The Wiggle Expressions in After Effects

If you have worked with After Effects for a while you’ll notice that creating random animation movements with key frames can be a real pain and a challenging task, luckily there is a better solution thanks to the wiggle expressions you can achieve random movement fairly quickly without spending hours tweaking key frames right and left.

In this blog post I’ll show multiple examples and methods of wiggle expressions from wiggle text to camera shake, I will also provide you the After Effects project source files so you can see how wiggle expressions are integrated with the layers. This should allow you to get a good understanding of how the wiggle expression works and use it for your own project. For those who hate programming expression I’ll also go over other ways to create Jiggle movement without using codes.

What’s a Wiggle Expression in After Effects ?

A wiggle expression in After Effects is a piece of JavaScript code that allow to move,scale,rotate… a layer back and forth in a random fashion.

The basic code look like this
wiggle(5,10)

The 1st number 5 define the number of time your layer will wiggle per second. This case it move 5 time in 1 second
The 2nd Number 10 define the how much it will move up and down this case 10 pixels

Here is a Wiggle animation example based on the setting wiggle(5,10)

Apply a Wiggle Expression in After Effects?

Using and applying an expression is fairly simple, below are the steps to add the wiggle expression to a layer,image,text or video.

– Assuming you have a layer/text/image on your After Effects timeline like below
ae timeline with shape layer

– Select the layer on your timeline and press P (It will show the position)
shape layer position open

– On your keyboard Press Alt (PC) or Option (Mac) click on the stopwatch icon
alt-to-apply-wiggle-expression

– Position numbers X and Y should now be red, replace transform.position with this: wiggle(5,10)

Here is the wiggle-expression After Effect project just in case you need to see it in action.

Other Examples of Wiggle Expressions

Control the start and stop of the wiggle expression

Your wiggle expression is making a good and smooth animation now what if you want to control the start or stop of the wiggling movement? No need to look for another expression.

Here is a method that should help you controlling the wiggle expression

Create Null Layer | Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Y for Windows | Command+Option+Shift+Y for Mac
Drag and Drop the “sliders control” from the effects and presets windows to your Null Layer
Select the Null layer and press E, expand slider control to see the stopwatch
Highlight 5, then drag and drop the expression pick whip
Add keyframes to the slide control of you null layer, ex: 50.00 for the first keyframe and 0.00 for the second keyframe
You Should have the wiggle animation starting and slowing down to completely stop such as below
Download the Control Wiggle Expression After Effects project

Wiggle on Y axis, Up and down, Vertical

Copy and Paste this expression below to your layer position to Wiggle your layer on the Y axis

org=value; temp=wiggle (8,40); [org[0],temp[1]];

Demo of Wiggle on Y Axis

Download the Wiggle on Y axis After Effects Project

Wiggle on X axis, Right and Left, Horizontal

Copy and Paste this expression below to your layer position to Wiggle your layer on the X axis

org=value; temp=wiggle (8,40); [temp[0],org[1]];

Demo of Wiggle on X Axis

Download the Wiggle on X axis After Effects Project

Wiggle on Z axis

Make sure you turn on 3D layer on your layer
Add this expression to the position
a =wiggle(0,0);
b =wiggle(0,0);
c = wiggle(5,95);[a[0],b[1],c[2]]

Demo of the Wiggle Expression on Z Axis

Download the Wiggle on Z axis After Effects Project

Wiggle Color

Make colors wiggle can be very difficult with expression, thanks to rowbyte this free plug in allows you to have a nice color wiggle animation.

Download the free wiggle plug-in for After Effects here

Scale Wiggle Expression

The scale wiggle expression can be used in 2 ways

The regular wiggle expression on scale will wiggle the scale height and width separately

wiggle(5, 80)

If you’d like a wiggle with uniform scale use this expression below

w = wiggle(5, 80);
[w[0],w[0]]

Text Wiggle Expression

If you ever wanted to wiggle individual letters on a text follow these steps.

Type your text in After Effects
Click on the Animate icon and choose position
Next to Animator1 Click on Add > Selector > Wiggly
Add this wiggle expression wiggle(18,3) to the position of the Wiggly Selector 1
You should now be able to see something like this

Download the Text Wiggle Expression AE project.

Camera Wiggle in After Effects

I am sure one day you’ll have to create a fake camera shake movement or a shake effect to your video, using a Wiggle expression is probably the easiest method to simulate a random shake camera movement.

Watch this video tutorial which explained very well how camera shake is done with a wiggle expression.

The other alternative you should consider if you are pressed by the time is to use presets, I found a couple of websites that have already made camera shake presets for free.
– 15 Free Camera Shake Presets
– Handheld Camera Presets

Wiggle Loop Expression

The looping wiggle expression become handy when you want an object to move randomly in your composition. Looping wiggle should be seamless and you shouldn’t see a cut, this expression is also used for background animation.

freq = 1;
amp = 110;
loopTime = 3;
t = time % loopTime;
wiggle1 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t);
wiggle2 = wiggle(freq, amp, 1, 0.5, t - loopTime);
linear(t, 0, loopTime, wiggle1, wiggle2)

Download the Loop Wiggle expression example here.

Thanks to Dan Ebberts for this expression

Other way to wiggle in After Effects

For those who don’t like programming expressions and codes After effects has other way to add a wiggle movement, here are a few methods below.

The Behaviors wiggle presets

After Effects has multiple wiggle presets you can find them in the Effects & Presets window (screenshot on the right)
– Animation Presets > Behavior Presets

The advantages of using the wiggle presets are the controls and options they include such as:

Wiggle Speed
Wiggle Amounts
Wiggle Width
Wiggle Nervousness
Wiggle Skew

How apply the Wiggle Presets?
Just drag and drop the wiggle presets directly to your layer and see if you like the movement and controls.

If you want to see a preview of the wiggle presets please check the behaviors presets page.

The Wiggler

Another alternative to make a wiggle animation without using expression is to use the Wiggler tool.
In After Effects you can find the tool under the Windows tab > Wiggler

Here is how the wiggler tool works

Create a text or a shape layer
Create your first keyframe and your last keyframe
Select Position
Go to the Wiggler Windows and click Apply
Once you click Apply, the Wiggler tool will create multiple keyframes to make the wiggle animation