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Using Trim Paths to Draw Dotted Line on AND Off
Greetings,
My project involves a dotted line that draws on from the left side of the screen, draws the outline of an image (house/hand/others), and then draws off the right side of the screen. The hope is for the left end of the line to follow, “erasing” everything that had been drawn, leaving the screen empty. My approach has been to use a shape path with Trim Paths to animate the line on and off. The line draws on properly, but when it’s time for it to animate off (using the “start” property), the dots actually move along the path instead of “erasing” the way they were drawn on. My guess is that they’re moving because I’m actually moving the Start Point, right? Any thoughts on an approach to get this to “draw off” instead of moving along the path?
Thanks so much,
Chris -
3 Replies
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I see no way to do it on one layer. Best solution I came up with is after you animate the line on, duplicate the layer and remove all the keyframes. Under shape change the direction of the arrow under “Path”, that changes the starting point of the path. Then animate the “End” from 100% to 0. Use that layer as a track matte for your dotted line.
Kind of a clunky work around, that wouldn’t be needed if you could keyframe the starting point of the layer. I made a sample project, you can check out.
8765_dottedlinetrackmatte.aep.zip
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb. -
Thanks for your response, John. In the meantime I sort of found my way to a similar solution. I am just making the moves I want with a non-dotted line that has the same width as the dotted one, then using it as a track matte. I’m going to give your method a try too and see if it makes for an easier workaround.
Thanks so much for responding. I appreciate it.
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Glad I could help
Johnny Cuevas, Editor
Thinkck.com“I have not failed 700 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
—THOMAS EDISON on inventing the light bulb.
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