• Adobe After Effects

  How to create A dot to Dot animation

  Posted by Peter Stenhouse on February 17, 2006 at 6:03 pm

  Hi there. I am trying to create an animating Dot to Dot image. For those of you not familiar with this childhood counting excericse it involves connecting points in a pattern in sequnce to form an image. I have had some success using stroke around an animated mask and then using the same mask as a text path and alot of full stops to create the dots. This same approach works for the numbers too (a seperate text layer with the same mask), but only single numbers. when I start typing 10, 11 , 12 etc, they appear on the path with a massive space. I am force justiying the dots and numbers around the path, and for the numbers grouping them as words (so the numbers have spaces between them. There is a solution, turning off the force justify and then typing spaces to push the text around the path.
  The other technique I have been using is using the alpha from the keyed footage and using a matte choker and then the original footage as an inverse matte to get an outline. However I am not to sure how best to get the numbers and dots to attache to this path without animating each one. The stroke reveals using a mask. If anyone has any ideas on developing this approach I would be very interested because it obviously requres less roto scoping, my most hated of things everer.

  The next question is regarding Gravity. I would like to be able to apply gravity to objects, like the dots for instance, so once the image is complet, they drop away. But in general knowing how to apply gravity would be great. I am sure there is an expresssion that could or has been written accelerating the object down at about 9.8ms2. if they could collide with a ground, that would be even better. I could do this in Maya but I am reluctant to turn this into an entirely 3D job. If anyone has any ideas about gravity in after effects I would be eteranly greatfull.
  Sincerely
  Peter Stenhouse

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  Peter Stenhouse replied 20 years, 3 months ago 6,816 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

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  Peter Stenhouse

  February 17, 2006 at 6:34 pm

  Right what I have done, which seems to work, is that I have put spaces (literally about 5 spaces with that bar at the bottom of my keyboard) between each consecutive number, so that it goes around the length of the path. Then I have also turned force allinment on. as the text is almost the length of the path anyway force allignment doesn’t have to stretch the letters out too much with automatic kerning. Hooray. I used the same number of dots as numbers and force alligned and everything pretty much matches up. Now I would like the stroke outline and the numbers to fall away.

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