Flip Your Keyframe Animation

Here's a smart way to loop your walk-cycle AND add keyframe animation to the same property with the loopIn() expression.

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USE loopIn()

By using the loopIn() expression you can effortlessly reverse a cycle loop and stop it from continuing at the last keyframe.

After Effects Screenshot LoopIn Expression — With loopIn() the animation loops until the last keyframe

Instead of looping your keyframes, starting at the end of your keyframe set like with the loopOut expression, your animation will loop until the playhead arrives at the last keyframe. Meaning, there are no keyframes at the start of your animation but at the end of it. The animation will stop looping once the playhead reaches the last keyframe.

USE PINGPONG

By using the PingPong type, you reduce your keyframes by half.

After Effects SCreenshot LoopIn Pingpong Type — Pingpong will play your keyframes back and forth between the last and first keyframe

Since this loop type will play your keyframes back and forth between the last and first keyframe, the beginning and end of your keyframe set doesn’t have to match for the animation to loop seamlessly, like with the cycle loop type. There are other loop types that change how the loop function behaves. Learn more about the cycle loop type in my blog post Speed Up Your Animation Work.

USE numKeyframes

By using the numKeyframes function, you can have a looped and keyframed animation on the same property.

After Effects Screenshot LoopIn expression pingpong type and keyframe number — The number after the equals sign determines how many keyframe sets (2 keyframes = 1 set) are looped

By choosing how many keyframe sets (2 keyframes = 1 set) are looped, you can keyframe non-looping animation after those looping sets. Since the animation is being looped until the last keyframe, the keyframe sets are counted from left to right. Meaning, numKeyframes set to one, will loop the two left-most keyframes until the playhead reaches the right-most keyframe of that set. All subsequent keyframes in the timeline will not be looped and can be used for custom animation.

loopOut(type = "pingpong", numKeyframes = 1)

MORE LOOP

Did you know there is more than one loop expression? Aside from loopOut there is also loopOutDuration, loopInDuration and a variety of types.

After Effects screenshot: adding loopOut() to layer property — ALT+click the stopwatch on any property with keyframes, to add the expression.

Check out my my blog post Speed Up Your Animation Work to learn more about the loopIn() expression and how to use it.

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Great explained tips that every motion designer should know. Thank you :)

Great teaching style; very clear and thorough. Some very high level best practice advice in here too. Looking forward to the other two lessons in this series and the other classes by Sonja.

Great tips which can shorten the path for beginners to become faster animators.

Learned loads of helpful tips and tricks to make my workflow much more efficient - thank you!

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Great contents and value in your channel ! ;) I have to recover the old streams on the motion side !

Love your stuff! I would love to see some short-form video content from you in the vein of tutorials or showcasing your workflow.

I love what you do.

Really enjoying these live streams!

Really cool to be learning new things watching you Sonja. Keep it up!

Thanks for sharing! It's so great to see other people's workflows, and that tip about the multiple passes to get the hand-drawn effect is really helpful!

Thanks for the Stream. Good work, as always. It is a lot of work just for the setup of the animation.

That was a nice process to watch! Thanks for sharing.

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