• Adobe After Effects

  Make it solid?

  Posted by Eddie Rouche on April 17, 2009 at 3:48 pm

  hi,

  I wish to bounce a square around the screen etc with it being effected by different things… so

  when the square hits one thing I need to change its anchor point… and rotate if from there…. but when it gets to the next thing that the square hits I need to change its anchor point again… but it seems to move the square when I do this…

  a) is there anything which can just make the square ‘solid’ and not overlap other shapes?

  b) how can I make the anchor point move without moving the square?

  thank you for you time.

  e

  Kevin Camp replied 17 years, 1 month ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Curious Turtle

  April 17, 2009 at 4:14 pm

  Hi

  If you want to get into some interesting expression work then you can check out Dan Ebbert’s Collision Detection set. But I have a feeling that it’s going to be better for you in the short term to stick to animating it yourself.

  WIth regards to anchor points – what you’ve discovered is that anchor points and position points are dependent on each other in After Effects. If you just change the anchor point then your layer will move. The trick is to use the Pan Behind tool (Shortcut: Y), this moves both Anchor Point and Position for you hopefully giving the result you need.

  Hope that helps,
  Ben

  Curious Turtle Professional Video
  Training | Editing |Support

  http://www.curiousturtle.com
  Just out: Rock Steady : Successful Motion Tracking in Mocha & After Effects
• 

  Kevin Camp

  April 17, 2009 at 6:52 pm

  you may be able to achieve something like you are looking for with particle playground….

  you’ll need to apply the effect to a new comp sized layer and set your square as the layer map (essentially the particle that will be emitted). you’ll need to key frame the cannon>particles per second so that it will only emit one square (unless you want more squares) and set the direction and velocity and all that good stuff…. and you’ll probably want to set gravity to 0 (or maybe not…).

  you can now create a mask on the solid with the particle playground effect on it that will act as a boundary for the particle to bounce off of. it will need to be a single mask, you can’t create several and have them get joined together… so if you need a complicated boundary, you’ll need to use the pen tool to draw it.

  once you have a mask, then you can set the effect to use it as wall>boundary. now you square should get emitted from the ‘cannon’ and bounce off the boundary mask. the action will also create spin for the square if it hits the boundary off angle…

  Kevin Camp
  Senior Designer
  KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

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