[Filip Vandueren]

There are a few plugins out there.

Do a search on the cow. Pete’s plugins has a screen, but is sloooow

[Filip Vandueren]

I almost always do it this way.

I find glow a bit too slow, it’s probably based on Gaussian blur, not Fast blur.

[Filip Vandueren]

Eventhough you can easliy do it in Javascript,
not all javascript methods are mirrored in the aftereffects expression language.

Why do you need this ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Eventhough you can easliy do it in Javascript,
not all javascript methods are mirrored in the aftereffects expression language.

Why do you need this ?

[Filip Vandueren]

Assuming you don’t have any layers parented to anything else, and the beam is applied to a solid that fits to the comp…

give the arrowhead these expressions:

position:

thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Ending Point");


rotation:

vec=thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Ending Point")-thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Starting Point");
rad=Math.atan2(vec[1],vec[0]);
radiansToDegrees(rad)+value;


If the arrow is flipped or 90 degreess of, just scrub the rotation value to + or -90

of course: change “beamlayer” to the name of your beam layer 😎

[Filip Vandueren]

Assuming you don’t have any layers parented to anything else, and the beam is applied to a solid that fits to the comp…

give the arrowhead these expressions:

position:

thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Ending Point");


rotation:

vec=thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Ending Point")-thisComp.layer("beamlayer").effect("Beam")("Starting Point");
rad=Math.atan2(vec[1],vec[0]);
radiansToDegrees(rad)+value;


If the arrow is flipped or 90 degreess of, just scrub the rotation value to + or -90

of course: change “beamlayer” to the name of your beam layer 😎

[Filip Vandueren]

Wow,

blast from the past…

I’m thinking if it can be worked around with trapcode 3d stroke, but I’m quite busy the next days…

[Filip Vandueren]

Wow,

blast from the past…

I’m thinking if it can be worked around with trapcode 3d stroke, but I’m quite busy the next days…

[Filip Vandueren]

Just do a file-search for “Adobe After Effects 6.5 Prefs”

on Mac os X it’s in /Users/yourname/Library/Preferences/

[Filip Vandueren]

Well…

to state the obvious: couldn’t you film a tangled phone cord.

At least to have some decent reference footage, because even in 3D, this is no cakewalk.

I wouldn’t even know how to start in 2D, short of the smoke & mirrors / misdirection / jump cut stuff you described.