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making dots in a gradient appear one at a time
Hello everyone,
I have a illustrator file that a client gave me that has 2 over lapping small to large dot gradients. They want the dots to appear one at a time. If I import the illustrator file with the dots all on separate files, that creates thousands of layers. Is there an effect that can create something like this without the pain of having the figure out how to work with so many layers?????
Thank you!!!
Heather
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16 Replies
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Are the dots to appear randomly or are they to appear sequentially from one side to the other?
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that’ up to me. I was going to try randomly first.
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I’d try using card dance sectioned into blocks small enough to encompase each dot – or perhaps foam. If they’re all in a row, perhaps you could just animate a mask to reveal them in sequence (ala Vegas) or just play with the venitian blind transition plugin…
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ahhh, what a good idea. I’ll give that a shot now.
THANK YOU!!
Heather
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The card dance idea will probably work…
However, that would depend upon how many dots and how big of a file the dots image is… if you have a lot and/or the dot image is large, you could run into trouble trying to use card dance.
If that is the case, you may have to resort to the “old school” and simply use masks to reveal a final image created in AI or PS. Or, you could make a track for each dot (…that would take a long time and be very time consuming, it it would most likely work without problems).
Joe
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Thanks Joe. I think that I may end up doing this old school….there are A LOT of dots that start small, get big in the middle, over lap a bit and then get small again…
I really appreciate your suggestions!
Heather
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If there’s any way that the dots in the AI file could be easily converted to dots of different shades of gray (from white to black), you could use this new white-to-black image as a map for the “gradient wipe” transition effect. This effect uses a grayscale image to control how another image reveals itself onscreen: whatever is in the same position as the map’s white bits appears first, with the stuff in the same position as the black bits appears last.
You could also use a fractal noise image (rendered, or in a separate comp) as the map, but you run the risk of incomplete dots revealing themselves partially during the transition.
I hope that made sense …
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Thanks Steve, sort of made sense…I’ll give it a shot.
Heather
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i assume this is the same logo that you separted into layers in illustrator…
if it is, and the ‘release to layers’ function worked for you, then there is pretty quick way to build this in illustrator and ae, but you won’t have much control… in illustrator i said to use the ‘release to layers (sequence)’, try using the ‘release to layers (build)’ instead. pull the new separated layer out of the parent layer and delete the parent. select all the layers and choose ‘reerse order’ from the layers palette menu and save.
now import into ae as a comp. open the comp and set the comp duration to at least the same number of frames that you have layers (actually you should figure out how long quickly each dot should add on, and set you comp accordingly). select all of you layers and trim them to the frame length you need (postion the time indicator line where you want to trim and hit option-] (that’s option-right bracket on mac). then choose sequence layers from the keyframe assistant.
you ai layers should now add together, the only trouble is if you need to reorder the way the add on, you will have to go back to illustrator and do it all over again.
Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW -
Hi Kevin,
The release to layers did work. But there ARE SOOO many layers that AE doesn’t seem to want to import them all, i.e. I get that love twirly rainbow ball. I am experimenting with different wipes and masks seeing what I can come up with before noon…
I’m going to look at this more in depth a little later today and see what I can do.
THANK YOU!
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