• Adobe After Effects

  Arrows

  Posted by Stig Olsen on October 21, 2013 at 9:25 am

  Hi,

  Im going to do an animation with some arrows following some lines of a body.

  When the arrows move from the feet and up the legs I want the arrows to bend as if they are following the lines of the body.

  Any suggestion?

  Stig

  Joseph W. bourke replied 12 years, 6 months ago 5 Members · 7 Replies
• 7 Replies

• 

  Joseph W. bourke

  October 21, 2013 at 3:14 pm

  I haven’t tried this before, but could you use the body graphic as a custom Displacement Map?

  Joe Bourke
  Owner/Creative Director
  Bourke Media
  http://www.bourkemedia.com
• 

  Stig Olsen

  October 21, 2013 at 3:17 pm

  Hi Joseph,

  You can see what Im trying to achieve here – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzHUsyZamgM

  Stig

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• 

  Kevin Camp

  October 21, 2013 at 6:35 pm

  you’d create a path on a solid and use the stroke effect to animate the line, or create a path as a shape layer and use the stroke property and use trim paths to animate the line.

  then you can select the mask/path property and copy/paste it onto a layer that will be the arrow head. right click that layer and choose transform>auto orient and select along path. then adjust the timing to match the line.

  Kevin Camp
  Senior Designer
  KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW
• 

  Tudor “ted” jelescu

  October 22, 2013 at 7:00 am

  To get the arrows to follow the shape of the body I can think of 2 ways:

  1- 3d arrows following a path- Zaxwerks 3d Serpentine.

  2- animate an arrow flow on a flat layer, precompose and distort in 3d to follow the shape of the body using Free Form or FreeForm Pro.

  Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
  Senior VFX Artist
• 

  Stig Olsen

  October 22, 2013 at 8:22 am

  Thank you,

  Kevin, I can have the arrows follow the line, but with your method I cant have the arrows bend to follow the curves of the body. like in 3D. Any suggestion?

  Stig
• 

  Jason Jantzen

  October 22, 2013 at 7:59 pm

  Or use C4D spline wrap 😉 I know, not AE, but some things aren’t always an AE job.

  Jason Jantzen
  vimeo.com/jasonj
• 

  Joseph W. bourke

  October 23, 2013 at 12:17 am

  You might give the Puppet Tool a try. It will allow you to warp your arrows, but you would have to do all the keyframing of points by hand.

  Joe Bourke
  Owner/Creative Director
  Bourke Media
  http://www.bourkemedia.com

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