Can this effect be made in After Effects

[Soham Jani]

Hmmm..that’s pretty interesting. Are you familiar with Cinema 4D? Or any 3D program, forminstance? Because I think that’s the easiest way to bend the arrow. Other than that, maybe you could try to fake the curve through some sort of distortion, or a lens effect but I don’t think it will get the best result. But try googling a curved arrow effect and maybe you’ll find something interesting.

[Tudor “ted” jelescu]

A really easy way to achieve that is to animate the arrows in a 2d comp sized accordingly, bring that in the master comp and apply FreeForm Pro to it. Then you can bend that in 3d space and distort it to get the curved arrow path.

Tudor “Ted” Jelescu
Senior VFX Artist

[Paull Blank]

I’ve only dabbled in 3D but thats my next goal to learn. I used CC Page Turn to give me something that’s close enough for now. But I’ll look into a 3D solution once Im done with this workload. Is Cinema 4D a good one to learn or should I go for LightWave? I’ll be doing some 3D modeling in the future as well. Thanks!
https://youtu.be/Fn9Av318dyw

Some contents or functionalities here are not available due to your cookie preferences!

This happens because the functionality/content marked as “Google Youtube” uses cookies that you choosed to keep disabled. In order to view this content or use this functionality, please enable cookies: click here to open your cookie preferences.

[Paull Blank]

FreeForm Pro looks pretty awesome. I just bought an Element 3D Bundle for $300 so I’ll have to hold off on spending more $ at this point. ha. But I’m gonna look further into it. Thanks!

[Joseph W. bourke]

You could do the 3D curve in Element 3D by just using a large sphere, then applying the arrow with an alpha as a custom texture map

Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com

[Ximon Gray]

You can do it in AE without any plugins.

1) As Ted said, create the animation in 2D and precompose it.

2) Switch the renderer from Classic 3D to Ray-traced 3D (the option is at the top right of the preview window).

3) Enable the 3D switch on the precomp.

4) In the layers panel, click the drop-down arrow for the precomp, and you will see ‘Geometry Options’. Increase curvature and segments accordingly.

5) Add a camera and move it until you get the perspective you want, add depth of field to make it look nice.

[Darion Leigh]

Sure – make it a s flat arrow moving across the scree and warp or bend it using a distortion effect.

CC Bend it
Effect > Warp

[Kalleheikki Kannisto]

Plus Element has other 3D distortion effects: Bend, Twist and Taper that you can bend an extruded layer with. Or if you got the Motion Design 2 pack, there are ready-made curved backdrops you could map the arrow footage onto.

[Paull Blank]

You guys are great! Thank you for all the advice. I am going to try each of your suggestions to see how they each look. I do have the motion designer pack for Element so I’m very interested in playing that as well. Thanks again everyone!