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Making a fading traveling line
Hey,
so I am doing a project with animations and I want to add a traveling line. I tried with dots but it didn’t look right (also there has to be a more efective way since you can see this effect all around) I want to make a line just like on the orange box on this video in the first 2 seconds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmyD2mweyU4 But want to make the start a bit thicker than the end and fade faster, I’ll add a glow on it as well and I want that to fade with the line as well (so at the start it is a bright wide glow and at the end there is a small glow don’t know if that’s hard to do or not). Is there a video or a method that someone could point me to or just explain in the comments?
Thanks
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6 Replies
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the vegas effect can do most of what you are asking for, except the taper…
create a mask on a layer, then add the vegas effect. set it to stroke the mask (rather than image contours), set the segment to 1 and adjust the length, width and other settings as needed. Animate the rotation to animate it around the mask.
it will get you close, but you’ll likely want to add the glow effect and finesse it a little to get closer to what you want.
‘saber’ is a free plugin from videocopilot.net. it will do the taper, but i don’t think it will do the fade… it had glow options built in and gives a very finished look with little-to-no extra finesse work. there are also good tutorials to learn that effect on that site.
‘3d stroke’ from redgiant.com can also stroke a path with taper options… simpler to use than saber, but not free.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
Thanks will try everything tomorrow.
Is it not possible to make a bigger stroke and just mask it as a triangle with curved sides so I get the big to small effect?
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not as easy as that. since the line needs to follow a path, the mask would also need to follow the path too, and that’s where it would become difficult.
if you did this in a 3D app, you’re path could be 3D mesh (like a pipe), and then you could simply animate a simple, long tapered image along the pipe and it would bend an follow it…. but with AE, you’ll need an effect that can do tapered and/or fading ends.
i’d start with the vegas effect and see if that could work for you… it’s pretty simple to set up and looks pretty similar to your example.
if it doesn’t work, i’d look at saber. it has a lot more settings (which complicates things) but the basic set up for this kind of effect isn’t too hard to do. once applied to a layer with a mask, from the customize core, set core type to layer mask, end size to 0 and set end offset as needed (for length of the stroke). then animate the mask evolution to make it move along the mask path and go from there.
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW -
I wonder if this would be any help:
https://aescripts.com/easy-arrows/
The following a path feature might make things easier, and you should be able to leave the arrow head blank.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Hey
I found this premade effect which is basicaly the arrow https://lesterbanks.com/2016/08/free-effects-path-arrow-preset/ Applied a glow on it and it turned out great.
Thanks for all the help.
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Nice. i haven’t seen that method before. thanks for sharing it
Kevin Camp
Art Director
KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW
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