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Animating one endpoint of a path while keeping other end stationary
I’m doing some motion graphics in AE where I want to animate the location of one end of a path while keeping the other end stationary.
This seems like it should be dead simple, but I’ve spent a few days experimenting in AE and googling around without finding anything. Does anybody have any suggestions or links to tutorials on this?
More about the scene: The shot is of a car passing by. There’s stationary text over the video, and I want a line to point between the text and the moving car as the car moves through the shot.
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5 Replies
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You could track the car and apply the tracker’s positional data to a null. Use the beam effect (with inside and outside colors set to the same value), set the starting point to the text and the ending point to the null with an expression by alt/option click on the ending point stopwatch and pick whip the end poit to the null’s position.
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If you have cs4, try using the shape tool to create a shape and add “trim paths” to it. You can keyframe start and end.
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I’m not seeing a way to animate the position of an endpoint using “trim paths.” Is there something I’m missing?
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This works! It’s too bad there isn’t a more direct way to go about it… I’d rather have the line as a shape than rely on a “beam” effect to generate it, but it gets the job done. Thanks!
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If you are animating a shape like drawing it on, use trim paths. Otherwise animate the path property of the shape and only move the points of the shape you want to move.
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