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How to create a Dot to Dot animation
Hi there. I am trying to create an animating Dot to Dot image. For those of you not familiar with this childhood counting excericse it involves connecting points in a pattern in sequnce to form an image. I have had some success using stroke around an animated mask and then using the same mask as a text path and alot of full stops to create the dots. This same approach works for the numbers too (a seperate text layer with the same mask), but only single numbers. when I start typing 10, 11 , 12 etc, they appear on the path with a massive space. I am force justiying the dots and numbers around the path, and for the numbers grouping them as words (so the numbers have spaces between them. There is a solution, turning off the force justify and then typing spaces to push the text around the path.
The other technique I have been using is using the alpha from the keyed footage and using a matte choker and then the original footage as an inverse matte to get an outline. However I am not to sure how best to get the numbers and dots to attache to this path without animating each one. The stroke reveals using a mask. If anyone has any ideas on developing this approach I would be very interested because it obviously requres less roto scoping, my most hated of things everer.The next question is regarding Gravity. I would like to be able to apply gravity to objects, like the dots for instance, so once the image is complet, they drop away. But in general knowing how to apply gravity would be great. I am sure there is an expresssion that could or has been written accelerating the object down at about 9.8ms2. if they could collide with a ground, that would be even better. I could do this in Maya but I am reluctant to turn this into an entirely 3D job. If anyone has any ideas about gravity in after effects I would be eteranly greatfull.
Sincerely
Peter Stenhouse -
1 Reply
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I did something like this for a Geometry lesson video recently dealing w) points and lines. I used the “Beam” effect.
I set the same color for “Inside” and “Outside”, and the softness to 0%. Then I set the “Length” to 100% and “Time” to 50%. I then key framed the “Time” parameter to show the line “drawing itself” from one point to another. As for the dot’s, I just instanced one dot that I’d created with the “Circle” effect.
Worked well for me.
As for gravity, I just eyeball it. I set the opening keyframe to “Easy-Easy out” and adjust the closing keyframe to match the “feel” of gravity based on the visual scale of the comp.
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