This tutorial takes you step-by-step through animating a realistic auto gauge.

Instructions

The first step is to animate the simple gauges of Fuel and Temperature.

Let’s start with the Fuel Gauge.

1. Import that PSD file as a Composition.
2. Double click on the Composition Icon to open it.
3. Using the Mouse select the FuelSpindle layer (or use the numeric key 1).
4. Click the "A" key to display the Anchor Point settings. Type "Y" to activate the pan be hind tool and with the mouse click and drag the "Anchor Point" (a symbol that looks like a plus sign with a circle on top) to what appears to be the center of the dark gray button on the fuel gauge that is the spindle housing. Feel free to set your Composition display to 400% to get a somewhat accurate location. Remember these dials are small so no need to be a perfectionist yet.
5. Hit the Rotate (shortcut is the W key for 'wotate') to call up the rotation setting for the layer. With the mouse again, simply drag near or on the numerical value of "+0.0" to raise the gauge spindle up or down.
6. With the timeline cursor at the beginning of the composition, rotate the spindle up to the first mark below full - say, +60 degrees. Add a keyframe by clicking on the stopwatch to the left of the word Rotation in the timeline.
7. Let's make the composition only last ten seconds. Hit command+k/ctrl+k. Set the duration to 10 seconds and hit return or enter.
8. Save your Project. (You will see me do this a lot.)
9. Jump to the end of your timeline (tap end key) and, with the mouse, drag the rotation down a bit, like we are driving a muscle car from the late 60's. Not too much, down to about 52 degrees.
   
10. Now we need a drop shadow for this spindle. Select the Layer with the mouse. Go to the Effects Menu Tree and choose Perspective and then Drop Shadow. To match the shadow of the spindle housing (upper right shadow), change the direction of the shadow to about 13 degrees. A distance of about 5 is a good offset, and to hide the small overlap on the spindle housing, soften the drop to about 11. If you want to remove that overlap, duplicate the Gauge layer, bring it to the top layer, and create a circle mask (Add Mode) to match the spindle housing - thus erasing the extra spill of the spindle shadow.

That composition is done. Save the project. If you drag the cursor back and forth you will see the fuel level drop.

On to the Temperature Gauge and Speedometer...

1. Import the TempGauge.psd as a composition. and repeat the processes of the FuelGauge Comp to taste. (Always good to practice newfound tools.)
2. Save your project when done.
3. For the Speedometer, we again we follow the same basic steps of importing a Photoshop file as a composition, moving the anchor point (using the pan behind tool) to the center of the spindle housing, and in adding the Drop shadow and masking out where the shadow overlaps the spindle housing.
4. At the beginning of the Composition, rotate the spindle layer up to the Zero mark. Add a keyframe by clicking of the stopwatch.
5. Move up to four seconds in the timeline. Enter or adjust the rotation to 74 degrees. Add a keyframe at the end of the comp (ten second point).
6. Click on the word Rotation in the timeline. This will select all keyframes.
7. Open Wiggler palette, found under the Window menu.
8. With the Noise Type set to Smooth, change the frequency to 1 per second and the Magnitude to 3. Click Apply. Preview the animation.
9. Now there should be some, not much, mind you, but some variation in the movement of the speedometer spindle as it rises. At this point, go in and delete some of the keyframes to help smooth out the motion. In my version, I deleted the keyframe at two seconds and the Keyframe at five seconds. Preview the Composition again. I specifically did not use an expression here because I like to delete and move keyframes so I can get a random yet natural feel of the motion.
10. Feel free to add keyframes to the Drop Shadow at the beginning and at the four seconds marks to more naturally change the shadow direction and distance. Time to save the project again.

Let's put all the pieces together.

1. Create a new composition. Call it 3Gauges. Make the 340x200, square pixels, and 30 fps. 10 seconds duration. (Note this file is slightly larger than our final comp size will be.)
2. Create a dark gray solid the same size as the comp (Layer > New > Solid).
3. Apply the Venetian Blind effect to the solid. Adjust the effect so that the direction is 90 degrees, use a width 0f 3, and a feather of 1. Adjust the transition completion to 20 percent. This gives a bed texture for the dials.
4. Add the three composition that we built earlier by dragging them from the project window and into the timeline.
5. Move the dark solid to the bottom layer and the Speedometer layer to the top. Solo the Speedometer layer by clicking the solo switch. Scale the Speedometer down to 40%. Solo the two other gauges and scale down them down to 30%. Position them to either side of the Speedometer layer.
6. Show Rulers (command+r/ctrl+r) and drag a guideline down to the bottom of the speedometer comps circle. Position it to bisect the dark space at the bottom of the circle. Position the two other gauges just above that guide.
   
   
7. Preview the 3Gauges Comp. Cool, but we can make it look even better. Time to save again.
8. Add an new black solid (Layer > New > Solid) and place it on top layer.
9. Add an ovoid mask (circular mask tool) to the black solid (subtractive). This Mask's four control points should touch the edge of each side - horizontally, and the upper and lower control points should touch the action safe guideline of the comp.
   
10. Feather the edges of this mask. Tap the F key to bring up the feather parameter in the timeline. Feathering will add a little dimension to the Comp.

Now for the moving tree shadow layer.

1. Import the PassingTree.psd as footage. Make sure you select just the TreeShadows Layer.
2. Drag the footage into your composition. Set the Opacity to 20%. Option/alt+click on the Position stopwatch to add the simple expression to add a moving shadow over the comp.

   wiggle(1,120)

Ok, the final Comp.

1. Create a new composition. Make this one 320 by 180, 30 fps. Drop the 3Gauges Comp into it. Again by Option/alt+click on Position of this layer and add the expression

    wiggle(3,2)

2. Preview the comp. It should look like were driving on a gentle but bumpy road.
3. One last little touch...add an Adjustment layer to the comp (Layer > New > Adjustment Layer).
4. Apply Lens Flare (Effects > Generate > Lens Flare). Position the Flare Center in the upper left corner at the beginning of the comp and set a keyframe. Tap the End key to move to the end of the cop and move the Flare Center above the top center at the end of the comp. Adjust the Flare Brightness to 85%.
5. On the Adjustment layer (layer 1) add the expression to Opacity:

   wiggle(2,300)

   Now the Lens Flare fades up and down like the trees or the edge of the instrument panel cuts it in and out.

I hope you enjoy this lesson. If I do anything else like this I will pass it along. Good luck.

SMA

If you would like to build an odometer, check out this tutorial. You'll need to change it up to match the look of the speedometer, but you can really make a cool dash board.