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Need Help With Setup
Hello,
I’ve been asked to do a mockup for an endtag for a commercial.
It is basically a “color wheel” that “opens up” like a fan. It is much easier to show in a picture so:
https://img148.imageshack.us/img148/5427/wheelsi.jpgSo it starts with just one “shape”, the other colors come out from behind it one after the other, and then it settles with the circle complete.
I did it for them once, where the circle would form, then close back up by continuing around until it was just one shape again… I did this by creating a single shape in AE, offsetting the anchor point to the bottom left corner, and then using an expression on the rotation parameter that referenced the index and put a delay on the rotation (I think I found it on Dan Ebberts’ site under follow the leader). Then I animated the rotation of the first shape one full revolution and duplicated the layer. This gave me the complete rotation – forming the whole circle and then closing back up.
But this left me a bit limited – because there’s a set number of layers, I had to precomp the entire wheel in order to do time manipulations – like pause on the full circle before it closed back up. They also talked about doing things like having each one scale down as it rotated into place, or perhaps even forming the circle in a different way – like from off screen left in a line and then joining up in a circle.
I guess I’m looking for a better way to set up my “full circle” so that I have more freedom in animations, but do not have to animate each individual shape by hand. Since every possibility always seems to involve a follow the leader motion (my guess is they will stick to the circular rotation llike in the image above) I feel that this can be done with expressions. But I can’t seem to wrap my head around it. Perhaps a motion path that they could follow and offset along? I assume something with expression control effects here would help.
I know my way around expressions but rarely have had to come up with them on my own, so I’m at a bit of a loss. Thanks for any help.
As I write this I’m finding it difficult to even explain myself so I hope this makes sense. Please ask questions as I’m deeply grateful or any assistance.
Scott
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2 Replies
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Lloyd Alvarez has a nice color fan project on the After Effects Exchange.
I found this by searching for ‘color fan’ in After Effects Community Help Search.
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Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
putting the ‘T’ back in ‘RTFM’ : After Effects Help on the Web
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Cool thanks for that – so many resources, sometimes they slip my mind!
I’ll have a look and see if/how much it helps.
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