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stroke like 3Dstroke, but without the plugin
Hi guys, I just want to make a number of tapered strokes fly acrross the screen following a wavey path. Normally I just use 3D stroke but I don’t have the plug-in at the moment. Does anyone know a reasonable quick way to make a stroke tapered at both ends.
Cheers
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3 Replies
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Some possible solutions, none of them perfect:
1. With some care you may be able to achieve this with three Vegas effects applied to the mask – one for the middle, “thich” portion, and two for each of the tapering ends. Vegas has no width falloff control but you can diminish the opacity which gives a similar effect.
2. Search the archives for Dean Velez’ tutorials, he makes some wonderful stuff using text. By using the appropriate text “message” with special characters, an appropriate font, heavily edited kerns and some additional effects, you may be able to create a tapered stroke. Animeate the text along a path and there you go.
3. In the unlikely event that you don’t have 3D stroke but you do have 3D particular, You can fake a stroke with particles. Copy your mask to the position parameter of the emitter, set the particle shape to something simple and monochromatic like a circle, make the particles velocity 0 so they stay put (don’t forget also “velocity from movement”), and change the “Size over Life” to a tapered shape. You’ll get some nice tapered strokes with a lot of interesting control options. This may be the best method but of course you do need a Trapcode plug-in (but a different one…)
Hope that helps,
– Alon
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It’s not ideal, but the “write on” effect lets you vary your brush size over time.
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