Stroke Effect and speed

[Steve Roberts]

That means that each line would take a different length of time to go from 0 to 100. For example, if it takes line A one second to go from 0-100, it would take line B, twice the length, two seconds to go from 0-100.

So. You need one instance of the Stroke effect for each mask (dupe the effect in the Effects palette), and you need to adjust the keyframes so they all have the same speed. To do this, make the speed graph visible in the timeline, for each pair of Stroke keyframes.

There may be an Expression solution, but I can’t think of one.

Anybody else?

[Shiba Doo]

hmmm. I think I did not get your point.. What do you mean with “one instance of the Stroke effect for each mask”????

[Steve Roberts]

In the Effects palette/window (F3), for the Stroke effect, deselect “all Masks” and select “mask 1” from the Path drop-down list there. Set the paint style to “on transparent”. Make sure the effect is selected, and hit cmd+D to duplicate it (ctrl-D on Win). Select the dupe, choose Mask 2 and set Paint Style to “on Original Image”. Dupe Stroke 2, then Stroke 3, and so on, matching each Stroke to a mask until each Mask has a Stroke.

The first one should be “on transparent”, and all the subsequent strokes should be “on original image”.

One layer, multiple masks, multiple strokes.

Now then. I was wrong regarding the speed. Forget what I said about that.

Here’s one way that works: make the graphs for the stroke End keyframes visible in the timeline. Assume the longest stroke is moving at the correct speed. Move the Current-time indicator (CTI) to the point in time where the shortest stroke should finish — if it is 1/4 the length of the longest stroke, move to 1/4 the time between 0 and 100 … where the longest stroke is at 25%, I suppose. Hide all strokes except the longest and shortest.

Drag (to the left) the rightmost (100) graph vertex for the short stroke until it’s at the CTI. Its graph slope should be steeper than the long stroke’s graph slope. Adjust that vertex in time until the length of the short stroke matches the length of the long stroke at that point in time. Do a preview to make sure the speed matches.

Next, do the same with each stroke’s vertex so all strokes are the same length at that point in time. Do a RAM preview.

Let us know how it goes.

[Steve Roberts]

Then, once you’re done, if you need to change the speed of the whole thing, hide the graphs, show the keyframes, select them all, then alt-drag the first or last key to keep them spaced proportionally.

[Shiba Doo]

wow… thanks for this post… I will try tomorrow… forgot to mention that it is not the same animation where all the lines should be animated, but diffeerent animations. In principle it should be a tourism video where in between the different stages there is always one map animation showing the way from one point to the next one… But nevertheless the speed of the strokes should be the same, otherwise it looks strange. The longest stroke is something like times 10 the shortest one…