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Layer follows Stroke start
hey all. first post here. i’ve been searching for an answer for this problem for about a week. im starting to think an expression is the only way to solve it, and even then, im not sure…
here is the issue:
i am animating a map. i have a traveling line setup as a path with a Stroke effect applied. the ‘start’ has been animated to have the path travel over time. nothing new here.
i also want a layer to sit ontop of the head of the Stroke as it travels (a graphic, say a ball/circle, so its not just a line traveling over a map).
in searching for how to get a layer to follow a paths position, i found that apparently the only way to do this is to paste the path into the layers position channel. so i did this and it works.
so lets say i set the start key for both the stroke and the layer at 1, and the end key at 100. they both move along the shape of the path together. no problem.
the problem is i dont want a linear animation. i have not been able to figure out a way to make a change to the animation of 1 and have the other do the same thing, so they are always on the same position on the map. the stroke is animating off a % of the ‘start’ property, and the layer is following a path with 2 keyframes and all those ‘rove across time’ black circles in-between.
i though, perhaps there is an expression that could say “When the layer is here (the starting point) this is 0%, and when the layer is here (the ending point), this is 100%”, and then that would be a value that the Stroke start would understand. this way, at least in my head, i would think that i could make changes to the animation of the layer by adding keys to the roving keys, and sliding them around so i get some animation happening, and then theoretically the Stroke would follow since animating the layer position is now effectively animating the Stroke start value.
though, im not entirely sure this would work, as the path is NOT a straight line, and i dont know that position to percent translation would work. i dunno… im just thinking out loud here.
so yes, this is the problem! im open to ANY solution at this point, even if it means a completely new way of setting this up.
my current fallback plan is to use a ‘write-on’ effect instead of a stroke as that has a ‘brush position’ property which i could probably set to follow the path, and pickup any timing changes i make to it, though i havent tried this yet.
2nd fallback plan is to precomp it and and time remap it, though i realy dont want to have to do that, as the layer is actually already a looping graphic precomp, and if i time remap THAT, the animation will get all weird.
surely someone must have done this before as it seems a very common thing to have to do. inquiries on other forums have not yielded any results, so im hoping the bright minds here can shed some light.
thanks all! (sorry for the overly wordy description)
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17 Replies
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You could let the percent completion of the stroke animation drive the graphic layer’s position. Just past the stroke path into the graphic’s position property, and add a Position expression like this:
percent = thisComp.layer(“map layer”).effect(“Stroke”)(“End”);
valueAtTime(percent*key(numKeys).time/100)Don’t alter the position keyframes and the graphic should follow the stroke perfectly.
Dan
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hmm, interesting. thanks dan. i will try this in the morning and let you know how it goes!
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hey Dan. so, this works, but not quite off the bat, though i figured it out.
i have the Stroke start set to start animating at frame 25. the 1st key in the graphic layer position was also set at 25, so they would start together.
so i left the position keys alone, pasted in your expression, added a tweak via some additional keys in the Stroke start, and it did follow, but it was delayed by 23 frames.
on a hunch i set the 1st position key for the graphic back to frame 0, and now everything follows properly.
it would be great if you could explain to me how this expression works, in plain english. im tryin to learn expressions, and i’ve only been at it for a couple weeks. id love to be able to understand the logic of how it does what its doing.
thanks alot!
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When you paste a path into a position property, you get a smooth animation that lasts two seconds. Sorry, I forgot to mention that you needed to make sure you pasted it in at time zero. Since the Start and End properties of the Stroke effect represent percent travel along the same path, all the expression does is convert that percentage to an equivalent time between zero and two and then use valueAtTime() to extract the corresponding position from the Position property version of the path.
Dan
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ok, so let me see if i understand this…
-valueAtTime, means: be this value (that we are about to calculate inside the brackets) right now?
-percent, well thats obvious.
-*key(numKeys), the number of keyframes, in this case 2.
-.time/100, the current time (frame #?) divided by 100?this last part is what confuses me. is it numKeys x frame# / 100?
so, the path gets converted into 2 keyframes and into a linear animation, 0% at key1 and 100% at key2 (hence the /100 at the end?). every point on the path in between is just an interpolation so the graphic sticks to the path and maintains that constant linear speed. the shape of the path is not important, only that its getting from point A to B over a linear number of frames…?
so if it was frame 75, and the stroke was at 18%, it would be valueAtTime = (18x((2×75)/100))? so it would return a value of 27? meaning the graphic should be 27% way through its animation?
…am i on the right track here? 🙂
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valueAtTime() means get the value of this property (position) from the time (in seconds) calculated inside the parenthesis.
key(numKeys).time is the time of the last position keyframe. Normally there would be more than two. If your stroke path has curves in it, you should get some roving keyframes between the two linear ones on each end. In any case, this gives you the time of the last one (which should always be two seconds in this case). So I guess you could replace:
valueAtTime(percent*key(numKeys).time/100)
with this:
valueAtTime(percent*2/100)
Using your example, if the stroke was at 18%, the position expression should extract the value from 18*2/100 or .36 seconds. So 18% stroke corresponds to 18% travel.
Dan
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damn, confusing. its worse that time is in seconds, not in frames! oh well.
i do have lots of roving frames in my position channel between the 2 keys. it seems that no matter how long you stretch the 2nd key out to, the expression still works. were you aware of this? cause it seems like your math was based on the fact that you assumed the keys were spaced 2 seconds apart. either way it seems to work… so just fyi.
i got that book, After Effects Expressions, and im making my way through that. hopefully once im done this will make more sense.
thanks alot for you’re help Dan! im sure ill have more questions soon enough.
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The version that uses key(numKeys) should work even if you stretch the keyframes out (why would you though?). It won’t work if the first keyframe isn’t at time zero though (although it would be easy to modify the code to allow for that (not tested, but it should be close):
percent = thisComp.layer(“map layer”).effect(“Stroke”)(“End”);
t = linear(percent,0,100,key(1).time,key(numKeys).time)
valueAtTime(t)Dan
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well it had been stretched out because when i was setting up the comp originally and i just had the linear motion, the animation still had to span the length of the comp, so i had stretched the keys out to match the keys of the stroke animation.
but, i understand now that it can be left at 2 seconds.
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hey Dan, just a bit of a curiosity. i was playing around with my map animation (the camera move) and decided to put some rotation on it so it was not just looking straight down at the map. it seems that when this happens, the graphic layer no longer follows the stroke… it jumps off into the lead and seems to get further and further ahead the longer it travels.
if im limited to looking straight down, thats fine, i just thought id ask why this is happening, and is there a way to correct it. if not, not a big deal.
thanks!
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