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Logical problem / Position, Scale and Speed
Hi
I’m animating a row of fishes that are swimming along a spiral shaped path. The fishes become smaller and smaller as they are approaching the center of the spiral. In fact I have only animated one fish, and then duplicated the layer 20 times and sequenced the layers.
Now my problem is that i want the distance BETWEEN the fishes to be constant, that is, each fish should bite the tail of the fish in front of him. I don’t know how to achieve this. Right now the distance between the fishes increases as they become smaller. Any ideas?
best-
Wilhelm
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2 Replies
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If you made the spiral a 3D helix instead, then if placed correctly, it would look like a spiral to the camera. The fishes would get smaller as they move away from the camera – due to perspective, but the distance between them wouldn’t change.
Otherwise you’ve got a nasty bit of expressions work on your hands, or a lot of manual tweaking.
There’s plenty of tutorials about getting things to follow 3D paths in After Effects.
One way would be to attach each fish to a null. Then rotate the null around its z-axis while at the same time moving it away from the camera along its z-axis. Then duplicate this arrangement up x times and offet them along the time line to get the desired distance.
-Ben.
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Hi and Thanks!
The fish move in relation to a 2D drawing, so the 3D approach is difficult here (I think tweeking the paths in 3D space would take too long). Any other ideas for how to do this ?
Here is an image showing what I’m trying to do :
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