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Looking for a most effective way to do movement after the elipse
I’m doing brush cleaning animation, and really need to find a way to automate the moment when toothbush is doing round moves while ceaning teeths. I assume that they need to be more eliptical than round ones. Is there any way to make such a loop, and kind of to be comfortable to work with, allowing changing it posiition a little, so the movement wouldn’t be boring and repeatable?
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13 Replies
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Two nulls, Null 1 to control the center of rotation and overall placement of brush, Null 2 for the rotating motion.
Null 2 position expression
thisComp.layer("Null 1").transform.position+[200*Math.cos(time*5), 100*Math.sin(time*5)]Parent the brush to null 2. Adjust values for your needs.
You can add a wiggle to the position of Null 1 to give it some variation.
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
How to add this expresion to a null? Animation->Add expression is inactive
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You have to pick the attribute within the null and add the expression to that (in this case “position”) just select the layer and hit the p button.
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Hmm, one more thing. Parented to null, toothbrush layer doesn’t move while Null is doing circles. I’m aware that it could be impossible to say what’s causing my problem, but is it available to determine what could cause an issue?
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What do you mean by “adding a wiggle” ? How do you picturing that?
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See the attached dummy project.
12867_rotatingtoothbrush.aep.zip
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
Ou! Thank you! So it was just a “wiggle” function xD haha
One more question, how to pin or insert an anchor point at the end of the orange toothbrush in your attached example, so it would stay in place? As the arm is behind the body, if I doesn’t do that, it will go all over the place. I would like to somehow be stuck, and move by only rotation
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There might be an easier solution, but all I can think of right now is a “lookAt” solution. You would have a third null in the point where you wanted the brush handle to point towards and add a lookAt() to the rotation of second null (the one that moves in elliptical fashion). Unfortunately it’s somewhat tedious with 2D layers in After Effects…
I’m sure there’s a simpler solution involving the rotation value of the center null and a sine function, but can’t figure out the code in my head. Need more coffee.
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer -
Thank for your help, I appreciate it. For now I will try to tweak some layers position and kind of imitate that “LookAt” expression, but I will keep it in mind for later.
As I wanted to use expression you wrote to me earlier in the topic,, I have encountered problem when splitting rotating null layer. I wanted to start the rotation from a given time but the whole rotations stops – would you have an idea how to deal with that issue, and how to set animation to start from let’s say 5th second?
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If you split it at 5 seconds, you should get the desired result by changing the null layer name in the expression to be the same as the null layer that exists after that point (“Null 3” or whatever yours is called).
Kalleheikki Kannisto
Senior Graphic Designer
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