Learn how to create morphing letters in After Effects with this 38-minute video tutorial from School of Motion. Discover techniques for transforming the letter A into B and then C using vector shapes and keyframe animation. Explore strategies for controlling the morphing process and applying animation principles to achieve smooth, visually appealing transitions between letterforms. Gain insights into the manual labor required to perfect letter morphing and understand why there's no simple plugin solution. Follow along step-by-step as the instructor demonstrates how to set up shape layers, create paths, and use After Effects' built-in tweening capabilities. Enhance your motion design skills by mastering this fundamental yet powerful animation technique.
Overview
Syllabus
Music :
Joey Korenman : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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.
Joey Korenman : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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 : 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.
Taught by
School of Motion
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