Animate efficiently with label groups

Hi folks, I'm Jess, a Motion Designer and Director.

Wicked smart motion designers use labels to optimize their workflow and make quick sense of their After Effects projects.

You can use labels to color code keyframes, layers, and assets.

Open the After Effects file supplied with this tutorial.

Labels can be applied to layers, markers, and keyframes.

We can change the label color of a layer by clicking on the color to the left of the layer name in our Timeline and selecting a label color.

If you can't see the Label column in your Timeline panel, right-click on the Heading bar above your Timeline, go to Columns, and click Label.

You can change the label color for multiple layers at the same time.

Select these four Flowerhead layers while holding down Shift, click on the label color, and select a color like Purple.

You can filter a label color by typing the color name into the Timeline Search bar.

The Search bar filters by selected layers, so clear any selections to search the entire composition.

Click X to clear the search.

We can quickly select all layers within a label group by clicking on the desired label color and clicking Select Label Group.

With this layer group selected, we can apply keyframes to all.

Click R on your keyboard to bring up the Rotation property, move the Timeline Indicator later in the Timeline, perhaps around one second, and click on the Stopwatch icon.

This will set a keyframe on all of the selected layers.

Move the Timeline Indicator to the start of the Timeline and type in -60 into the Rotation property.

Now all of these layers rotate from -60 to 0 at the same time.

We can also give keyframes a label color.

This is really useful, especially when working with keyframes on multiple layers.

Select all the keyframes on the Rotation property by clicking and dragging a box around all of them in the Timeline.

Selected keyframes will be highlighted by a blue stroke.

Right-click one of the selected keyframes, go to Label, and select the color you want to label these keyframes.

Let's also scale the flowers up while they're rotating.

With these layers still selected, hit S on your keyboard to bring up the Scale property.

Let's go to around one second again, click the Stopwatch icon to set some keyframes.

Move to the beginning of the Timeline and set the Scale to 0.

Now click U on your keyboard, then hit U a second time to reveal all animated properties on these layers.

Right-click on one of the Rotation keyframes and Select Keyframe Label Group.

Here, you can choose whether you want to select the label group On All Layers, On Selected Layers, and whether or not the keyframes are visible.

Let's select Label Group On All Layers.

Now all the Rotation keyframes are selected, and we can quickly adjust the timing of these Rotation keyframes by sliding them around.

We can also set the Rotation and Scale keyframes at the beginning of our Timeline to one label group color, say, Yellow, then set the end keyframes to Green.

Now when we select one of the label groups, we can adjust how long the animation of both Rotation and Scale takes.

If you want to work even faster, set a custom keyboard shortcut to select the label group color.

Navigate to the Menu at the top of your screen, find Edit, Keyboard Shortcuts.

Using the Search bar, we can type Label group to find this action quickly.

Now you can assign this action to a shortcut.

You can hold a modifier such as the Ctrl or Cmd key to see which keys are free.

While still holding the modifier, click and drag Select Label Group to the keyboard shortcut you want to use.

In this case, I'm going to assign Select Label Group to the Ctrl and Comma key.

Now in our Timeline, we can use the shortcut for layers and keyframes depending on what's selected.

This same method can be applied to assets in the Project panel.

When you change the label color of an asset in your Project panel, it will retain the label color already in the composition.

However, if you drag this asset into the Composition Timeline now it has the label color assigned in the Project panel.

Selecting label groups is also possible within this panel.

If you're looking for more customization over your label colors and defaults, you can find more options by clicking a label color and going to Edit Label Colors...

Practice implementing labels early and often to increase your efficiency, keep track of your assets, and just to make a nicer file for sharing.