From the course: After Effects Apprentice: 03 Advanced Animation

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Working with separate dimensions

Working with separate dimensions

You've no doubt noticed that the Graph Editor in After Effects treats position graphs differently than it does graphs for other values. For example, when the display is set to Auto-Select Graph Type, for other values it shows the value graph, but for position, it shows the speed, or velocity graph. This is because it's bundling the X and Y coordinates--and if it was in 3D space the Z coordinates, as well--into one keyframe value, and then calculating what is the composite speed for changes in all of those dimensions at once. I'll select Snowstorm Title so I can focus on just a position graph. Now I can indeed look at the Value Graph for position, and I can see a separate X and Y graphs. However, I'm kind of limited in what I can do with them. For example, if I hold the Command key down and hover the cursor over the graph to add a keyframe to the Y graph, it also adds a keyframe to the X graph. You'll notice that I can't select just one keyframe without its partner dimension being…

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