Overlap For Ae Creates Dynamic Overlapping Action & Follow-Through

Overlap is a simple tool for After Effect that will allow you to easily create and edit dynamic overlapping action and follow-through for any layer property.

Think about the functionality you wish the Repeater in Shape Layers had…

Overlapping action is a necessity in any kind of animation. Anything that moves, needs to move in style. You may have tried to create overlapping action by hand before in After Effects, using keyframes.

There is nothing wrong with that at all. The problem arises when you need to make mass edits to many, many layers. Each layer with its own set of keyframes. There are a couple of ways that you can facilitate overlapping animation in After Effects, Some will involve a plugin. Depending on the plugin, you will get varying results and may slow you down considerably in Ae.

Blast-Frame’s Kevin Burke has the perfect solution for your overlapping action in After Effects. Simply select the layer that will drive the overlapping action, and then the layers that you want to control. Overlap will then work it all out for you. You only need to edit the driving layers keyframes to have the others follow suit.

Overlap for After Effects Controls include:

• Auto-Orient your Driver and Driven layers/shapes
• Rename Driver – identify your Driver more easily.
• Offset Control – separate your Driven layers/shapes from the Driver
• Factor by Index – distributing property adjustments in your Driven layers/shapes
• Maintain Original – keep your layers/shapes where they are and just add the Driver’s animation
• Invert Control – Get the Driven layers/shapes to do the opposite of the Driver
• Phase Shift – loop the Driver animation and phase-shift the Driven layer/shape (great for character arm swings!)
• Randomize – randomize the order in which the Overlap happens
• Index Control – reorder the order your Overlap at any time
• Color Labels – make it easier to identify your Driver & Driven layers/shapes