• Adobe After Effects

  Getting a stepped trapcode 3d stroke to move along a line smoothly

  Posted by Scott G on November 3, 2005 at 1:47 am

  Hi,

  I’m trying to animate a trapcode 3d stroke dotted line. I’ve adjusted the step so that the stroke looks like a dotted line, but I can’t get these dots to move smoothly along the line. When I adjust offset or start/end, it just changes where the balls start / finish. They don’t actually move along the line.
  I’m trying to create a “crawling ants” marquee effect, but much larger. Since this will be used to show water currents on a map, the strokes are curvy lines, and so I can’t just cheat by moving the position of the layer under a mask etc. I need the balls on the stroke to actually move.

  Any suggestions? Perhaps 3D stroke is not the way to go?

  Thanks,
  Scott.

  Scott G replied 20 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Steve Roberts

  November 3, 2005 at 3:20 am

  Effect>Render>Vegas might be the thing for you.

  Steve
• 

  Scott G

  November 3, 2005 at 5:07 am

  I just tried vegas for the heck of it, and I think path text gives me a better result. There are too many controls in vegas, path text achieves the same effect and is much more quick and simple. All I have to do is type ……… or lllllllllll and then animate the margin. Type more than you need and you won’t have to adjust both margins, just one.

  Plus, with path text I can change the shape of the dots – originally I wanted round dots, but then tried a few other things – arrows and shapes from dingbat fonts – finally settled on a blocky shape that gives me long dashes rather than balls. Mask it with a 3d stroke layer or other similar layer to remove the rest of the unwanted shape (it was a large block!), and viola, perfect running dashes.

  Seeing vegas is a render effect, wouldn’t it also take longer to render? Usually all those effects in th ‘Render’ category slow things down quite a bit.

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