• Adobe After Effects

  is it possible to auto-orient shapes on same layer independently?

  Posted by Chuck Miller on August 19, 2013 at 6:01 pm

  trying to do an arrow animation (think indian jones map, line traces, proceeded by arrowhead). Working with CS5.

  I worked from the tutorial here: https://youtu.be/azHQF_JmOs8

  The problem is, if you reduce the opacity of your arrow as a whole (in order to fade out), a blending artifact appears where the arrowhead shape layer and the mask arrow-path layer overlap.

  

  tried setting the blend mode of the shape layer to “difference.” Nothing happened.

  I thought I was onto a great solution by having the arrow-path and arrow head on the same shape layer and using “trim path” rather than the stroke effect on a mask to animate the line being drawn.

  The problem NOW is that I can no longer auto-orient the arrowhead to the line path, if the line path is on the same shape layer as the arrowhead. Having the line and the arrowhead on the same layer solves a major workflow problem for repositioning the animation, and to eliminate blending artifacts if opacity is changed.

  Is there a way to auto-orient different shapes on the same layer independently? Or is there a much better solution to this problem in general?

  Thanks.

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  Chuck Miller replied 12 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Siew Kei

  August 20, 2013 at 9:22 am

  Hi,

  You could try this (to solve the fade-out problem in general, but not to answer your question about auto-orienting shapes on same layer):

  Select the arrow path and arrow head layers (making sure both are at full opacity without any fading), and pre-compose them.

  The two layers are replaced by a single pre-comp layer.

  Then adjust the opacity of that single pre-comp layer to do your fade out.

  Hope this helps.

  Regards,

  SK
• 

  Chuck Miller

  August 20, 2013 at 3:02 pm

  And the answer is: “much better (read: easier) solution to the problem.”

  Thank you SK!

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