Looping in After Effects has never been easier. There are tons of looping expressions and different ways you can get your footage or keyframes to loop. Remembering all the techniques can be tricky, so we decided to make the Crate’s Looper Script

 

 

Download the 100% Free Crate’s Looper Script Here

 

You must be logged in either as a Pro or a Free user to download the script. Drag and Drop  into your After Effects > Scripts Folder

 

If you want to loop footage or media make sure to select the footage in your Project Window. Set the amount of times you want it to loop and hit Apply. You can also select your footage by pushing the ‘…’ button on Crate’s Looper Script.

 

The Time Remap option is auto-checked. This is the most popular looping option for Footage or Compositions. It creates 2 key-frames, one at the beginning and one at the end of your layer. If you want to loop another parameter, such as rotation or position, un-check this option. (Box 1 on the Right)

 

You can choose to loop-in, loop-out, or both! Looping-in will loop from the last key-frame to the first key-frame. Loop out, the more often used, will loop from the first key-frame to the last. Loop-In/Out will do both of these options.

 

Let’s take a look at some of our different looping options now. See where it says ‘none’ on our right? Select that drop-down. You will see these amazing looping options! Check out what each one of them does below.

 

Ping – Pong allows your animation to go forward until the last key-frame and then repeat the animation backwards. It’s like the popular Boomerang effect you see everywhere!

 

The Continue Loop is really interesting, instead of stopping on the last key-frame the animation takes into account the motion parameters and makes them continue on indefinitely.

 

Cycle is a useful loop. This will start your animation over to the first key-frame after the last key-frame.

 

Offset is definitely the most interested. We used 3 key-frames to really show this one off. The animation cycles through all 3 key-frames (start, finish, halfway back to start) but continues it’s directional movement. The animation repeats but is ‘offset’ from the difference in the key-framed parameters. This one is especially fun to make complex animations with!

Want to check out more of our scripts? See them all here