In the past when I wanted to loop an After effects Composition I always do duplicate the composition multiple times, until this day where I had a this tiny composition to duplicate a hundred time!! After a few research online I wanted to share to simplest way to loop an after effects composition / precomp, so here it is.
Shot 1 – Place the composition you would like to loop in the new composition
Shot2 – Right Click on the Composition Layer – Click Enable Time Remapping
Shot 3 – Once time mapping enable this is what you should see
Shot 4 – Add a script to the time remap
On PC : Hold Alt + Click on Stop watch
On Mac: Option-click stopwatch
Replace timeRemap by this loop expression: loopOut("cycle")
Shot 5- This is where the magic happen! -Click at the end of your composition, drag until the end or where ever you want it.
Click play – Now your After Effects Composition Layer should play in loop!
One thing you should know
There is a known bug that Adobe has not resolve yet, when you loop you might see a blank / empty frame when you play
There is 2 solution you can use:
- Go into your composition and drag your layer time more than the last frame
- Sometime changing the frame rate of both of your composition help.
Good Luck!
You are a star! Thanks for sharing that, you’ve just saved my life!
You’re welcome! 🙂 Glad it help you out
Clear, concise, and very very helpful. Thank you!
does not work in CC2015
“Sometime the last key frame of the time remap is blank, you can edit the frame rate of your main composition and it should resolve it.”
the last frame is almost always blank, and not sure what you mean by adjusting the frame rate, can you explain a little more?
Thanks for your feedback KS, usually your composition is at 29.97 Fps changing it to 25 Fps sometime solve the issue.
Before you do that check inside your pre-comp that all layers are extended until the end and more.
meaning if your pre-comp finish at 2 second extend your layers to 2.2 seconds.
Hope this helps I will try to improve this post with images when I get a chance. Hope this help.
This is a hack that doesn’t work 100%. If you change the composition to 25fps, it’ll show in that composition but it won’t show if that composition is within another composition.