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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects stroke end following motion tracker

  • stroke end following motion tracker

    Posted by Felix Gorbach on December 3, 2010 at 8:20 pm

    Hy folks,

    I just made some tests for an upcoming project – in combination with mocha 2.5 for AE.
    Everything works fine – but I want to follow the end of a stroke to a motion tracker.

    See screenshot for that tree-eating machine – it´s pretty huge and cuts a tree in seconds…

    The tracking and mask things I made with mocha – just tried this for a few hours and it works perfect.
    But to push this further I´d like to follow the end of the stroke (done with an adjustmentlayer, the pen tool and 3D Strokeplugin) to follow the movement of the green part of the lower part of the machine (hanibal)… hope this makes sense 🙂

    Maybe the 3d stroke way with pentool is not the right way – but hope its possible to follow a mask shape point to a tracker (or a null object that follows the tracker 🙂

    Thanks for your great ideas,

    Felix

    And I know Hannibal is with double n…

    Felix Gorbach replied 15 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • Kevin Camp

    December 3, 2010 at 8:37 pm

    you might try the write-on effect, using a simple expression to link the ‘brush position’ to the tracking object. it should then ‘write-on’ a line that follows that track.

    if your tracking layer is named ‘track’ your expression could look like this:

    thisComp.layer(‘track’).transform.position

    Kevin Camp
    Senior Designer
    KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

  • Felix Gorbach

    December 3, 2010 at 9:03 pm

    I hope I know what you are suggesting. This would generate a “seeable” motionpath – right?

    But that´s not what I´m looking for.
    Maybe this screenshot explains it better:

    Thanks a lot,

    Felix

    I know – I could “handtrack” the end of the stroke as the shots that I´m using have just a couple of seconds – but I´m sure that there is a better way

  • Kevin Camp

    December 3, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    sorry, i misunderstood what you were looking for, i did think you were trying to trace the path…

    there is a script that will ‘attach’ a path vertex to the position of a layer (or any 2d point/point control). i believe it will work with multiple vertexes and points. you can get that at the top of this page:

    https://www.crgreen.com/aescripts/

    you could also try the beam effect… it simply draws a line between 2 points and you could use an expression like the one i mentioned in previously to attach one end of the ‘beam’ to the track the machine, and the other to track the shot (or the word ‘hanibal’).

    Kevin Camp
    Senior Designer
    KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

  • Felix Gorbach

    December 3, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    this sounds very promising.
    will try that as soon as I´m back to my machine… it´s 22:36 in Austria – and I just had a beer… I´ll report – thanks

  • Felix Gorbach

    December 3, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    Haha – I could not resist. Got it workin with the beamer effect and the expression – great – tomorrow I´ll take a look on the script. maybe this is a more elegant way – but for all of us – it´s workin with the beamer effect great – and the stroke moves along with the movement of the machine.

    Thanks,

    Felix

    a href=’https://i1.creativecow.net/u/190803/bildschirmfoto-2010-12-03-um-23.35.jpg’>

  • Chris Wright

    December 4, 2010 at 7:19 am

    also, you can use custom connectors besides the bland beam, for instance, you can use ropes, chains, beads, etc. They work best as vector images.

    custom connectors
    https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/2/986902

    https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

  • Felix Gorbach

    December 4, 2010 at 11:25 am

    after trying out the script thing – its much cooler than the beam effect – thanks so much – it`ll save a lot of time.

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