Announcing Ease and Wizz 2.0 — now with Curvaceous!

This new version lets you apply the expressions to curved motion paths and mask shapes. If it all sounds rather too good to be true, have a look at this quick demonstration screencast. Otherwise, you can download it now.

Introduction

Ease and Wizz is a set of expressions for After Effects that give you more ways to interpolate between values. The obvious use is in motion, but they can be used on animated properties of any kind. They’re applied with an After Effects-ish palette that can be docked, so it’s very easy to use.

A while back, Flash guru Robert Penner created a suite of extremely useful easing equations that have been used to build thousands of websites worldwide. I've adapted these equations to work as expressions in After Effects (for an introduction to After Effects expressions, check out Dan Ebberts’ excellent site).

One advantage of using an expression for easing is that the keyframes are editable. You can drag objects in the comp viewer, or move keyframes in the timeline, and the easing will be updated immediately.

Ease and Wizz has been reviewed by these good folk:

Download

ease-and-wizz-2.0.zip (weighing in at a mere 254 KB).The Ease and Wizz palette

Ease and Wizz is free and open source. If, however, you’re burning to donate to the cause, you can do so by clicking the donate button at the bottom of the page. You’d bring me much joy if you did.

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System requirements

  • Adobe After Effects CS3 or CS4.
  • Mac OS X or Windows.

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Installation

Gyorfi Szilard has very kindly put together a comprehensive screencast guide to installing Ease and Wizz on Windows Vista. If you’re on Windows, I encourage you to check it out. Otherwise, cross-platform instructions are below.

  1. Open the After Effects preferences. Check that "Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network" is enabled.Screenshot of AE preferences
  2. Navigate to the After Effects Scripts folder. On my Mac it’s here: 
    /Applications/Adobe After Effects CS3/Scripts/
    On Windows:
    C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe After Effects CS3\Support Files\Scripts\
  3. Create a folder in Scripts called "ScriptUI Panels" (if there isn't one already; I think AE CS4 might come with one conveniently made for you).
  4. Extract the zip archive into the ScriptUI Panels folder. It should look something like this:Location of Ease and Wizz script
  5. Relaunch After Effects. There should be a new item under the Windows menu, right at the bottom: "Ease and Wizz.jsx". When you select this item, a new panel should appear. You can dock it with some other panels, wherever's convenient.
  6. Create a new comp and put something in there (shape layer, bitmap, solid etc.). Animate one of its properties, such as position or scale. With at least one keyframe selected, select the "Apply" button on the Ease and Wizz palette.

If you’re still stuck, you can watch the hilariously amateur screencast I’ve put together. Note that there’s no sound. Important: the screencast is for version 1.0 of Ease and Wizz. The palette layout has changed, and you no longer have to locate the easingExpressions folder.

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Usage

Simply select the properties that you wish to add expressions to, choose the type of easing from the popup menu, whether it should be "in", "out", or both and click Apply. As of version 1.1 it's possible to apply the expression to all keyframes instead of just the first two.

You can choose any number of properties (including different kinds), on any number of layers, and the script will add expressions to everything that's selected.

Note: If there are already expressions on the properties that are selected, they'll be replaced when you click Apply.

Types of easing

Regular easing (from most to least dramatic)
Expo, Circ, Quint, Quart, Quad, Sine
Special types
Back, Bounce, Elastic

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FAQ

How do I get more control over the bounce or elastic expressions?
These expressions are pretty speedy to apply, but don’t offer too much in terms of customising. For that, I recommend checking out Dan Ebberts’ motionscript.com. The Physical Simulations is a great jumping off point.
After Effects CS4 crashes every time I quit. Coincidence?
It’s an After Effects bug that’s been acknowledged by Adobe. Presumably they have a crack team of highly trained programmers working on it as we speak (er, type).
Can I use this with After Effects 7?
I never had any joy getting the palette to work in AE7. However, you can always just copy and paste the expressions directly into the property you're animating … if, for example you wanted an expo in-out tween on a position property, keyframe it as usual then open the file "inOutExpo-easeandwizz-all.js". Copy the contents, add an expression to the position property, then paste it in.
Why do I need to enable "Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network"?
The expressions themselves are separate files in the "easingExpressions" folder. The main script figures out which one you intend to use, opens the relevant file, and the applies the expression to all the properties you've got selected. In a pinch, you could also do this manually (but it's pretty laborious).
What's with the name?
It's a pun on a song title by UK band Pulp: “Sorted for E's & Wizz”.
I’d like to give you some money. Can I?
Hell yeah! Just click this big ugly yellow button and PayPal will do the rest:
Are these questions really “Frequently Asked”?
OK, you got me. They have, literally, never been asked.

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Version history

2009.02.11 – Version 2.0

  • [NEW] Curvaceous. Allows you to apply easing expressions to curved motion paths, and to mask or shape layer paths.

2008.12.01 – Version 1.12

  • [FIXED] After Effects CS4 compatability.

2008.03.24 – Version 1.1

  • [NEW] Tooltips added to the palette
  • [NEW] Popup menu added so you can select which keyframes to affect (all, first two and last two, or just the first two)
  • [CHANGED] Replaced the "type" radio buttons with a popup menu
  • [CHANGED] Eliminated need to choose easingExpressions folder path (thanks to Jeff Almasol)
  • [FIXED] Fixed colour of text in popup menus - thanks to Jeff again

2008.03.21 – Version 1.0

  • Initial release

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Contact

If you were to take the word “mail”, and stick it on to the domain “ianhaigh.com” with an “at” symbol, it would more than likely result in my email address. Your feedback is welcome.

To keep up-to-date with announcements, you can subscribe to my blog, The Ianternet. If you're strictly about the easing, here’s an RSS feed that relates exclusively to Ease and Wizz news.

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