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Most Common Animation Mistake In After Effects and How To Fix It – Wobbly Keyframes 45 Comments


RSS Users… Visit the website to watch the videos.

The “Wobbly Keyframe” problem has been plaguing After Effects animators everywhere. I made this short cast on how to get rid of the problem.
If your not sure what it looks like, check out this video.

Sick of my face? Want the three step program to obedient keyframing? Here ya go…

Step One: Select the offending Wobbly Keyframes.

Step Two: Right click and select “Keyframe Interpolation”

Step Three: Set Spacial Interpolation to “Linear”

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45 Comments

  1. Gene Gemperline

    When I was just starting out this gave me the most headaches and I could never find anywhere that told me what the deal was. Great that you explained it for everyone.

    Also – another workaround would be to use hold keyframes.

    Reply

    • Jiiimbooh

      Thanks for the “hold” tip! The problem with these wobbly keyframes just arose in a project I’m doing, but they were already set to linear. Hold keyframes solved the problem.

      Reply

  4. Mars

    Sometimes I watch these beginner tutorials and I think to myself, whatever, I know this stuff. But there’s always some tiny morsel to learn in after effects.

    Case in point, I had no idea the motion path color corresponded to the layer color. lol

    Reply

  5. curt

    thanks nick, that is one of my biggest problems. you helped me a ton. nice “the more you know” reference to.

    Reply

  6. Zee

    Thanks a lot fr this post nick!! i have this problem most of the time. Finally i know how to fix it. i have a question tho, do you know how to create “double vision” effect in after effects? you know to show those “drunk” feeling

    Reply

  7. brooke

    Love your site Nick! keep it up.

    To get ride of this keyframing problem I always go to…AFX Preferences, General, click on “Default Spatial Interpolation to Linear”.

    Reply

    • MikeC

      I can add this to the list of the Greatest Things I’ve ever learned on the internet. Thank You.

      Reply
  8. The Gorilla

    thegorilla

    Great Tip Brook. Also, maybe someone can find Zee a link to a Double Vision Tutorial? Ill keep my eye out.

    Reply

  9. Liam

    Thanks so much for this! An annoyance I didn’t even know could be fixed. Sorted.

    Reply

  11. Josh Fry

    Thanks so much for posting this Nick. This motion path wobble issue has been a source of frustration for many years.

    Josh

    Reply

  12. Vapour

    veryyy grateful for sharing this awesome tip.
    may God bless you :D

    Reply

  13. marc

    you could also select the keys and, with the arrow tool selected, hold down ctrl+alt (which changes the arrow to the “carrot” tool) then click in the composition window on one of the selected keys. different method, same result. :-)

    Reply

  14. Dusty Deen

    Wow, this has been a problem for me for a while. Thanks so much!

    Reply

  15. Jordan

    thank you sir! I never understood why it did i would get soo pisssed i am so glad i know ho wot handle that punk ass “wobbly keyframe” when he shows up again lol thanks again

    Reply

  17. Anders Hattne

    Aaaaah!! I can’t remember what I was doing.. I had something orienting along a path.. and the objects would rotate around uncontrollably.. I spent hours trying to get rid of the bezier handles with the pen tool..

    Thanks for that!!
    ‘ll check out those adobe links

    Reply

  18. Rakesh

    This really helped a lot in understanding why its happeneing, Thanks!

    Reply

  19. Daniel Miori

    Hello Nick,

    I’m a huge fan yours. I’m sharing this Most Common Animation Mistake In After Effects and How To Fix It , on a website for editors, it’s called: http://www.oeditor.com
    I hope you don’t mind…
    I’m from Brazil, sorry for my mistakes in english…
    If you visit us, please leave a comment.
    Thanks for all!!!

    Reply

  22. Ralph Stein

    Great Tutorial!
    Thanks for explaining what’s behind it as well!

    Reply

  23. Osvaldo_Tampico

    Man! I have had this issue since forever and ever! And I don’t remember how did i get to fix it then but this video opened my eyes to a new level of understanding of after effects! Man you are awesome!

    Reply

  25. Alptonay

    First of all, thank you for this useful tip.. And yeah, this was happening to me very often when I was a rookie.. Actually I have found the solution accidentally while I was clicking every right click menus.. Where were you man in 2002? ;) I have spent lot’s of time to solve this… Anyway I saw this link in aetuts+ and liked your all tips.. They all work well, except tilda key.. Because we don’t have tilda key on our keyboards.. Do you know how to assign another button, for full screen issue? (Language is TR) Thanks again…

    Reply

  26. AntoxaGray

    I had that once but I tried to fix it in graphs, and failed.

    Reply

  28. Jordi

    Thank you so much. Took me an hour to solve this shit, until I found your article <3

    Reply

  29. Noelia

    Hi! greets from Buenos Aires Argentina!
    Gosh, If only I knew this!!!
    last week I had and 8 bit project for school delivered and in some parts I could see this error and didn’t know how to fix it!
    well, next time Ill do better!!!
    thanks so much for your help, really I stated from zero this year in my last year of Graphic design school… and didnt know shit about after effects…you are my hero!
    greets!!!

    Noelia

    Reply

  30. Samuli

    Hey!

    I was struggling with this problem for like an hour. Thanks a lot for saving my day!

    Reply

  32. fcosta

    Thank you so much for this solution, it was driving me nuts!

    Reply

  33. Samir

    thanks heaps.. i used to do it with avid and all you got to do is select linear, thanks to you i can use ae now! cheers!!

    Reply

  36. mcu

    this is the number one mistake to fix for adobe but they dont care. fuck auto brezier

    Reply

  37. TinyHeart

    I guess, i’m pretty new at this and i need more help… :( I don’t know why, but this helps me only on the first stop… i want my object to stop 3 times, but this works only on the first time. I mark all the keyframes…. :( what may be the problem?

    Reply

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