User Guide

CHAPTER 5

178

Animating Layers

3 Set a value for Tolerance. The units of Tolerance match those of the property you are

smoothing. New keyframe values will vary no more than the speciﬁed value from the

original curve. Higher values produce smoother curves, but too high a value may not

preserve the original shape of the curve.

4 Click Apply and preview the results.

5 If necessary, choose Edit > Undo The Smoother to reset the keyframes, adjust the value

for Tolerance, and then reapply The Smoother.

Creating motion paths with masks

You can instantly create a motion path from any mask that you draw in After Effects (or

from a path that you copy from Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop), by pasting the

mask or path into a layer’s Position property, a layer’s Anchor Point property, or the effect

point property of an effect. The assigned keyframes are set to rove in time, except for the

ﬁrst and last ones, to create a constant velocity along the mask or path. By default, After

Effects assigns a duration of 2 seconds to the motion path. Adjust the default duration by

dragging the ﬁrst or last keyframe to a new point in time.

To create a motion path from a mask:

1 Do one of the following:

• Select a mask.

• Create and select a path from Adobe Illustrator or Adobe Photoshop. For information

on creating paths in those products, see the respective User Guides.

2 Copy the mask or path to the clipboard.

3 In the Timeline window, select the destination keyframe property.

4 Paste the mask or path.

UG.book Page 178 Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:05 PM