• Adobe After Effects

  Animating Scale with Layer with layer control

  Posted by Eugene Constable on January 14, 2014 at 2:55 pm

  Hello,
  Working on an animation for a beer company.

  

  I have this world map image as an illustrator file.

  I want to reveal this map from bottom to top with a slightly fluid feeling, think beer being poured from a jug. The dots actually represent the tops of pint glasses. Now, back to the After effects..

  I figured:

  create a black/white and grey wipe, using solid layers and a staggered linear wipe that wipes from bottom to top, revealing grey. Precomp these solids,

  apply expression (taken from ECAbrams)

  sourceLayer = thisComp.layer(“Transition Control 2”);
  sampleSize = [1,1];
  samplePoint = transform.position;
  colour= sourceLayer.sampleImage(sampleSize,sampl­ePoint);
  x=colour[0]*100;
  [x,x]

  this should cause each dot scale up as the luminance of the sample point area changes with the wipe.
  Causing each dot to pop up and settle back down to its resting size.

  problem:

  I separated these dots in AI to layers – there are over 1,300 layers and unsurpirsingly AE cant handle it.
  it only just imported the file, let alone applying expression…lots of spinning beachball.
  I think I need a different route, perhaps using Trapcode form or Particular.

  Any suggestions most welcome,

  Thanks in Advance!

  Eugene Constable replied 12 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Walter Soyka

  January 14, 2014 at 3:19 pm

  Form is a good idea, but it’d be hard to get the irregular layout you have here.

  Particular would work better for the layout, but it’ll be harder to control the particles’ entrances.

  sampleImage() is slow. What if you animated a few nulls from bottom to top and referenced their vertical position in the expression (plus or minus some small random amount for each layer) instead?

  You could also split up the comp by continent to try to make it easier to work with.

  Walter Soyka
  Principal & Designer at Keen Live
  Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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• 

  Eugene Constable

  January 14, 2014 at 3:54 pm

  Hi Walter,
  Thanks – little bit trickier than I first thought this – good call on referencing nulls pos instead although, not that expert on writing expressions (I vaguely understand this one from a tutorial..) I’ll give it a go referencing nulls – will repost if I get stuck (quite likely!)

  I think youre right about sampleImage being slow. Also divide up the artwork up seperate comps too..

  Thanks again!

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