Jason Jantzen
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AE Expressions Coin
1
COW Coin
Forum Replies Created
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I was going through old threads and came across this. What I would do is make a parametric (non-bezier) circle on a shape layer with just the stroke at like 6 pixels. Animate trim path that’s found in the Add menu when you twirl down the layer. Add a keyframe to the stroke width, and animate the width so that it goes from a width of like 6-8 or something desirable. Now you you have one circle animated. If you want the offset look like in the video, it’ll be easier to duplicate the shape layer and not the shape group inside the shape layer. On the duplicates, you just need to size the circle down mathematically so that it fills the main circle. So, if the first circle is 100 pixels and has a 6 pixel stroke, and you want that gap in between to show like in the video, then you’ll need to make the second circle 93 pixels to show a 1 pixel gap. When you animate the stroke width, this will close the gap (animating the stoke 2 pixels bigger is overshooting it on purpose to avoid any slight gap that might show up from anti-aliasing). If you want to reveal anything within those circles, you’ll have to precomp the animation once it’s all completed and then duplicate the precomp and set that as your track matte for what you want revealed.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
There is this script, which may be a bit out of reach considering he’s charging $100 for it. It will give you per vertex position values. It’s pretty amazing. I bought it a while back, and it’s been useful here and there.
https://aescripts.com/bao-mask-avenger/
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
Yeah, a mask path.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
Yeah, that’s kind of how I envisioned the heat lines, entering and exiting sort of how steam might behave in real life, but what you’re going for is a more stylized approach.
I tried doing your approach only using a solid with the write on effect and the end caps tend to distort much less.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
You could also just draw a straight line on a shape path, use the twist effector, add trim paths, adjust it to 50% and animate the offset.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
I just saw this, but if you’re still stuck, I use a script for this called Gridder https://aescripts.com/gridder/ It has an option to generate an expression controller to animate the circular grid into a rectangular grid. I believe so, anyway. If not, you could always use the script to arrange your circle, make your key frames, then use the script again to arrange them in a grid.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
Yeah, it looks like the twirl effect doesn’t translate in 3d space, which actually allows for some cool distortion effects that sort of look like bending the layer in 3d space, but not the look you’re going for. If you really want it flat and in 3d space, I’d export a larger file size to keep your clean lines and switch off CT.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
Do you own a copy of C4D or are you using C4D Lite included with After Effects 12. I don’t believe Sketch and Toon is included in Lite. The way I set up that scene, I’m not using Sketch and Toon. It’s a simple cell shader. I don’t even have Sketch and Toon turned on in the render settings.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
It works for me. I haven’t tested it, but I think the sketch & toon effect is what you’re talking about from the render settings, which doesn’t work with Cineware. It should. Everything should translate over, technically speaking.
I’m talking about creating a cell shader like you were initially asking about. That works fine for me. I’ll attach an example. Drop this file straight into AE and see how that works. All the settings are in the luminance channel. The ambient occlusion has also been tweaked to look more like cell shading by reducing the ray length, contrast to -100% and adjusting the gradient as desired (determines how far the AO spreads). I’m not sure if the C4D file contains the OBJ, but it’s a generic model that comes with Studio, so it should be in there anyway.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj -
Oh, you’re taking about the render effect in render settings. Yeah, that doesn’t translate with cineware. The standard cel shader works fine, however. You can create one in the luminance channel under the sketch effect, choose cel.
Jason Jantzen
vimeo.com/jasonj