Contents

1. Creating and animating text in Plexus (at 1:11)
2. Animating a Plexus point cloud using ExpressionTimeline (at 13:02)

In this After Effects tutorial we will combine the Expression Timeline with the plugins Plexus and Trapcode Shine to create an impressive title animation. Use it for your next intro and adapt it to your own logo.

In addition I show you a useful expression to loop the keyframes of a property.

Expressions

• Random grid movement by Dan Ebberts
• Random Motion by Dan Ebberts
• The following expression allows to loop the keyframes of a layer with various options:

  var lastFrame=50;
  var offset=index;
  var speed=0.05;
  
  valueAtTime((time*speed+offset*thisComp.frameDuration)%
              ((lastFrame+1)*thisComp.frameDuration))
  

  You can adjust the numbers behind lastFrame, offset, and speed:
  • lastFrame: Setting this to 50 means that the 50 first frames of the composition are looped. You can also loop any shorter or larger regions
  • offset: offset=10 would mean that the loop runs though the frames 0 to 50, but starts at frame 10 instead of frame 0. If you set this not to a fixed number, but to something like index or 5*index, the offset becomes different for different layers such that they are all at different positions in the loop.
  • speed: by changing this number, the loop runs slower (small numbers) or faster (large numbers). For var speed=1 the loop runs at its original speed.