How to Make Wheels Rotate in After Effects?

To make wheels rotate in After Effects, you can use the following method based on the provided reference:

Auto Wheel Rotation Technique

The tutorial explains a quick tip for automatically rotating wheels by using expressions.

Steps

1. Parenting: First, you'll have to parent your wheel layers to the main body or moving object layer.

   • In the example, a car is composed of three objects: the car's body and two wheel layers.
   • The wheels must be parented to the car's body layer.

2. Accessing Rotation Property: Select the wheel layer you want to animate and navigate to the Rotation property.

   • Click on the rotation stopwatch of the wheel while holding the Alt/Option key. This will add an expression field.

3. Adding the Expression: In the expression field, enter the following code:

   time*some_speed_value

   • Replace some_speed_value with the desired speed of rotation.
   • The higher the value, the faster the wheel rotates. For example, you can use time*200.

4. Result: This expression will make the wheel automatically rotate as the timeline plays.

Key Takeaways

• Parenting is crucial to ensure that the wheel moves along with the car's body.
• The expression automatically calculates the rotation of the wheel based on the time multiplied by a speed value.
• Adjusting the speed value lets you control the rotation's velocity.

This method can be used for any circular object that needs to rotate in relation to its parent layer's movement, not just wheels.