Animated Infographics in After Effects | Tutorial

In this After Effects tutorial, I’ll show you how to create infographics effectively. We go through the basics, then get into some more advanced stuff. Like how to create easy to use templates. Where you insert the values and the bar animations adapt automatically, without even touching a keyframe! Sounds like magic? Almost… It’s basic expressions. Hey everyone! My name is Manuel by the way, and let’s dive right in. And create a basic progress bar. We use the pen tool. To draw a straight vertica

l line. Hold shift to make sure it actually is a vertical line. No fill, Let’s set the stroke width to 100 pixels. And let’s use a linear gradient to make it look more interesting. We choose two colours. Like pink… and a dark blue. Then position these two blue handles to adjust the start and end of the gradient. Blue is the area, where the numbers are low, the higher the numbers, the more it turns into pink. To animate the bar value, we add a trim paths animator. We open the contents property an

d choose it from the add menu. By animating the end value, we animate the progress of the bar. Next to the path property are these two direction options. You can switch the start and end point easily. And I should quickly mention, that you can change the cap form in the Gradient Stroke Group. In the line cap property. Let’s set it back to butt cap for now. We want to be able to quickly adjust the maximum progress value. Therefore, let’s add an expression control. A Slider Control. We add it. And

name it: Progress Value. The range is between 0 and 100. That’s great. Otherwise you could change it with a right-click. Next, we link the end property of the trim paths animator to the slider property of the Slider Control. And the slider sets the end value. Let’s animate it quickly with two keyframes. 0 at the beginning, 100 at 1 second. We select both keyframes, right-click on one of them and add Easy Ease to them. Next, we want to display the progress value. Therefore we add a text layer. U

se the type tool and type in literally anything. I use Roboto Mono this time, I think it’s available on Adobe Fonts. We open the Source Text Property. Because you can display the Slider value by linking the source text property to it. Either the Slider Value or the End value. And the number has a lot of decimals. To get rid of them, we add a simple expression in front of the one here. Math.round parentheses and move the existing expression inside the parentheses. Math.round rounds the numbers an

d gets rid of the decimals. Awesome. First of all, let’s position the value. Maybe centre align the text. You probably want to add some kind of unit or symbol to make clear what kind of value this is. To add that you add a plus sign and add a string value. Or text value. This has to be in between quotation marks. Let’s add percentage for example. If you want to add a unit in front of the number, you add it at the beginning. You can use this basic principle and change the design of course. So bas

ic expressions like these make a big difference. They allow you to create things that aren’t really possible with keyframes. You can create a particles rig for example. Once set up, you can use it again and again. And again. Or, create responsive animations. That automatically adjust to your comp size. I know it’s overwhelming at the beginning… That’s why in my course, we start from 0. In 30 lessons we go through the basics. Basic expressions, Responsive animations Dynamic Text animations And re

petitive techniques. A more than 50 page-long expressions sheet will accompany you. Plus bonus content! With even more application examples. Upgrade your skills and Learn how to animate with expressions in After Effects! Make sure to check out the link! Alright, let’s say we want the progress value to move along with the progress bar. I’ve added a second, darker bar as background by the way. We open the path property of the progress bar layer. Select the path. Go to window and choose the create

nulls from paths script. And choose trace path. That reminds me… We need to select the path property. This creates a Null object that traces the path. Obviously. Let’s go into the effect settings and deselect the Loop option. The progress property is animated with two keyframes. We delete them as well. And link the progress value to the end value of the trim paths animator. You could link to the Slider value as well. Now the Null object moves along with the right edge of the progress bar. Next,

we link the text layer to the Null object. Using the pick whip tool. We position the text layer. On the right edge of the progress bar. and - in this case - right align the text. It moves along. Let’s work some more on the beginning though. We use the background layer as alpha track matte for the text layer. And make it visible again. This hides the text layer at the beginning. Awesome. Finally, let’s create an automated infographic template. This is the exact same setup than before, just the di

rection of the bar is vertical instead of horizontal. Anytime we want to change the end value, we need to go into the animation and change the keyframe value. And most infographics have more than just one bar. It would be much easier and quicker if you’d just have to insert the values and the animation would automatically adjust, right? Let’s do that. We delete the two keyframes for now. And the Slider Control. I should quickly mention that you need to link the source text property and the progr

ess property of the null object to the end property of the trim paths animator. Then we add a new text layer and add a random number. Like 50. Let’s name the text layer: INSERT BAR VALUE 1 Let’s change the label colour to green maybe. Then right-click on it and turn it into a guide layer. This means, it won’t be rendered out. It is only visible in the preview. The idea is, that the value you insert here, is the end value of the animation. First of all, we add two keyframes to the end property. L

et’s delete this expression here. We don’t need it any more. The purpose is: the first one is the start of the animation, the second one the end. Let’s add it at 1 second. The values don’t matter. It’s just about the timing. Now we add an expression to the end property of the trim paths animator. And define a few variables. var timestart equals key 1 in parentheses. .time We want the time of the first keyframe. 0 in this case. Semicolon. var timeend equals key 2 in parentheses .time the time of

the second keyframe. which is one second. Semicolon So we have to variables that define the start and end time. Now we need two more that define the start and end values. var valuestart equals 0 Semicolon. The first value is 0. valueend equals The value we added to the text layer. We add Math.round again. To get round numbers We click inside the parentheses and link to the source text property of the text layer. I need some more space… Let’s click back into the expression and link to the source

text property. Semicolon at the end. So right now, the end value is 50. Then we add a linear expression. linear and in parentheses the expression needs a variable or source, the min and max values of it and the two new outcomes. the variable is time. time comma the min and max values are timestart comma timeend. comma 0 and 1 second in this case. the two new outcomes: valuestart comma value end At 0 seconds, the value is 0. At 1 second, the value is 50. Let’s move the window back down. And here

we go. We created a linear animation from the first to the second keyframe. You can change the timing of course. Instead of “linear” you can use “ease” to ease the movement. Or replace it with easeIn or easeOut. If you change the value, the animation adapts automatically. That get’s much more interesting if you have more than 1 bar. I’ve added more guide layers. Which you can hide. Except the ones with the actual values. I’ve offset the timing of the animations. And anytime you change a value. T

he animation adapts automatically. Which is awesome. And really quick to use as a template. Check out my course: Animating with expressions to learn more about how amazing expressions are. Link is in the description. On the left side, I’ve added a video you might like. Thanks for watching this one. See you in the next one. Bye everyone!