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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Adding an arrow to the front of a painted line.

  • Adding an arrow to the front of a painted line.

    Posted by Gabriel Baryard on June 27, 2011 at 8:16 am

    Hello ever helpful creative cow folks,

    I recently painted a line over the top of a mountain and then animated the end property to make the line appear to trace the top of the mountain. I am trying to figure out how to put an arrow on the line so it looks like it’s at the front of the line as it animates. I can’t seem to find a way to parent an object to the end property or any other property for that matter. Im wondering if I need to go back to the drawing board on this one and do this another way. Any suggestions?

    Thanks,
    Gabriel

    Greg Burrus replied 14 years, 10 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Steve Renard

    June 27, 2011 at 2:43 pm

    I haven’t done this in a while, but I think this worked for me in the past.
    1. Draw an arrowhead, either on a shape layer or with a mask on another layer. Make sure the anchor point is at the proper spot for the arrow to rotate around.
    2. Copy the mask path from your animated line to the position property of the arrowhead. This should give you two standard keyframes and a bunch of roving keyframes in between. Drag the standard keyframes so that they match up with your line animation.
    3. Right-click the arrowhead layer and select “Tranform => Auto-Orient…”. In the dialog box, select “Orient along path”

    Your arrowhead should now follow your animated line.

    Good luck,
    Steve

    ————
    Steve Renard
    Media Director, Cicada Design Inc.
    and Freelance Know-it-all
    647-406-7991
    srenard@cicadadesign.ca
    http://www.cicadadesign.ca

  • Greg Burrus

    June 27, 2011 at 2:44 pm

    Check out the link below for a list of method to achieve this.

    https://ae.tutsplus.com/articles/news/an-animated-arrow-to-rule-them-all/

    The “An Animated Arrow To Rule Them All” method is the way I like to do it the most recently.

    Hope this helps.

    Greg

    https://mogra.g2bproductions.com/ – Blog
    https://g2bproductions.com/ – Portfolio

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