How to animate unwinding a thread from a spool of thread

[Kevin Camp]

it may depend on how realistic you want it and how much detail your rope/thread needs…

you can make flat ‘spool’ image and wrap it with the cc cylinder effect. if you need caps on that cylinder, you will need to make those out of solids with circular masks that you will place in 3d space. your spool will be very smooth, you won’t have bump detail as it wraps around the cylinder.

you will then need a rope/thread looking image that will animate along as the cylinder turns. and find a way to seemlessly composite the rope/thread to the coil/spool as they both animate.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Joe Moya]

“… and find a way to seemlessly composite the rope/thread to the coil/spool as they both animate…”

hmmm….those few words make it sound so easy… 🙂

I tried some time ago to try and create this effect without 3D animation and basically gave up and simply video recorded an actual spool unwinding and rewinding… then use a typical high end NLE to convert the action into what looked as if it was animated. Waaaay easier and faster.

[Richieb]

You chaps scare the crap out of me. I thought this was a relatively straightforward endeavour.

It seems like I am screwed, because the 3D option will take too much of my time, since I haven’t done any 3D for two years.

I will try to use the cc cylinder and see what I can get done in AE.

Thanks very much for all the responses.