Ease Curves

Ease Curves

The simplest way to “fi x” an animation that looks too stiff
like this is often to add eases. For this purpose After Effects
offers the automated Easy Ease functions, although you
can also create or adjust eases by hand in the Graph Editor.
Select all of the “up” keyframes—the fi rst, third, and
fi fth—and click Easy Ease (F9). When a ball bounces, it
slows at the top of each arc, and Easy Ease adds that arc to
the pace; what was a fl at line Speed Graph now is a series
of arcing curves (Figure 2.5).
Technically, you could have applied Easy Ease Out
(Ctrl/Command+Shift+F9) to the fi rst keyframe and Easy
Ease In (Shift+F9) to the fi nal one, because the ease in
each case only goes in one direction. The “in” and “out”
versions of Easy Easy are specifi cally for cases where there
are other adjacent keyframes and the ease should only go
in one direction (you’ll see one in a moment). In this case
it’s not really necessary.

Meanwhile, there’s a clear problem here: The timing of
the motion arcs, but not the motion itself, is still completely
linear. Fix this in the Composition viewer by pulling
Beziers out of each of the keyframes you just eased:
1. Deselect all keyframes but leave the layer selected.
2. Make sure the animation path is displayed (Ctrl/
Command+Shift+H toggles).
3. Click on the fi rst keyframe in the Composition viewer
to select it; it should change from hollow to solid in
appearance.
4. Switches to the Pen tool with the G key; in the Composition
viewer, drag from the highlighted keyframe to the
right, creating a horizontal Bezier handle. Stop before
crossing the second keyframe.
5. Do the same for the third and fi fth keyframes (dragging
left for the fi fth).

The animation path now looks more like you’d expect a

ball to bounce (Figure 2.6). Preview the animation, however,

and you’ll notice that the ball appears to be riding a

pogo stick across the frame, instead of bouncing naturally.

Why is that?