Slowly morph 2D shapes using reshape

[Steve Roberts]

Try this:

1. make the 250×250 solid
2. mask the square by dbl-clicking on the square mask tool
3. add 4 extra points to the square mask at the midpoint of each side: N, E, S, W.
3a. keyframe the mask shape
4. move ahead in time
5. make a new solid, masked to form a circle the same size as your final. This is a template: lock it.
5. Drag the corner points of the square mask so they meet the circle at 45 degree positions: NE, SE, SW, NW. You should have an octagon.
6. Select the pen tool, and alt-click on the corner points to make them bezier (smooth) points. You should now have a circle.
7. Hide the template and test the animation.

Does that make sense?

[Ignatius Gorin]

Many thanks for the quick answer !

I’m not in front of it right now but it seems to make sense, I’ll try it later as soon as I can.

Is this using reshape? Is there render time? I failed from my chair when my guy announced that it would take 50hrs to render this kind of stuff on a dual proc G5…

I see two ways to go from a square to a circle : either the circle is contained within the square (size wise), i.e. the diameter of the circle = one square side, or, the square is contained within the circle, i.e. diameter = square diagonal… or somewhere in between, like half way, i.e. circle diameter = square (side+diagonal)/2; now I’m thinking maybe this last option would be the smoothest, so as not to have to shrink or expand the initial shape too much. What do you think? But this doesn’t seem to affect your technique.

Also, should I want a drop down shadow underneath the animated shape afterwards, would that be complicated?

Thanks!

[Steve Roberts]

No, it doesn’t use the reshape effect — just an animated mask on a solid.

Of course there’s render time 🙂 It’s gotta be faster than using the reshape effect.
So I just tested it, and saw a render time of 9 seconds for a 4-second comp, using just one masked solid and a sharp drop shadow over a solid background. So a 15-minute version of that comp would take about 33 minutes and 45 seconds to render. Roughly. 🙂

Just try my technique: one mask with eight points, animated from square to curvy octagon, as I described.

As for the drop shadow, just apply effect>perspective>drop shadow. Dead easy.

[Ignatius Gorin]

MANY thanks !-)

[Steve Roberts]

Masks are good. 🙂

[Steve Roberts]

I miscalculated: the render was actually 13 seconds, so 15 minutes would take 48 minutes and 45 seconds at D1 res. Or so.

[Steve Roberts]

Now, if you have stuff in the square that you want to distort, such as text, then that’s different. You’d have to use one of the distort effects, such as the reshape effect or the liquify effect.

[Ignatius Gorin]

No, just plain color within the square.

And 45′ is totally ok (compared to 50 _hours_…).

Thanks!

[Mike Smith]

1 – how can a circle be “same size” as a square ..?

2 – what happens if you make your solid (square) bigger than the target composition (or target pre-comp if it’s a small part of the frame)

The create a circle mask

Then use scale to animate, at minimal render time … ?

[Ignatius Gorin]

>> 1 – how can a circle be “same size” as a square ..? << That's why I used quotes around "same size". What I meant was that the circle's diameter = either the square 's side or diagonal. Or it could be same area, like if the square is 50x50 (area=2500) then pi*r^2=2500 [or (2500/pi)^(1/2) if I'm right] for the square. Well I dunno 🙂 For the rest, I'll let Steve answer 🙂 (and I still have to try he's technique as we're very short on time and doing other needed stuff).