After Effects: Bouncing Animated 3D Sphere

Learn how to leverage the 3D options in Adobe After Effects to create a bouncing animated sphere that can make your motion graphics project stand out.

Introduction

• Welcome
• Using the exercise files
• Project folder structure

1. Creating the Basic Sphere

• Creating the sphere's color map
• Creating the sphere
• Adding reflections and color correction

2. Squash and Stretch Animation

• Creating the squash and stretch animation
• Adding squash and stretch marks
• Automating the squash and stretch animation

3. Preparation for Animation

• Expression linking the sphere’s rotation properties
• Expression linking the sphere’s squash and stretch animation
• Connecting the sphere to a position null
• Adding a wiggle expression to the position values
• Adding Puppet tool handles
• Rigging the Puppet tool handles with nulls

4. The Bounce-Decay-Stop Expression

• Adding a bounce-decay-stop expression to all the moving parts

5. Animating

• Animating the position and rotation
• Animating the sphere color map
• Animating the squash and stretch
• Animating the Puppet tool elasticity

6. Automatic Shadow

• Creating an automated shadow