<p>I would use a particle engine of some kind to do this.</p>

<p>You set up the Emitter to start from the same position as your torch (in a layer behind it).</p>

<p>You set your particles to look like the ball.</p>

<p>You emit them at an appropriate rate, and use air or wind adjustments to "blow" them across the screen.</p>

<p>After Effects has a built in particle engine called Particle World</p>

<p><a href="https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/simulation-effects.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/simulation-effects.html</a></p>

<p>Or you could use Particular from Trapcode</p>

<p>Screen shots below showing roughly how you could do it in Particle World:</p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/uZ0xl.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/uZ0xl.png" alt="screen grab"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/abywD.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/abywD.png" alt="screen grab 2"></a></p>

<p><a href="https://i.sstatic.net/06hGO.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/06hGO.png" alt="screen grab 3"></a></p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-26T13:04:05.163Z
2018-06-26T13:04:05.163Z
tomh
<p>An alternative to using particles is to make copies of the layer with an expression that adds some variability to their motion. For example you could add some wiggle by adding this expression to the position property:</p>

<pre><code>wiggle(1, 10);
</code></pre>

<p>This will randomly wiggle the layer around its keyframed position with a frequency of about 1 wiggle / second. If you want them all to start in the same position and get increasingly wiggly you could use this:</p>

<pre><code>var wigglyness = 100; //how wiggly
var wiggleFreq = 1;  //how quickly to wiggle
var wiggleStartTime = inPoint; //you could also use a marker etc.
var timeWhenFullyWiggly = inPoint + 2; //seconds until full wiggliness

wiggle(wiggleFreq, linear(time, wiggleStartTime, timeWhenFullyWiggly, 0 wigglyness));
</code></pre>

<p>This will ramp up the wiggle from the inPoint of the layer for 2 seconds.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-27T23:51:48.520Z
2018-06-27T23:51:48.520Z
stib
<p>I have the following animation, in which a ball goes from the flashlight to the end of the frame. However, how do I create multiple iterations of this animation, except with the ball following the same path, except with some variation? I'm using Adobe After Effects V15.1.1.<a href="https://i.sstatic.net/ymxmn.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/ymxmn.png" alt="enter image description here"></a> <a href="https://i.sstatic.net/fH7gW.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/fH7gW.png" alt="enter image description here"></a>
<a href="https://i.sstatic.net/MyHuw.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.sstatic.net/MyHuw.png" alt="enter image description here"></a> </p>

<after-effects><animation><keyframes>
Applying identical keyframes to identical objects w/variation
DarkRunner
# Applying identical keyframes to identical objects w/variation

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-06-26)

I have the following animation, in which a ball goes from the flashlight to the end of the frame. However, how do I create multiple iterations of this animation, except with the ball following the same path, except with some variation? I'm using Adobe After Effects V15.1.1.[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/ymxmn.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/ymxmn.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/fH7gW.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/fH7gW.png)
[![enter image description here](https://i.sstatic.net/MyHuw.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/MyHuw.png)

**Tags:** after-effects, animation, keyframes


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## 2 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2018-06-26. Score: 0 | Accepted answer

I would use a particle engine of some kind to do this.

You set up the Emitter to start from the same position as your torch (in a layer behind it).

You set your particles to look like the ball.

You emit them at an appropriate rate, and use air or wind adjustments to "blow" them across the screen.

After Effects has a built in particle engine called Particle World

<https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/simulation-effects.html>

Or you could use Particular from Trapcode

Screen shots below showing roughly how you could do it in Particle World:

[![screen grab](https://i.sstatic.net/uZ0xl.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/uZ0xl.png)

[![screen grab 2](https://i.sstatic.net/abywD.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/abywD.png)

[![screen grab 3](https://i.sstatic.net/06hGO.png)](https://i.sstatic.net/06hGO.png)


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### Answer by username_2 on 2018-06-27. Score: 0

An alternative to using particles is to make copies of the layer with an expression that adds some variability to their motion. For example you could add some wiggle by adding this expression to the position property:
wiggle(1, 10);

This will randomly wiggle the layer around its keyframed position with a frequency of about 1 wiggle / second. If you want them all to start in the same position and get increasingly wiggly you could use this:
var wigglyness = 100; //how wiggly
var wiggleFreq = 1;  //how quickly to wiggle
var wiggleStartTime = inPoint; //you could also use a marker etc.
var timeWhenFullyWiggly = inPoint + 2; //seconds until full wiggliness

wiggle(wiggleFreq, linear(time, wiggleStartTime, timeWhenFullyWiggly, 0 wigglyness));

This will ramp up the wiggle from the inPoint of the layer for 2 seconds.


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