Not sure how to design complex animations that move smoothly over time, while only drawing on a few frames in the sequence? After Effects makes it easy.
In this walkthrough, we explain what a keyframe is and share how to add keyframes in After Effects. Find out how you can complete the process in just a few simple steps.
What is a Keyframe?
Keyframes denote specific moments in time when changes occur in a layer. These changes might be a vector moving in space, an adjustment to properties such as color or opacity, or a shift in an audio track. With After Effects, you create a beginning keyframe and an ending keyframe, and the software dills in, all the time in between.
Keyframes require the activation of the stopwatch, which establishes new keyframes whenever you modify that layer. If the stopwatch is inactive, any tweaks made to a layer will persist for the clip’s entire duration instead of being assigned a specific position on the timeline.
How to Add Keyframes in After Effects
To start, open your current After Effects project and locate the property you want to adjust. Clicking the stopwatch icon next to the property name enables keyframing. Alternatively, you can go to “Animation” > “Add [x] Keyframe” and select the layer you want to animate.
Once you’re comfortable with adding keyframes, you might want to try Auto-Keyframe mode. This mode automatically adds a new keyframe whenever you adjust a layer and at the current time in the clip. To enable Auto-Keyframe mode, go to the Timeline panel and select “Enable Auto-keyframe”.
Using the Keyframe Navigator
After adding a keyframe, After Effects opens the Keyframe Navigator, which displays all of the keyframes for a specific layer. To move between keyframes, click the navigator arrow next to a desired keyframe or press the K key to move to the next item in the sequence.
Selecting and Deleting Keyframes
When working in layer bar mode, you’ll notice that selected keyframes are colored blue, while unselected ones are colored gray. In Graph Editor mode, selected keyframes are yellow, and unselected ones match the color of their associated graph. To select a keyframe, click on the icon, or Shift+click to draw a marquee around multiple keyframes.
During the animation process, you can delete a keyframe by selecting it and pressing Delete, or by clicking the stopwatch icon next to the layer to deactivate all associated keyframes. Be sure to save a copy of your work before doing this, as deleted keyframes will be permanently removed, and clicking the stopwatch again will not restore them. However, you can undo a keyframe action by selecting “Edit” > “Undo”.
Cover image via fireFX
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