Animating Curved Line
by Pat Ford
on
Aug 18, 2008 at 1:27:19 am
I have a tiny amount of skill with AE7;I have done a search and cannot find an answer quickly. I hope someone will give me a push in the right direction.
I want to do a stylized fireworks display....highly stylized. I want to represent the rise of a rocket. There would be several curved lines each with a circle with a stroke and no fill. The circle would rise from the center of the frame at bottom. The circles would rise....there would be a curve line tracing the ascent. The circle would bounce against the top of frame, explode or bounce down and collect in the lower corners of frame.
Soooo, I want to animate a curved line with a circle at the end. The path mimics the rise of a rocket.
Re: Animating Curved Line by Mike Clasby on Aug 18, 2008 at 6:03:03 pm
First go to the spot in the timeline where the stroke begins to animate. On the layer with the stroke hit "uu" to reveal the keyframes that animate the stroke. We'll line up the circle position changes with these keyframes.
In the layer with the stroke, "m" reveals the mask. Select and Copy (Ctrl C) the Mask Shape.
In the circle layer (the one you make or import), hit "p" to reveal it's position. Set a position keyframe by clicking the Position Stopwatch, then Paste (Ctrl V) and the mask will now set position keyframes for the circle position. These are roving keyframes, so you can drag the end keyframe on the right to be directly over the Stroke keyframe that animates the stroke.
The circle should be attached to the end of the stroke.
You can sub in your own graphics for Dan's. Downlaod the project file. Just delete all but one of Dan's particles and Alt-Drag your own particle (should be about the same size) from the Project window onto Dan's selected Particle. Now duplicate the particle (Ctrl D) as many times as you want.
