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consolidating the ends of 3 lines along an animated path
Hey all, I’ve asked this on a few slack channels as well, but so far haven’t received many suggestions. Figured I’d ask here to see if anyone has any ideas. It might be an expression forum question. Honestly not sure. Here’s the question:
I’m doing the typical task of having streaks follow an animated object. Now, this object will guide all the scenes, so I need the streaks to move dynamically with the object. I’ve figured out how to get the streaks to follow it properly, but I want them to be more individually dynamic, and I’d like them to compress together at the end to kind of form a single, combined tail. I can not, for the life of me, figure out how to do this. I’ve tried Particular (streaks don’t look right). I’ve tried a plugin called Speed Lines – but that doesn’t taper the lines (which I want, and there’s no way to compress them. I’m currently using 3D stroke but, again, no way to control the end. I’ve tried several different distort effects, like bulge, warp, etc, which I paired to a null that followed the shape path. That doesn’t work because the lines curve over each other too frequently. I realize that I could do this easily in Cinema 4D, but really have to keep it in After Effects because other people will probably be working on this project, too, and there’s no guarantee they know how to use C4D. Any ideas?
I can provide a pic of the current test look if necessary. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Sean -
9 Replies
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A picture will be worth a thousand words.
Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive | RenderBreak [blog] | Profile [LinkedIn] -
You could also explain what was wrong with the Particular’s test. And you could try Stardust. If i’m not mistaken it has a separate “module” for trails. Perhaps you’ll get a better control with it.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
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I ended up playing with Particular some more and found a way to make it work (for the most part. Some of the curves are a bit janky – look stepped rather than smooth). It’s not perfect, but it will do. Now I’m working on figuring out how to obscure more than one 3D layer. But thanks for the help!
Sean
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Nice to hear…just remember theres a setting that makes Particular accounts for intra frame steps. Its in emitter -> position subframe. Your curves should not look jagged.
Cassius Marques
http://www.zapfilmes.com -
Out of curiosity: How did you manage to achieve this in the end?
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
Thanks, Cassius!
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I ended up using Particular with a precomp of 3 different colored dots that I set as a sprite particle. Then, to compress the tail, I used the size graph and had it go down to 0 at the end. That way, the tail converged and was able to follow the path. 🙂
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Cool, good solution.
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer
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