By default After Effects attributes a different seed value to each wiggle. The seedRandom function forces the wiggle (or any other function using random numbers) to use the seed your are providing. Creating a Line Boil in After Effects. First, create a new Adjustment layer above your animation. Next, apply the effect Turbulent Displace. This is the core effect we’ll use to create our line boil. The two effect settings we’ll need to adjust are the Amount and Size of the displacement. Apply the Turbulent Displace effect.
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Use an expression to create random movement with the wiggle expression in After Effects. In this post we’ll show you how to create wiggle easily by modifying numbers…not keyframes.
Editors sometime cringe at the word expressions, but have no fear. When you understand them they really aren’t scary and can end up saying you a lot of time.
If you’ve ever seen animations where light is flickering or a camera shakes, it’s likely you’ve seen the wiggle expression in action. Wiggle is one of the most popular After Effects expressions, as it is easy to use and visually interesting. Instead of creating a bunch of keyframes to make a layer randomly move, we can do this with a couple of numbers.
The Wiggle Expression in After Effects
For this example I created the word ‘wiggle’ from text. I want the position of this text to wiggle, so select the text layer and hit P to open the Position Transform properties.
Option (Mac) or Alt (PC) click on the stopwatch to create the expression. The text turns Red, telling you there is an expression applied.
Type wiggle(2,50). This expression states that twice a second the text should wiggle 50 pixels on the x & y axis – the first number is how many times a second, the 2nd is the amount of pixel movement.
If you want to modify the wiggle simply change the numbers. If we had done this with keyframes, every time the client wanted changes we would have to change the keyframes – not fun!
Wiggling One Dimension
What if you want to wiggle just the x or y position? This expression is a little more complicated, but you don’t have to write it.
I went to motion-graphics-exchange.com (an online resource for After Effects expressions), and searched for “wiggle one dimension”. This is the expression they have for ‘wiggle in one dimension’:
wiggle only in x (horizontal):
Shorthand:
wiggle only in y (vertical):
Copy this text into your After Effects project and you’re done!
For more After Effects expressions check out motion-graphics-exchange andaenhancers.com. If you want to learn about creating expressions, check out: JJGifford, MotionScript and Gray Machine.
Controlling the Wiggle Expression
What if you don’t want the layer wiggling constantly? A common technique is to add an expressions control to a null layer so we can keyframe the wiggle. For AE newbies, a null is an object that doesn’t render that we can use to control other layers.
We are going to use the null with the original position wiggle we created on the Wiggle text (above).
From the Layer Menu select New and then Null Object. Rename the Null “wiggle control” and then apply the effect “Sliders Control” (in the Expressions Controls category).
Select the wiggle control layer in the timeline, and type E to reveal the Slider Control effect. Click the twirly for Slider Control to see the stopwatch.
Go to the Wiggle text expression and select just the 2. with the 2 selected, click the pickwip (looks like a curly cue), and drag the pick whip to the Slider stopwatch.
Pick whip is highlighted in Red:
Here is the larger view:
We no longer see a wiggle, as the Slider is now controlling how many times a second the text wiggles. Click the stopwatch to create a keyframe at the beginning, then move the playhead further in time and change the amount for the Slider to increase the wiggle. You can turn on motion blur to enhance the effect.
Motion Blur Highlighted in RED (click for larger view):
After Effects Wiggle Effect
Now you know how to create a wiggle expression in After Effects and how to control it using a null and an expression slider effect – a huge timesaver.
What After Effects expressions do you rely on?
Share them with us in the comments below!
How to make a more flexible wiggle in After Effects
Written on 30 June 2016, 01:58am under Quick Tips
The typical wiggle expression in After Effects is this:
After Effects Wiggle Effect Free
So if you would like your position to move on a scale of 20 pixels every half second you would use this expression on the position property:
How to wiggle x, y and z separately
The wiggle function returns an array or numbers. If you are applying it on a 3D layer, it returns an array of three numbers ([x, y, z]) and if you are applying it on a 2D layer it returns an array of two numbers ([x, y]). If you want to just wiggle one of the axis of a 2D layer you can simply do this:
Here, only our value x will have the wiggle. The only difference with a 3D layer is that it would need a third value.
If you would like instead to have x wiggled normally, but y and z to have a bigger wiggle you could do:
How to keyframe the wiggle values
You often might want to keyframe a wiggled value. This can easily be resolved by creating a null layer, typically named Controller, to which you would apply two Slider Control effects. One namedFrequencythe other one Amplitude. You can name them however you like, but I think these names are the most obvious. Next, on your layer’s position property, you would add this expression:
This way, you would be able to keyframe one or both of those sliders in order to increase or decrease the wiggle effect.
How to sync multiple wiggles
You can sync multiple wiggles by using the seedRandom() function. By default After Effects attributes a different seed value to each wiggle. The seedRandom() Most useful premiere hotkeysfasrmen. function forces the wiggle (or any other function using random numbers) to use the seed your are providing.
The first parameter (1) is the seed number that will be used to generate the random number. It can be whatever you like. The second parameter is the timeless parameter. If you don’t set it to true the random number will change on every frame and this will probably result in things you do not want. If you use the expression above on many layers, all of their wiggles will be coordinated.
How to wiggle the wiggle
Wiggle Effect In After Effects
The good thing about using a controller, is you can apply a wiggle to the amplitude too. To do this, you will need to add another slider to your controller. Name it maybe Wiggle value and set its base amount to the the number you want to start from, say 50 for example, and then apply the same kind of expression:
Now, you can apply to your layer’s position this expression:
Since value represents what your property already holds as its base value. It will be supplemented with Wiggle value.
Now, since Wiggle value is a Slider Control, it only has one dimension. If you use it with a property that has 2 dimension, say scale for example, both first and second values will be the same. If you want them to be different, instead of using a Slider Control for your Wiggle value use a Point Control for 2 dimensions, and 3D Point Control for 3 dimensions such as position for 3D layers.
And that’s about it. If you want to learn more about the wiggle expression you can read about it here:
After Effects Wiggle Effect Definition
Written bySébastien Lavoie(Published articles: 17)