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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects animating a light beam

  • animating a light beam

    Posted by Paul Woodvine on March 16, 2010 at 1:38 pm

    Hi, I have been asked to create a series of animations based on existing light trails. The shapes are now registered so the animation needs to replicate these shapes exactly. Does anyone know of a good tutorial that could help me out. Im guessing I would need to draw out the path and animate it?

    Thanks

    Michael Szalapski replied 16 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 6 Replies
  • 6 Replies
  • Michael Szalapski

    March 16, 2010 at 5:49 pm

    Sorry, I don’t really know what you’re asking. Perhaps a bit more detail would be helpful.
    What do you mean “existing light trails”? And what do you mean when you talk about basing your animation on them?

    – The Great Szalam
    (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

  • Scott Novasic

    March 16, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    well, if you need to animate content to match a path shape, then you will need to keyframe it accordingly.
    Your “path” needs to match the motion of your ‘light’ trail. So your velocity is going to be fixed depending on the number of inbetween frames you allow for.

    Im not sure I get your question, but I tried… 🙂

    SuperNova
    Animation & Visual Effects
    Scott Novasic
    Los Angeles Ca
    web:https://web.mac.com/finaleffects

  • Paul Woodvine

    March 17, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    Hi, The following link is a similar file to the one im trying to animate. If you imagine this beam has a start point and end point then its the inbetween I need to animate. How do I get the light to flow around this shape?

    Thanks, Paul

    https://www.shutterstock.com/results.mhtml#photo_id=13191253

  • Michael Szalapski

    March 17, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    You could do this with Vegas, Stroke, or (for tons more fun) Trapcode’s Particular.

    – The Great Szalam
    (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

  • Paul Woodvine

    March 17, 2010 at 4:06 pm

    Thanks for the tip, do you know any good tuts on this? Fairly new to after effects but will be able to follow a good tutorial…

    Cheers

  • Michael Szalapski

    March 18, 2010 at 11:18 pm

    For Vegas or Stroke, just read the help files and play around with them, they’re not terribly complicated. You’ll need to use Stylize>Glow or some other things like that to make it look light light.

    For Particular or other 3d particle systems there are several tutorials out there.
    https://videocopilot.net/tutorials/light_streaks/
    https://videocopilot.net/tutorials/light_streaks_2/
    https://videocopilot.net/tutorials/moving_3d_lines/
    https://videocopilot.net/tutorials/3d_stroke_effect/
    And that’s all from one website. There are tons more out there.

    – The Great Szalam
    (The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

    No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

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