[@schoolofmotion]

Honestly you could use both. I typically like using the speed graph over value graph if possible for the animation.

[@shizzlenizzle27]

Awesome, thanks. I see later in the tutorial you used the speed graph, hence I was curious as to why you were using the value graph

[@hyggewyke3742]

Great video! I have a problem with my morphing: I'm not morphing an A to a B, but one icon to another. The path is overlapping in a not so visual great way when making the transition. Other than changing the "Set first vertex" how can I change the rest of the paths? Hope my q makes sense. Thanks!

[@schoolofmotion]

It may not be a fun answer, but you may need to keyframe in between the two main positions.

[@derrickstanton9]

20:17 That ... is a thing. Also great video. :)

[@abdallahbelkhiria4253]

lol

[@evareppen6355]

What if you wanna go from c to a?

[@delphinelisabeth]

Can I do this with letter forms that are images ? Go from one to another ?

[@ZephyrBW]

For some reason my after effects settings doesn't show two Paths. Is this something only 2021 has?

[@ghsaikat91]

Lovely

[@chippsanders9614]

God dammit I love SOM.

[@NusrathUllah]

awesome

[@skotbvids]

"Organic" HaHa! Thanks for the informative tutorials!

[@quinhoc07]

NIce!!!

[@evakeydi9126]

я все поняла даже не смотря на то, что я русская. Спасибо большое за ролик

[@theChefnut]

This is a really cool tutorial but bro...broooo you gotta learn to just get to the point. Learn from Andrew Kramer and edit yourself. It can be really nice to hear ourselves talk but you spent an eternity explaining how and why to create paths from letters and showing the paths in each letter blah blah blah. Like good lord bro just say "Next click the layer and click Layer > Create Shapes. Done.

[@illmill3639]

na some of us like to hear why things need to be done. it helps you conceptualize and implement in the future