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Animated Line Graph
Can anyone tell me how to get a great high resolution animated graph line in After Effects. I have created my animated line graph by creating a new solid and drawing my line with the pen tool, then generating a stroke and changing the paint style to “On Transparent” and keyframing the “End” Value.
Problem? My problem is that I need the camera to zoom in and follow the line as it animates, but when I zoom in the line becomes pixelated. I have been using After Effects for some time now and so I am frustrated that I cannot figure this out on my own. My Composition is 1920X1080 with Square Pixels.
Any ideas?
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7 Replies
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The problem is that the line is drawn on a solid, which is a raster object. It’s made up of a set number of pixels so when you zoom into it the pixels look larger and you get those horrible jaggies.
If you have CS3 or above, try drawing the path on a shape layer (just use the pen tool with none of the layers in the timeline selected). Once you’ve drawn it, delete the fill (or have it turned off ahead of time). If you make the layer 3D and zoom into it, it will always stay sharp. Vectortastic!
You may also find Aharon’s tutorial on shape layers useful when it comes to animating the stroke: https://podcasts.creativecow.net/after-effects-tutorials-podcast/shape-layer-tips-3-trim
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysfx
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Thanks so much!!
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Simon,
Thanks for your speedy reply! I tried using a shape layer instead with no fill, but I am still getting about the same result. I drew it as a shape layer with the fill turned off and a stroke of 10px. Is the stroke what is causing problems?
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I think I just figured this out. I was using a camera to zoom in and follow the path of the chart. I just realized that if I change the Z position instead it looks great. I can just do this instead, but for my own curiosity…is there anyway to use a cam without getting the pixelated image?
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Ugh! I am still not getting a crisp line though, I need to be able to zoom right into the line without any loss in quality….What is the difference between having a fill on my line vs. having a stroke? It looks like the way you told me to do it worked a lot better than what I was doing before, but it still does not look vectorastic!
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Just figured it all out…I apologize for all the threads …I had precomposed my graph and was zooming into the pre-composed layer, but I just discovered that if I go to the original comp and zoom inot the original line layer, it looks perfect. There is something technical there that I just don’t know about.
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Hmm, ok. But maybe if you hit the collapse transformations switch for the graph layer in the main comp it will remove that problem? Not absolutely certain it will, but it would save you having to keep track of camera movements in a different comp.
Simon Bonner
youtube.com/simonsaysfx
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