Building a wall – brick by brick

[Steve Roberts]

Oof! You can use a top-to-bottom stepped (banded) gradient to make one row come in at a time, but you’d see the entire row come in, not one brick at a time. If you had 256 bricks (or maybe with 16 bit, you can have more…) you could create a gradient where each brick had a different gray level, but …

To do it one brick at a time, I might make the wall, then mask one row of bricks and use a left-to-right gradient to make them come on one at a time in Shatter. Then I’d dupe the layer and move the mask, so we show the next row. And so on. Normally, I’d suggest making one row of bricks, duping it, and moving the row up in shatter, but you can’t move objects in shatter — just the camera.

This is where 3D apps com in handy. 🙂

Anybody else?

[Mrnewo]

Maybe I’m just oversimplifying this, but I’d be inclined to simply get a photo of a brick or make one in PS, then create a comp the max width of your ultimate comp, but only one brick high. Then, animate a mask to outline the first brick, then the first and second, then the first three, and so on. Use hold keyframes on the mask to reveal entire bricks only. Once you’ve created a first row, you can dupe that comp and flip it to build the second, etc..

[Mrnewo]

Maybe I’m just oversimplifying this, but I’d be inclined to simply get a photo of a brick or make one in PS, then create a comp the max width of your ultimate comp, but only one brick high. Replicate the brick to create a full course of bricks using the offset function. Then, animate a mask to outline the first brick, then the first and second, then the first three, and so on. Use hold keyframes on the mask to reveal entire bricks only. Once you’ve created a first row, you can dupe that comp and flip it to build the second, etc..