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What Are The Best Practices for Animation?
Hello,
I’m looking for advice on the best way to animate a flow of dots inside a pipe. The end result would be a continuous flow of dots that loop infinitely.
I went an old school route where I copied and pasted about 150 layers to achieve the flow, but once my 30 seconds of timeline ends, the dots start from the beginning animating one after another. My looping isn’t continuous.
I’m familiar with loop expressions but really need help on the best practice for animation.
I really would appreciate any feedback.
Below is a graphic of what I’m working for a visual reference.
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5 Replies
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— hi Jason — I reckon you can do this with a mask – v quick and easy to test anyway….
1 ) draw mask path along pipes – you do not need to close path
2 ) delete fill and adjust stroke to width of dots and set to correct colour
3 ) go to dashes ( at the bottom ) and set size to 1 – should give dots
4 ) adjust gap to whatever
5 ) go to start and set keyframe on the ‘offset’ box
6 ) render this as a single reference frame ( maybe in a different colour ( ? )
7 ) import as a background to the dots layer just created
8 ) go to end of loop and adjust offset randomly ( probably around 1500 for a 30 second loop) then fine tune it to match where if would be the frame BEFORE the ref frame ( so you dont get a double frame )
—- never done this but reckon theres a fair chance this will give the right result and it should only take 10 mins or so to check it out — good luck …………
————————————————– chris —
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@Chris Brett- Thank you very much for your solution. Your right, it only took me 10 minutes and it works almost perfectly. The issue I’m having is the dots need to animate from the bottom line. When I play the animation, the dots animate from the top. All it needs is to be reversed. I’ll research how to do this but if you know, please let me know.
Thanks again for your solution Chris!
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Hi Dave LaRonde- Thanks for responding. I tried Chris’s solution first and it worked out for me. I appreciate your input.
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— probably just reverse the keyframes —-c—
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There’s a slightly hidden thing too. Right click a point on the path. Then Mask and Shape Path > Set First Vertex.
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