Keyframe and animation guide

Add and change keyframes

Every property that can be animated has a key button in Properties. Its tooltip tells you the state: a static value, an animated value with no key at the playhead, or a key at the playhead that you can remove.

Select the layer and move the playhead to the moment you want to set.
Click the key button beside the property. It is now animated, with a key at the playhead.
Move the playhead, click the key button again and change the value, either in Properties or by dragging on the Stage.

Auto-key is off, so changing a static property never creates animation by accident. On an animated property, the arrows beside the key button jump to the previous and next keys. Turn on Offset the complete animation (↔) to shift every key of that property by the same amount, instead of changing only the key at the playhead.

Read the Graph editor

Switch to Animate (Alt+3). The channel list on the left shows the animated properties of the selection; choose one to focus on it. The Graph has three views of the same keys.

Value: The property's value over time. Use it to set levels, overshoots and the shape of a curve.
Speed: How fast the value is changing. A move that should flow shows as a smooth hump; a dip in the middle means the move hesitates.
Dope Sheet: Keys as points on rows, one row per property. Use it to line up timing across many properties or layers.

Drag a box to select keys. Fit all and Fit selection frame the view. When channels with different units share the Graph, it shows them normalised.

Choose how each key eases

A key's easing controls the curve from that key to the next one.

Hold: Keeps the value until the next key, then jumps. Useful for on-off changes and stepped animation.
Linear: Constant speed. Mechanical movement, or a steady drift.
Ease out: Slows as it arrives at the next key. The usual choice for something coming to rest.
Ease in: Starts slowly and accelerates away.
Ease in/out: Slow at both ends.
Overshoot: Passes the next value and comes back, for a move with a little spring.
Smooth through: Keeps the motion continuous through intermediate keys, so a long camera move doesn't pause at each waypoint.
Custom Bézier: Creates handles on the segment. Choose Edit Bézier handles… to set the incoming and outgoing handle offsets, in frames and in value, relative to the key.

Audio gain keys use the presets but not custom Bézier handles.

Retime and arrange keys

Select keys in the Graph, then use the Keys menu or Edit > Keyframes.

Copy, Cut, Paste at playhead: Moves or copies keys with their spacing intact. Pasting onto frames that already hold keys is refused, so nothing is overwritten by accident.
Paste at original times: Puts copied keys back at the frames they came from, for example on another layer.
Duplicate at playhead: Copies the selected keys to the playhead in one step.
Distribute evenly: Spaces keys at three or more times evenly between the first and the last.
Align to playhead: Moves one selected key per property to the playhead frame.
Reverse: Plays the selected keys backwards between the first and the last. Select every key inside that span on each property.
Stagger keys…: Delays each later group of selected keys by an extra number of frames. Keys on the same frame stay together.

Edit a motion path on the Stage

Select a layer whose position is animated and its path appears on the Stage, with a point for each key. Drag a point to change where the layer passes at that key, retime a point to move its key in time, and change the point's outgoing interpolation to reshape the segment that follows.

For a layer inside a nested composition, open that composition to see the path. To make a layer follow a path you have drawn as a shape, ask Ape; it can attach the layer to the path and turn it to face along the direction of travel.

Animate text by word or glyph

Select a text layer and turn on Enable text staggering in Properties.
Choose the Unit, Glyph or Word, and the First and Last units to include. Leave Last at 0 to run to the end of the text.
Choose the Order, Forward or Reverse, and the Direction: Entrance animates each unit in from the values you set, and Exit animates it out to them.
Set where each unit starts: its Offset in pixels, Scale, Opacity, Rotation and a colour shift.
Pick the Ease, then set the Start offset, the Delay between units and the Duration of each unit, all in seconds.
For a repeating animation, raise Cycles, add a Cycle delay between repeats, and turn on Ping-pong to play alternate cycles backwards.

Drive one value from another

Live drivers link numeric parameters so one follows another with some physics. To use them on a layer's position, scale, rotation or opacity, first select the layer and choose Edit > Add to composition > Add Transform Controller. The transform then appears as parameters that drivers can read and write.

Select the parameter that should follow.
In its Live driver card, choose the Source parameter.
Choose the Kind and its settings, then Attach / update.

Follower: Chases the source with a lag set by Response seconds.
Damped spring: Follows with Mass, Stiffness and Damping. Low damping bounces; high damping settles quickly.
Small-angle pendulum: Swings with Length, Gravity magnitude and a Damping ratio, like a hanging sign.

Every kind also has Start time, Gain and Offset. Reveal source selects the property being followed, and Detach returns the parameter to its own keys. A driver that would loop back on itself is refused with a message.

For procedural rules such as a seeded wiggle or a looping drift, see property scripts.

Pose and animate a Puppet

Select an image layer and choose Create mesh in the Puppet section of Properties. Smaller Mesh spacing adds detail and takes more work to animate.
Press P, or choose Edit pins on Stage.
Click to add pins at the joints and ends: the shoulder, the elbow, the hand. Drag a pin to pose the image.
Shift-drag over areas that must not bend, such as a face or text, to protect them.
Select a pin to see its values in Properties and key them like any other property. Enable rotation on a pin to turn the image around it, or depth to control which part overlaps in front.

If the source image changes, choose Rebuild mesh. Pins, protected regions and their animation stay in place, and Undo restores the previous mesh.

Move a camera

Choose Edit > Add to composition > New Camera. If the composition has several cameras, choose Make active on the one that should drive the output.
Turn on 3D camera, and 3D for each layer that should sit in depth. Set their Z positions so the layers are spread out in front of the camera.
Key the camera's Position, rotation and Zoom or Focal length as you would any layer.

To find a framing by moving around, choose Pilot camera and navigate the scene view; Align camera to view sets the camera to match the view you have found. Edit camera path shows the route on the Stage.

Rack focus

Depth of field only renders when the camera has an aperture. Set Aperture (f-stop) above zero, set Focus distance on the first subject, then key Focus distance to move to the second. Smaller f-stop values give a shallower focus.