• Adobe After Effects

  is it possible to animate an Illustrator signature in AE with the “trim paths” command???

  Posted by Nicholas Natteau on August 25, 2014 at 4:15 pm

  For a WWII documentary, I downloaded Rommel’s signature from wikipedia in SVG format and converted to AI Illustrator format. I’d like to animate the signature in After Effects. I know how to do this two ways: with the “Stroke” and with the “Write-on” effect.

  But this signature is somewhat complex to animate. As the stroke effect gets to the “R” in Rommel’s signature, it inevitably reveals later bits of the “R”.

  Now with a shape layer, animating any line is effortless. You just add “trim paths” and set “end” to 0% at the start and “end” to 100% at the end. Is there a way to convert a vector image signature in AE to a shape layer that would allow me to add a trim path?

  Thank you in advance for any feedback.

  Chris Brett replied 12 years ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Chris Brett

  August 25, 2014 at 4:34 pm

  Hi Nicholas

  have done a similar thing before with a similar problem solved by animatin a mask to reveal signature using mask as a track matte —

  — you can animate the thickness of the line and tweak mask so that the reveal is a precise match for the signature at the point where it is problematic —- cant remember the exact details so you will have to think it through a bit but this does work….

  …. masks can be generated from Ai file as below …….

  …….. open file in Ai / select paths / copy paths / open Ae / paste to required layer where they appear as masks.

  —- good luck —————— chris —-

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