Simple Keyframe Looping
Every once in a while you will create an animation that you would like to repeat or loop for the course of your composition. Using this simple expression in After Effects will save you time and give you some flexible options to loop your keyframes that you may not have known existed.
You can download this tip and the project file at www.AEProjects.com under the Freebies section.
First create your keyframes (at least two) for any property you would like to animate.
Alt-click on the stopwatch or select the property by clicking on it and go up to the menu “Animation” and select “Add Expression”
In the expression box that opens type:
loopOut(type = “cycle”)
There are three more types that offer you some extra capabilities that can make some very easy animations.
pingpong – will go through your keyframes and when it reaches the last you will go back through them in reverse, giving you a bouncing back and forth among your keyframes.
offset – repeats the keyframes, but offsets each time by the difference in the value of the property at the start and end of the segment, multiplied by the number of times the segment has looped. This makes your animation
continue – does not repeat the specified segment, but continues to animate a property based on the velocity at the last keyframe.
Enjoy!
