Make it solid?

[Curious Turtle]

Hi

If you want to get into some interesting expression work then you can check out Dan Ebbert’s Collision Detection set. But I have a feeling that it’s going to be better for you in the short term to stick to animating it yourself.

WIth regards to anchor points – what you’ve discovered is that anchor points and position points are dependent on each other in After Effects. If you just change the anchor point then your layer will move. The trick is to use the Pan Behind tool (Shortcut: Y), this moves both Anchor Point and Position for you hopefully giving the result you need.

Hope that helps,
Ben

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[Kevin Camp]

you may be able to achieve something like you are looking for with particle playground….

you’ll need to apply the effect to a new comp sized layer and set your square as the layer map (essentially the particle that will be emitted). you’ll need to key frame the cannon>particles per second so that it will only emit one square (unless you want more squares) and set the direction and velocity and all that good stuff…. and you’ll probably want to set gravity to 0 (or maybe not…).

you can now create a mask on the solid with the particle playground effect on it that will act as a boundary for the particle to bounce off of. it will need to be a single mask, you can’t create several and have them get joined together… so if you need a complicated boundary, you’ll need to use the pen tool to draw it.

once you have a mask, then you can set the effect to use it as wall>boundary. now you square should get emitted from the ‘cannon’ and bounce off the boundary mask. the action will also create spin for the square if it hits the boundary off angle…

Kevin Camp
Senior Designer
KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW