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Form Image to Path
Here’s what I’m trying to do. I created a rolling hill scene and want to place grass on top of the hill but I want the grass to form to the shape of the top of the hill mask. Here’s what I did:
1) Created hills in Illustrator
2) Copied the path to a solid layer in After Effects
3) Now I have a vector image of a grass layer that is a straight horizontal line, but I want that horizontal grass image/vector to follow (or wrap to) the path of the tops of the hills.Here is a link to the screenshot from After Effects to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.
https://722productions.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/AE-Sample.png
I’ve spent way too long on this so now I’m seeking help from the pros. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.
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6 Replies
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Have you tried the Distortion plugins which come with AE? You might try the Displacement map, and, using the hills image, get something close. I’d probably just take the hills into Photoshop, create a brush from a chunch of the grass, and paint it.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
Thanks Joe and Dave. Joe, I tried to make a brush in Illustrator, but I’m guessing the grass vector was too complex because it wouldn’t let me. The image of the grass layer was actually 7 sections pieced together. What I ended up doing was taking each section and applying an envelope warp then I just adjusted the anchors and handles to match the curve of the hills. It was time consuming, but it came out how I had hoped. I’m just surprised that After Effects doesn’t have a “form to path” feature for images. I know you can do it with text, but doing it for images seems to be a feature that could be added for CS7 (unless it already exists and I can’t find it).
Anyway, here is a screenshot of what the rolling hills look like now.
https://722productions.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/AE-Sample-2.png
Thanks again for your kindness to respond.
Jason
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Jason
Glad that you solve the problem. Just for the knowledge:
You can use Mesh Warp Effect to distort the Image.
You can also use Text-Anarchy Plugin from Red Giant to distort shape through a path using Path Distort Feature.
Vishesh Arora
3D and Motion Graphics Artist
Films RajendraBlog:
https://digieffects.wordpress.com2011 3D Demo Reel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHPgIJU_BR8 -
Thanks Vinesh. I tried the mesh warp but it was acting quirky on me. I’ll have to try it again on a dummy comp to see if I can get it to work.
Jason
Jason Nelson
722 Production
St. Petersburg, FL -
Nice work Jason, and thanks for sharing your solution.
Joe Bourke
Owner/Creative Director
Bourke Media
http://www.bourkemedia.com -
The Reshape effect with some tweaking of the paths may work. It’ll get more complicated if the layers are continuously rasterized.
Darby Edelen
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