How to Make a Ball Bounce in After Effects

Create a bouncing basketball in Adobe After Effects using the Transform tool.

The bouncing ball animation is a good tutorial to learn the basics of After Effects and its animation possibilities. Once you create the animated ball, you can add advanced movements like rotations, drop-shadows and object interference. There are no plug-ins or additional effects needed to create the animation. A bouncing sound effect will make it even more realistic and help complete the video. This tutorial works in all "CS" versions of Adobe After Effects.

Instructions

1. Right-click in the "Project" window and select "Import." Choose a ball picture with a translucent or solid-colored background.

2. Right-click in the "Composition" window and select "New Composition." Set the amount of time for the video and press "OK."

3. Drag and drop the ball layer into the "Composition" window. The ball picture will appear in the "Preview Monitor" window. Hold "Shift" and click to scale it to the proper size. Go to "Effects," "Keying" and "Color Key."

4. Select the dropper tool from the "Effect Controls" tab and choose the background color to remove it. If your background is already translucent, skip this step.

5. Press "R" to load the rotation settings on the ball layer. Drag the timeline scrubber to the start of the video. Click on the "Key Frame" icon to activate the key frame animation for the layer. Set the starting rotation point for the ball.

6. Drag the timeline scrubber to the end of the video. Set the rotation to "360 Degrees" and choose how many rotations you want the ball to make. Depending on the length of the video, an average of five to 10 rotations will look realistic. You can adjust the number later.

7. Press "P" to load the "Position" settings for the layer. Move the timeline scrubber back to the start of the project. Click and drag the ball to the starting position. If you want the ball to start off-screen, click in the center of the "Preview Monitor" and scroll downward to zoom out. All of the gray area is the off-screen positioning.

8. Move the scrubber to the "1 Second" mark. Drag the ball to the bottom of the screen or the "floor" off of which it will bounce. You will see a line connecting the starting point to this next point.

9. Move the scrubber ahead one second. Move the ball up on the screen based on the angle of the bounce. Another line will connect the previous animation point.

10. Repeat the position animations until the ball bounces for the duration of the video. You will see lines that show the complete path of the ball's movement. To remove these lines from view, click off of the layer to deactivate it.

References

• Adobe: Separate dimensions of Position to animate components individually
• Adobe: Show or hide layer controls in the Composition panel