One of the biggest annoyances when editing is keyframes. They can be difficult to understand, hard to get right, and time-consuming to use. Then, if you want those animations to be smooth you’ll need to add some easing, which can be a another problem!
That’s why I built the AnimEngine for WippTemplates tools. It’s a custom framework which handles the animation and easing for you, without using any keyframes! Basically, it lets you choose when you want the animation to start, how long you want it to go, and how smooth you want the animation to be.
It completely eliminates the need for keyframes for 90% of the effects I do, and it saves me countless hours on every project. The AnimEngine doesn’t sacrifice quality for speed. In fact, my animations look better with the AnimEngine as they are much more consistent and will always look smooth!
There are several versions of the AnimEngine, which version 4 being the latest. All of them offer the same basic functionality but over time improvements have been made to the speed and control interface.
One of the often overlooked aspects of the AnimEngine is that you only need to learn ONE animation system for all of my tools and titles. This makes it really easy to get started and eventually master all of my tools without wasting time learning a new animation system for each tool.
The first set of controls in the AnimEngine are the In and Out Toggles. These let you turn the In animation or the Out animation on or off depending on what you need for your project. After that, you can control the Animation Offset and the Animation Length.
The animation offset chooses when the animation will start. An offset of “1” means the AnimEngine will wait 1 second before it starts the animation. The animation length controls how long the animation will take. A length of “2” means the AnimEngine will take 2 seconds to complete it’s animation.
By default, the “In” animation values will mirror at the end. This means if you have an offset of “0” and a length of “2” there will be a 2 second animation at the beginning and a 2 second animation at the end. If you turn off the “Mirror Out” option you’ll have a second set of Offset & Length controls so you can control the “Out” animation independently of the “In” animation. This means you can have a 1 second animation at the beginning and a 2 second animation at the end.
To make this process even easier, some of my tools that have AnimEngine V4 have “Set Start” and “Set End” buttons. This allows you to animate with your playhead by pressing those buttons to update the “Offset” and “Length” sliders automatically!
One of the most annoying parts about working with keyframes is that they don’t automatically update when you change the length of your clip. The AnimEngine fixes this! If you need to make the clip longer or shorter, just change it’s length on the timeline! It will keep the animation lengths the same but make sure the animations still happen at the beginning and the end of the clip, without any manually retiming!
The AnimEngine also solves the problem of stuttery, inconsistent easing in your projects. Instead of spending hours building Animations curves in the keyframes panel or in the Fusion Spline Editor, The AnimEngine has a range of built-in easing curves you can select and combine using two dropdown menus. Need to make it most custom? You can use the custom option and create your own easing curve right from the Inspector for maximum control!
The AnimEngine is exclusive to WippTemplates tools (and select other tools developed my WippTemplates). If you want a custom tool developed with the AnimEngine or want to use it in your projects, reach out via the plugin design contact form on the WippTemplates website.
Tools like the EditorCollection and EditorTitles which use the AnimEngine are designed from the ground up to save you hours in DaVinci Resolve. One of the main reasons they can do this is because of the AnimEngine.
The AnimEngine makes it incredibly easy to get professional looking animations in a matter of seconds. Gone are the days of having to spend 5-10 minutes on every animation creating keyframes and fine-tuning the easing curve to make sure it is smooth.
And since the AnimEngine powers all of my tools it’s extremely easy to learn how to use all of them and get the same animations across all of my tools. The AnimEngine is easy to use while still allowing for the control the pros need.
Once you start using it, you’ll wish all of your other tools have it!
