-
Rotating arrows around octagon shape
Hi guys,
First post here, but I had a little problem that come up and the was the first place I thought of.
I’m racking my brain as to the best way of achieving this animation. Essentially, I need those arrows on the outside of the diagram to rotate around the shape and conform to the octagon shape as they rotate. I’m guessing there’s no ‘easy way’ to do this, and imagine I will need to do some editing to the paths (everything has its own layer)?
It would be great if I didn’t have to edit any paths for the animation to work, and could automate as much as possible. Even if I had to animate one path and automate the rest that would still be a bonus I guess.
There is also an added problem that each of those arrows will have a text label … but i’m trying not think about that for now.
Thanks!
-
18 Replies
-
Puppet Pin Tool? Make a straight line animation (that loops) and then make it the right shape with the Puppet Pin Tool.
Alternatively, use Mesh Warp/Bezier Warp, etc.
Bonus: text attached to the arrows will warp with them with either of these methods.
– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
-
Heaing and air logo? If only they were square you could animate the stroke using dashes around the octagon..
-
you might find these video series handy:
https://www.eyedesyn.com/tutorials/bend-2d-layers-along-paths-using-after-effects-cinema-4d/Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials -
Thanks for the response. That would be a great automated solution and something I considered experimenting with. A tricky situation that would have arose is that the colour of each arrow also alternated, and there would be text attacvhed to each arrow.
I wonder if there is some sort of option to ‘bake’ that stroke animation? Once I have that animated I could maybe do some manual editing afterwards.
-
Thanks for the response. The Omino Snake plugin was the first thing I tried. It worked to an extent, but gave some problems that were proving hard to work around and it the result weren’t too great.
For now my client has said that it isn’t too important, and would prefer it quickly as opposed to going through any long drawn out processes. I decided to just rotate the arrows in a circular motion for now and just scale them out a bit so that they don’t intersect the inner diagram.
I think it’s something he will be asking me to revisit in the future however, so i’m still going to need to solve this eventually. It doesn’t help that the vector file given to me isn’t the cleanest, so i’m probably going to have to do a redraw and hopefully I can plan for this animation a bit better then.
-
Thanks for the help!
These two features are two of the (many) areas of AE I don’t have much experience in to be honest, since I mainly use it for 3D compositing and basic motion. I played with the puppet pin tool and I could see how easy it was to form the basic shape from a straight arrow, but I struggled to process how I would turn that into a full blown animation.
It doesn’t help atm that all my layers are pulled in from a vector file, so I may need to scrap the arrows that came with the diagram and redraw my own straight version for the purpose of animation?
-
[Colin Wood] ” may need to scrap the arrows that came with the diagram and redraw my own straight version for the purpose of animation?”
Yes. If you have your arrows going in a straight line inside a precomp, you can use offset-type effects to make them seamlessly loop and then bend it into any shape you would like with distortion effects. Might take a bit to get it set up, but quite powerful. The only hard part is the hard edges of the path. It’s a lot easier to get smooth paths!
– The Great Szalam
(The \’Great\’ stands for \’Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble\’)No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.
-
-
so after going about this for a long time and producing semi good results, I asked long time Ae contributor Rick Gerard to have a look and I will write down his recipe that took him ten minutes to accomplish.
here’s the project file:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B5wyUt17-tu2QzBOYk5wejEwTTg/view?usp=drivesdkhere is the recipe:
The trick is using a stroke for the path, loopOut() and then a little track matte from a pre-comp.
Start by double clicking the Polygon tool, expose the properties, delete the fill if there is one, set the stroke to about 36, set the number of sides to 8 then the outer roundness to about 220%.
Now you have your basic shape. To preserve that for future tweaks duplicate it and then convert the Polygon to a Bezier path in the duplicate, reveal the path and set a keyframe and copy it.
Now it’s time for the arrowhead. Enable the Grid so you can draw a > shaped path with the apex right on the anchor point. Set the stroke width to about 36 and delete the fill Make it plenty big to cover the entire stroke, press Alt/Option + p to create a position keyframe and paste, then drag out the keyframes to give the movement a little time and add a loopOut() expression to the arrow. The arrowhead should now continuously loop around the path.
Duplicate the converted octagon layer and name it matte. Apply Set Matte to the arrowhead and choose the matte layer. Duplicate the arrowhead 7 times so you have eight in total then select them all and press P to reveal the position keyframes.
Starting at the top select all of the position keyframes and then grab them and hold down the shift key as you drag to the left until you line up the second keyframe on the layer below with the last keyframe on the layer you are moving. Repeat until all of the arrowheads are distributed around the octagon and then precompose all of the arrowheads and the Matte layer.
Use the pre-comp as a track matte for the converted octagon. You should have 8 lines with pointy ends moving around the outside of the octagon.
To create the different colors reveal the stroke properties and add dashes until you have 4 dashed lines distributed around the octagon then set a keyframe for offset, move to the last frame of the completed arrowhead cycle and adjust the offset until the dashes make one complete loop around the octagon and check the timing. Add a loopOut() expression to the offset. If everything is good duplicate the stroke, change the color of the duplicate, then select all of the offset keyframes in the duplicate and move them to the left until you have two colored lines with pointy ends.
Roei Tzoref
After Effects Artist & Instructor
♫ Ae Blues Tutorials -
That’s pretty much perfect, thank you!
The example file you also put together is also very helpful. I’ve looked at everything and it really is simple to achieve. My only minor complaint if i’m being picky is that the animation is very smooth would benefit from being a little more linear. I’m guessing I can fix this by tightening up the corners on the bezier curve?
This is going to save me a massive headache when the client comes back to me for this. Thanks again!
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up