• Adobe After Effects

  Animating hundreds of Unique Pieces of art

  Posted by Robert Saltino on February 20, 2015 at 4:52 pm

  Hello everyone,

  im in the middle of a project which requires the animation of a unique pattern. I would like to have all these individual pieces animate as if they are separate elements yet behave as a whole. Much like a flock of birds.

  Assigning one as a parent, and having the others follow its movement is obvious but i would like them to move in a delayed fashion, giving the feeling that they are all individual pieces (again, much like a flock of birds).

  They would also need to land/stop in their own unique position relative to the parent.

  I think a great solution would be to animate a parent along a curved path and have all the others follow a similar path and use a wiggle expression so i can make their path conform greatly to the parent or take a more random path just by changing the wiggle parameter. Then have them land in their own unique position to make up the final pattern.

  Can someone give me any help on this?

  Thank you.

  Robert.

  Steve Bentley replied 11 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Steve Bentley

  February 22, 2015 at 9:45 pm

  I think you’ve already got the answer. But instead of using the wiggle out of the menus, use it as part of an expression and then you can animate the wiggle’s intensity over time.
  A particle system would also do this but the ones for AE may give you grief trying to land them on a specific spot.
  If the landing area is just an area (like a custom shape or letter) then that could be done with particles run backwards so they are born from the shape in question and then fly along the path of the parent.

Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up