-
Variable width stroke, without write-on effect
Hi,
I’m trying to create an animation of a path that is variably stroked along its length. I’m animating the path anchor points and handles to move in the animation, but not animating the completion of the stroke – the path is stroked 100% of its length for the entire duration. This is different from using the write-on effect, as far as I understand it.
In Illustrator, it’s relatively easy to control the width of the stroke along the path. One option is to create my artwork in Illustrator and then expand and bring it into AE, but that makes the animation of the lines very difficult, since maintaining the width of the stroke would depend on very precise control of the anchor points and handles along both sides of the closed shape. Ideally, I could animate an open path, and have the stroke move appropriately. Puppet warp creates bad results, with kinking and the like.
Is there any tool, plugin, or technique that would make the task easier? Thanks for any help.
-
9 Replies
-
an effect called 3D stroke by trapped (available at redgiant.com) has a taper control, among other improvements to the stoke effect.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Thanks for the ideas. Trapcode’s 3D stroke is too limited, I think, for the need. I’m also not trying to reveal segments of a stroke, but rather animate the motion of a line.
Imagine trying to animate movement of this line. For this example, say I wanted to animate the the left anchor to move up and down in an arc to make it look like the “tail” of the shape was wagging. The stroke would need to follow the path.
The overall goal is to animate something like this without having to control the anchor points on both sides of a solid shape, because that would be extremely tedious.
-
…This is my fear. Puppet warp would be good in principle if it would only behave. Are there and plugins that do it better?
-
On a related noted, is it possible to keyframe individual anchors? Path animation is not very flexible when you only have one keyframe for the entire path.
-
you might try cc bend it. create a straightened version of your shape, then add cc bend it, adjust the start/end points to where the ends of the shape are and animate the bend property it to make it wag. you can even add mulitple bend its with end points aligning with other start points.
you could also try turbulent displace, adjusting the various properties may be able to produce a waving motion that you desire… less control, but easier application.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Thanks for the suggestions guys, I really appreciate the ideas. Distort effects aren’t going to give me enough freedom to control the motions. 3D stroke isn’t really that flexible either, imo, since it’s essentially distort effects in 3d space.
I’ve got a fair amount of experience working with the vector/shape tools in AE and am probably around upper-intermediate level in general. The vector tools simply aren’t that powerful from what I can tell and was wondering if a 3rd party tool or an expression-based approach could yield more control in animation and stroke width.
I guess my best option is to use 3d stroke to create tapered lines and restrict the artwork to paths that are stroked with linear increases and decreases in width. Still, there will be little control over the path/anchor point transformations over time…
-
yep… there isn’t any built in control for varying a strokes width along a path/mask.
also, a path’s/mask’s shape cannot use expressions (there is a script that can link a vertex to a null/layer position, take a look at the scripts on crgreen.com)
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Some rigging/IK tools may be useful for this. I’m going to try DUIK. Thanks again for the help!
-
You might want to give this a try – it’s free, so you have nothing to lose but time. Omino Snake will let you distort a graphic along a path, so you should be able to animate just the path nodes to get the flowing hair:
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up