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Attach shapes to an animated shape path?
I’m trying to create a zipper effect. I know how to make shapes move along a motion path but I’m trying to do the opposite – have an animated shape path (or mask path) dictate the position and orientation of the two halves of the zipper. Ideally I’d like to repeat and offset the teeth of the zipper (although I don’t mind duplicating and offsetting layers) and then have the teeth attach to an animated path that splits and curves on a bezier point that slides down vertically. (two animated reflected paths)
There’s a nice little script (path duplicator) on aescripts.com that will replicate and orient shapes along a path but AFAIK it won’t update dynamically as the path changes?
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2 Replies
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An easy solution is to use text on a path and repeat a character that looks like the teeth of the zipper, such as “1” or “l” (numeric one or lower case “L”). Text on path is fully animatable.
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Yeah – that won’t work. It’s an idea copied from the client’s website (where I guess they animated it with Flash or HTML) and the style has to match. I’ve never done it but I suppose I could create a new character in a new font but surely there is a way in AE to get around this problem.
I’m no scripting or expressions guru – I guess what I need to know is can I use valueAtTime to place objects along an animated path so their position updates as the path updates?
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