Hot Tip: Wiggle Any Value in After Effects
Posted by George Williams
• 22/02/2022
A better wiggle
The wiggle effect included with After Effects is good for some things, but it also has its limitations. Not (natively) being able to parent another layer to a wiggling object or to easily set a loop time for a wiggle ended in a lot of head-scratching and eye-rolling, not to mention the stock wiggles only work with a very limited selection of layer values.
The other parts of the bee are parented to the body... but they're not moving with it. And it's not looping.Bad, bad Adobe!This lead me to start looking for a better way, a better wiggle. Luckily I found Dan Ebbert's awesome expressions for wiggling (and looping) pretty much any value you want.
Express yo self
Using the expression below, you can wiggle the anchorpoint, position, scale, rotation, and opacity. Simply paste into the expression field, adjust your freq (speed) amp (amount) and looptime values.
freq = 0.5;
amp = 5;
loopTime = 6;
t = time % loopTime;
wiggle1 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t);
wiggle2 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t - loopTime);
linear(t, 0, loopTime, wiggle1, wiggle2)You can use the above expression for wiggling scale, but it will wiggle both the X and Y values independently. If you want a uniform wiggle, say for instance a uniform scale, use this altered expression. Alter freq amp and looptime as before.
freq = 1;
amp = 110;
loopTime = 3;
t = time % loopTime;
w1 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t)[0];
w2 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t - loopTime)[0];
linear(t, 0, loopTime, [w1,w1], [w2,w2])Examples
Wiggle position loop + Parenting
The bee body is a shape layer with the wiggle expression, with the wings, antenna and legs parented to it.
Wiggle scale loop
X and Y independent
Uniform
All together now!
Position, scale, rotation looping wiggle + parented body parts