In this post, you will learn how to quickly offset layers in After Effects.
Alright, so we are in After Effects and for this example, I am working with 18 Ukramedia logos.
These Ukramedia logos are scaling up from 0 to 100 percent.
Now, what if I wanted to take all of my 18 Ukramedia logos and offset them by 3 frames. How can I do it quickly without having to manually offset each layer one by one?
As you can see from the picture above, manually adjusting layers can take a long time. Especially if you are working with a lot of layers.
So let me show you the easiest way to do this.
Step 1:
Select all 18 layers.
Step 2:
Move the time indicator to the beginning of the timeline
Step 3:
Press page down on the keyboard 3 times.
Step 4:
Press ALT+] to shorten the selected layers.
So right now all 18 layers are 3 frames in length.
Step 5:
Right-click on selected layers and go to Keyframe Assistant and click on the Sequence Layers.
When you do that, you will have a pop-up window appear.
You will see an option for Overlap.
The Overlap gives you an option to fade each layer, which is not what I want to do, so I will leave it unchecked.
Step 6:
Make sure the Overlap option is unchecked and then press OK.
Now you can see that all of my layers have been offset by 3 frames, so obviously we have a little problem here because my layers are not very long. They are only 3 frames.
Step 7:
Move the time indicator to the end of your composition.
Step 8:
With all 18 layers selected, press ALT+] again to extend the layers to our time indicator, which is located at the end of my composition.
So now if we preview our project, you will see that everything is working well.
Now let me show you how to control the offset order.
Step 1:
Move the time indicator to the beginning of the timeline.
Step 2:
Undo a few steps with keyboard shortcut CTRL+Z on a PC or CMD+Z on a Mac to bring us back to where we started.
Step 3:
Select the layers based on the order you want them to start by pressing CTRL+RMB on a PC or CMD+RMB on a Mac.
In other words, my offset will be determined based on the order of my selection.
So whatever I select first, second and third and so on, that is how it is going to go down. I am going to keep going with my selection until all 18 layers are selected.
Step 4:
Right-click on any selected layer again and go to Keyframe Assistant and then choose Sequence Layers again.
Step 5:
Press OK when you see a pop-up appear.
And so now you can see that it automatically off-set layers based on my selection.
Step 6:
Move the time indicator to the end of our composition and press ALT+] to extend layers to the time indicator.
Now let’s preview what we have so far.
Everything is working well. The offset is based on my selection, which is exactly what I wanted.
I do want to point out one more thing, but first, let’s undo everything we just did.
So obviously it offsets things based on the length of our layers.
What if want to have a different offset? For example, let’s manually adjust the length of layers one by one like so:
Next, I am going to select all of my layers, right-click on them, then choose Keyframe Assistant and then click on the Sequence Layers option just like we did in previous examples and press OK on the pop-up.
And now you can tell that it offset some things differently.
It offsets everything based on its length. So it is going to have different timing.
Now let’s move the time indicator to the end of this composition and press CTRL+] on a PC or CMD+] on a Mac to extend our layers to the end of our composition.
And now if I preview this you can easily tell that the timing of some of our layers is not the same.
I hope you found this tip was useful!
