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Cheerful_fierceness8848
Participant
August 24, 2026
Question

Possible to do something near exact to this animation?

  • August 24, 2026
  • 4 replies
  • 50 views

A quick question, but I’m looking to redo this animation as I don’t have the original file for it, is it possible to do this in After Effects or is it a Cinema 4D job? Obviously a simple loop would be easy to do with trim ends on a path, but notably on this animation the outer loop passes under the inner one at one point and looks like it’s slightly see through as it passes over another-  so would be a bit of a job but is After Effects capable of building it? 

TIA :)

    4 replies

    Szalam
    Community Expert
    SzalamCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    August 28, 2026

    That looks an awful lot like 3D Stroke from Red Giant. Like many plugins, you can do it by hand, but it’s much, MUCH faster to use the plugin. If you don’t have Red Giant tools, this is something you could do by hand (as Kevin says) with some careful work, but it’ll take a bit of time.

    Cheerful_fierceness8848Author
    Participant
    September 8, 2026

    It does look like but upon giving the trial version a go one thing it doesn’t do is allow for the paths to pass above/below each other where they cross over - so but alternative to that would be masking/layering using it, and it also doesn’t have the option to fade the gradient to 0% opacity at the start, but thanks for the suggestion!

    Community Manager
    Kevin-MonahanCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    August 25, 2026

    Hi! After watching the animation, I’d say After Effects should be capable of creating something like this, so it doesn’t immediately look like a Cinema 4D-only job.


    The over-and-under crossings would be the challenging part, and I suspect they’d require some careful layering or masking rather than a single straightforward Trim Paths setup. I haven’t personally rebuilt this exact effect, though, so I don’t want to pretend I have a proven step-by-step solution.


    Hopefully, someone here who has created a similar woven-path animation can share how they approached it. It’s a cool-looking effect. Good luck!

    Cheers,
    Kevin

      Cheerful_fierceness8848Author
      Participant
      September 8, 2026

      Thanks for the reply! 

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