Approaches for an animation

[Angelo Mike]

Keyframe the animation using text in Vegas to make dashes as lines.

To make an effect like what that pic has, you could make a solid blueish color event, mask out the shape you want, bring down the opacity a little to make it a little transparent, and then keyframe animate it using pan and crop.

[Brett Cole]

Thanks for the feedback. Would this approach “draw it” per se? I need for the line to be drawn and not just have a blob move. I assume that’s what you’re thinking too. Would this approach work if the line was an arrow with a distinct shape at the head?

Thanks

[Theo Van laar]

Hi Brett,

If you would like to have a line that starts at the beginning and increases in length, following your path, you can do this with the Gradient Wipe Transition. However, you will also need a program like Photoshop tp crate the path. Do you have photoshop?

Theo

[Pete Baratta]

Brett, Have a look at “Route Generator” on Google. It’s a freebie & will animate
an adjustable line, any color, over an overlay of your choice. Pete.

[Phil Peacock]

Pete is right. With a bit of imagination (which we all have!), and if necessary the chroma keyer, this is a really useful little program. It will certainly do what you need Brett, with or without the arrow heads.

Make sure to explore the few options, particularly the ‘smooth route’ option.

[Angelo Mike]

[Brett Cole] “Thanks for the feedback. Would this approach “draw it” per se? I need for the line to be drawn and not just have a blob move. I assume that’s what you’re thinking too. Would this approach work if the line was an arrow with a distinct shape at the head?”

Yes. Keyframing the motion in pan and crop will animate it.

[Andrew Lenczycki]

What Angelo Mike suggests (overlay the route on the map, then unmask the route) is the method I’ve used with good success. I’ve tried the Route Mapper, but it doesn’t have enough control for me (but is a good basic tool). If you want custom arrow heads, symbols (at start, stop or waypoint destinations for example), the following is the way I’ve done it.

To do the “unmask route”, I used Vegas Pro 10 and Photoshop Elements 9 (PE).

1) Open the picture (map) you want to add route lines to in PE. Using various tools (for a quickie, I just used the line tool, making the line width to what I want the route line width to be – 12 pixels in this case). I drew short line segments “onto” the map, overlapping each line segment, to get the smoothest line possible, even around curves. If your line segments each end up on multiple separate layers (as mine did), when done drawing your line segment(s), I hid the underlaying picture (map) layer then Layer|Merge Visible, which combines all the line segments into one solid oject on a single layer. If you are going to have multiple route lines on your map, you can draw them all, then merge them onto one layer in PE.
2) With the underlaying “map” layer still turned off in PE, I used the Pencil and Eraser tools to tweak my route lines, filling in any small gaps where the individual line segments don’t completely match each other, and erasing any edges that don’t “look right”.

3) Once you have your route lines completed, save the file in Photoshop Elements format (so you can go back and tweak if needed), then save the route layer (with the “map” layer turned off) as a PNG file. I usually name it the same name as the picture map file name, but add “route” to it. EX: My map picture is “Map 7 of 8.jpg” so I named the route layer as “Map 7 of 8 Route.png”.
4) Open a project in Vegas, adding the Your Map Route.png file on track 1, and the Your Map.jpg file on track 2.
5) Select the Event Pan/Crop icon on the right side of the track 1 event (Your Map Route.png). Towards the bottom left of the Pan/Crop window, select the Mask checkbox to turn on masking. Now click a mask around each route line, keeping in mind that it doesn’t need to be exact, and that you want to end up with evenly matched sets of masking points around each route. As the mask progresses during the event, you will be progressively deleting one set of mask points, one on either side of the route to “uncover” your route. You need to set the Path|Mode from the default of Positive to Negative, which will “hide” the route (rather than the areas surrounding the route). I also set the Opacity to 75% and the Feather to 2.4% to get a little softer “reveal”. You may need to read about the masking tools in the Vegas help file. Below is a screenshot of my 1st Masking keyframe.

6) Next move down your MASK timeline some period of time and select the first two mask points (across from each other) that are on the end of the route line you want to reveal first, and right click select Delete|Anchor for each of these two points. This will effectively remove part of the mask (revealing part of your route line). See screenshot below of my 2nd Masking keyframe.

7) Keep adding keyframes down your MASK timeline in the Pan/Crop window, removing successive sets of points (one on either side of the route line) to continue to reveal more of the route line. As you can see in the screenshot below, the last keyframe has NO masking points left (revealing the entire route line). Also note that the keyframes are spaced wider (more time between) at the start and end and closer together in the middle keyframes. I did this to give a “slow” start and “slow” end to the route line reveal, while the intermediate route reveal is at a “faster” pace (because the keyframes are closer together).

Below is a quick video of the final output. If you are going to have more than one route line, using the Masking keyframes you could either reveal one route line at a time or reveal multiple lines simultaneously.

Route Line Animation

Sorry for the long-winded explanation, but sometimes the more experienced users jump in and give a very basic description of what needs to be done, but for a beginner, it’s VERY hard to figure out what really needs to be done, step by step. Hopefully this helps.

Andrew Lenczycki

[Stephen Mann]

That’s the hard way – just use Route Generator.

Steve Mann
MannMade Digital Video
http://www.mmdv.com

[Brett Cole]

Thanks everyone for the detailed and helpful responses. I really appreciate it.