Check out my latest upload here!photo to video transition in After Effects. These After Effects templates are ideal for use within Instagram Stories, product mockups, music or app promotion. Another way of discovering the perfect After Effects template is to search by the project the animation template is needed for. We have high-quality templates for wedding invitation, sports, food or corporate.
This article shows you dozens of different pre-made transitions that are already sitting in After Effects waiting for you to use. They’re tucked away but once you know where to find them they’re pretty easy to use. Here’s where you can find them and how to use them:
Using Animation Presets to Create Transitions in After Effects
For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you already have your Comp setup and have a layer you want to apply a transition effect to in After Effects. To begin, find the Effects & Presets Panel. If you can’t find it, under the Window menu find Effects & Presets. Choosing that will pop it right up.
Right away you should see the *Animation Presets folder in the panel. It’s the very top folder. Next twirl it open. Take a deep breath — there’s a lot in there. For this tutorial we’re going to focus on four folders: Text, Transitions – Dissolves, Transitions – Movement, and Transitions – Wipes.
The Three Transitions Presets Folders
Now twirl open the three Transitions folders. You can take any of these transition effects and drag and drop them onto a layer. Wherever your time position indicator is in the Comp is where the animation will begin. Give it a shot. Drag and drop an one of the pre-made transitions After Effects has provided onto one of your layers.
Uhh… what happened? You might not notice that anything happened. Select the layer and hit the “U” key to show all the keyframed properties. Also open up the Effect Controls Panel.
Enjoying this tutorial? Check out my tutorial on the simple and useful Replace Layer shortcut in After Effects
By default, all the transitions in the three Transition folders are 1 second long (I’m 99% sure of this, but could be wrong!). Now that you can see the keyframes, you can click and drag them to adjust the length of the transition. You can even flip their placement to reverse the transition. For example if you used the Slide – swoop transition if you flip the keyframes it would now swoop off instead of swooping on.
All of these After Effects transitions in the *Animation Presets folders are customizable. You do this in the Effect Controls panel.
To be honest, there’s a lot of junk in these folders. Things you’ll absolutely never use. A few of the good ones in my opinion are:
- Fade – dip to black
- Fade – flash to white
- Fade – overexposed
- Slide (any of them!)
- Stretch & Blur
- Stretch & Slide
- Grid Wipe
I strongly recommend experimenting and going through as many as you can. Make some mental notes, or heck, some physical notes on which ones you like so you can remember for future projects.
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Text Transitions Presets
Let’s head back to the Effects & Presets Panel. Next find the Text folder inside the *Animation Presets folder.
There’s a ton in here. And, unlike the Transitions folders we just covered, there’s a lot of gems in here.
There are a couple differences between the Text presets and the Transitions ones. First, these can only be applied to text layers. And second the duration of the transition varies with each one. Some are a second but others aren’t.
The same rules still apply though. Wherever your time position indicator is, that’s where the transition will begin. You can flip the keyframes and alter the transition in the Effect Controls Panel.
Seriously, mess around with these. You’ll be surprised with how many transitions are just… there!
I genuinely hope that this tutorial helped you. If it did, please consider subscribing to my email newsletter. Do you have thoughts on these pre-made transitions in After Effects? Leave them below in the comments!
– Josh
Related
Cover image via
Give your footage a fun, clean look with these 16 free transitions for After Effects.
Transitions are hard. In a perfect world you wouldn’t need them… your content would simply flow from one animation or scene to the next. Unfortunately, that is certainly not always the case. When it comes to animation, you need to think of a creative way to transition from one scene to the next without having a hard cut.
Cool Video Transitions After Effects
There are many things you can do — fade to black, dissolve, maybe a wipe — but if you really want to make your video stand out, you’ll need to do something a little more creative than simply using the NLE’s built-in tools. This is where our free transitions come into play.
Designed to help video editors create engaging and fun videos, these 16 free transitions for After Effects are a clean and fun way to breath life into a boring project. Here’s a quick demo of the free After Effects transitions in action:
Music: Sun’s Coming Out from PremiumBeat
Footage from Shutterstock
All of the transitions can be easily colored and customized to your individual needs. Plus, if you want to simply render them out individually, you can use a codec with alpha channels to render them out.
Using the Free Transition Template
To use the template you must first download the free After Effects transition pack. To do so, simply click the following button:
DOWNLOAD FREE TRANSITIONS PACK FOR AFTER EFFECTS
Free Special Effects For Videos
It should be noted that these projects have been optimized to work with After Effects CS6 or higher. Once you open the template, you’ll notice six different folders. Each folder (except for the ‘Assets’ folder) contains a few compositions, and each composition features a different transition. Simply double click on a composition to open it.
If you want to change the colors, you can easily do so by selecting the ‘Color Control’ layer and changing the various fill effects. The project can also be easily imported into another After Effects project and customized. You can also export each of the transitions in After Effects using alpha channels, which will allow you to drag and drop them into the NLE of your choosing.
How do you use transitions in After Effects? Share in the comments below.