Write-on effect from two directions? is this even possible?

[David Lieberman]

that thread question was posted by me and to be honest, it has nothing to do with this question…

Im trying to figure out how to use two write on effects on one layer, hence revealing different points (left point and rigth point) simulatenously…

The only similar question on creativecow was to do with a gun and masks, but that’s not what im trying to do. I want to reveal the image not draw on it. and I have no idea how to reveal the image from two seperate points at once…except for duplicating the image…

thanx for the help.

[Darby Edelen]

[david lieberman] “that thread question was posted by me and to be honest, it has nothing to do with this question… “

I think you’re a little quick to write that technique off. I’m going to simplify the technique for the purposes of this post, but it should apply to your situation. For example, if you wanted to reveal a straight line equally from the beginning to the middle and from the end to the middle you could animate your first write-on effect on a solid above the layer to be revealed from the beginning to the end, duplicate the effect, reverse the keyframes move to the midway point of the keyframes, create a new keyframe on both effects (this should be the same middle point for both effects) and delete the keyframes that follow the midpoint in both effects. Note that in order for this to work you have to set your Write-On effects to “On Transparent,” but you can then use this solid layer as an alpha track matte for the layer you want to reveal.

You can’t always expect there to be an easy button, but if you think through the problem I’m sure you can come up with an elegant solution (which is so often better than an easy one).

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[David Lieberman]

thanks for the help… but when i duplicate the write-on effect and put the second one on transparent it simply cancells out the first one and the effect doesnt work essentially.

thanx for the help.

[Darby Edelen]

[david lieberman] “but when i duplicate the write-on effect and put the second one on transparent it simply cancells out the first one and the effect doesnt work essentially.”

Sorry, that should’ve been “On Original Image.”

Darby Edelen
Designer
Left Coast Digital
Santa Cruz, CA

[David Franklin]

I’m not entirely sure why you have given up on the “stroke” effect. If you use the pen tool to draw paths that follow each of the many strokes that make up your flower, then use the “reveal original” paint style, rather than “on transparent,” you should be able to animate the reveal using the “start” and “end” perameters.

If you can’t get the brush wide enough, you could also experiment with making duplicates of the layer with different “revealing strokes” positioned so that the combined effect reveals your flower. That’s a little clunky, I know.

The other option would be to bring the flower in as an Adobe Illustrator sequence (you implied that it was a vector image — is that where it was made?), and then animate the actual layers that make up the flower to have them grow individually into their final positions.

I hope this helps!

[David Lieberman]

thank you for the help. the flower was made in adobe illustrator. im not very familiar in how to animate on illustartor but ill have a look at some tutorials. Putting the second write-on on Reveal original doesnt do the trick. it only creates another stroke in the colour that you choose instead of actually revealing the original.

You’d think they would have that sorted out so u can use as many multiples of write-on as you wish but hey…they dont!

thanx for the help.

[David Lieberman]

i have tried to duplicate the stroke effect with differnt options for reveal and nothing works to allow two effects on one layer to reveal different sections simultanously…so i take it there’s no way around this…

I’ve duplicated the layer using the write-on effect on different sections of each layer, but as you said, it comes out clunky and its very obvious from the shine of the stroke that they are lying on top of eachother and clashing..

thanx for the help.

[David Franklin]

Okay. Two more ideas.

One is to use masks in the add mode to reveal the flower. To do this, use the the pen tool to draw the mask over each radial part of the flower, repeating until you’ve drawn a mask for each section you want to have uncovered. Then hit “mm” to reveal all mask properties, and turn on the stopwatch for the masks’ position and set a keyframe for each mask’s “ending” position.

If you then go back to the beginning of the comp and bring all the mask vertices that are at the edge of the flower in to the center, then and make new key frames for each of these new mask positions, the entire flower should be hidden by having tiny masks. You should be able to RAM preview and see all the masks animate from the “start” position where nothing is revealed, to an “end” position where everything is. You could tweak this by animating the mask expansion property at the same time as you have the vertices move positions.

The second idea is to take your individual strokes that make up the flower and, using the pan behind tool, move the anchor points to the place where you want each piece to start its growth. Then turn on the stopwatch for the “scale” property and ramp it down to zero. Move down the timeline and scale back up to 100%. If you stagger this process for parts of the flower that are higher up, so that they don’t start “growing” until after the stalk reaches them, you will get a different type of growing effect. It won’t look the same as a write-on or stroke style reveal, but it might be nice.

That’s my best shot!

[David Lieberman]

great options!! thank you, I just found another one as well,

Using the Vector Pain effect, make the strokes animated and as matte, then i just trace what i want and tune the animation length to fit the speed i need..

thanks again!!

thanx for the help.