after effects and stills question

[X1Lightning]

i have a comp that i am working on in AE CS4
basicly i have a bunch of images that were made in photoshop, and they are slightly different, and i am trying to animate them in AE, but it looks too choppy to me. does AE have a setting that i can use to smooth out the transition between images?
I have been googleing it, but maybe i am using the wrong term because i haven't found anything to do that

[blackmoses]

i have a comp that i am working on in AE CS4
basicly i have a bunch of images that were made in photoshop, and they are slightly different, and i am trying to animate them in AE, but it looks too choppy to me. does AE have a setting that i can use to smooth out the transition between images?
I have been googleing it, but maybe i am using the wrong term because i haven't found anything to do that

It sounds like you're looking for something that does morphing - allowing you to have one image shift into another overtime. After Effects does not really do this on its own. What it has is frame blending: with a video sequence shot at regular speed that you wanted to slow down or speed up, you could use AE to intrapolate new frames inbetween your existing ones.

You could try this with your sequence by arranging your stills on a timeline, nesting it within another comp with a different frame rate, and turning on the highest setting of frame blending. Your best bet, though, might be to get a package dedicated to morphing. This is a free one I found for OS X; haven't tested it myself though: http://www.norrkross.com/software/morphx/morphx.php

[MrLatte23]

Are you animating (moving) the stills? Or dissolving / wiping to change the image? There's a lot of variables so please be more specific. How large are the images to begin with. If their smaller than standard TV sizes and you're zooming in or upscaling when animating they can look bad.

[X1Lightning]

Are you animating (moving) the stills? Or dissolving / wiping to change the image? There's a lot of variables so please be more specific. How large are the images to begin with. If their smaller than standard TV sizes and you're zooming in or upscaling when animating they can look bad.


well basically what i was doing was frame animation(like a flip book), i ended up doing it in flash , and just adding frames on some of the stills to extend it, not the best solution, but the person i was doing it for was happy with it.

[MrLatte23]

you can import an image sequence in Adobe After Effects. It's a choice in the File>Import dialog. This would make your stills play in order as video frames, usually numerical. You'd need 30 images for one second of video (@ 30 FPS), 300 images for 10 seconds and so on. You could then turn on frame blending to smooth out the playback a bit. You could adjust the frame rate too if you didn't need full motion playback.