After Effects Path Copy

[bongp]

I have a situation wher I've made some shape layers and generated some paths for objects to follow from the right  mid screen to outside. This is working perfectly but now I want to have the same paths and objects that will follow similar paths from left mid screen to outside. I have experimented with copying one of the paths and transforming the path so it mirrors the right side path. I have duplicated an object. But if I attach the object to the left hand path the position of the path and object reverts to the original position of the right hand path. Is there a solutution to this apart from having to draw a new path.

[Peru Bob]

I've moved this from the Using the Community forum (which is the forum for issues using the forums) to the After Effects forum so that proper help can be offered.

[Mylenium]

Impossible to know. Sorry, but you are being way too vague and unspecific, in particular about how the "objects" are conencted to the paths. If it's based on expressions, of course you may have to tweak those. If it uses another approach you simply have to tell us. Screenshots and exact info would certainly help a lot.

Mylenium

[bongp]

Thanks for reply I have an object which is following a path from shape layer. I wanted to copy the shape layer and transform the path and attach an object to follow that path. I'm sorry my explanation was a little vague. I'll include a screen shot. In the example layer single note 3 is following a path from shape layer 1.

I want to copy shape layer 1 transform the path and attach  layer single note 4 to that path. Previous efforts has only duplicated the path and position of shape layer 1. The transformation of the copied path had no effect. I hope this makes things clearer. I've deleted the copied shape layer for now.Thanks.

[ShiveringCactus]

If you expand the Position property expressions area, you'll see the expession targets a particular path.  You need to alter this to point to your duplicated path and that should sort it.

[bongp]

Thank you for your reply, should I refer to the position property expression in my shape layer where the first path was generated or to the layer to which the path is applied. Thanks

[ShiveringCactus]

Ah right.  I see you've copied the path as keyframes as there is no expression on the Position property.  I think trying to do it that way is creating work for yourself.

Instead, make sure the path is selected, then go to Window... Create Nulls from Paths.jsx and choose Trace Path

This will create a new null object, linked to the path and keyframed to animate along it.  You can alter the path and the null will follow.  You can then parent your PNG file to this and it will travel along the path.

You can then either duplicate the path and null and follow the steps I mentioned in the earlier post, or duplicate the path and run the script again.

[bongp]

Thanks for reply, this solution is working fine. After Effects is quit deep and previous searches for duplicating paths etc did not show any solutions. Lots of info about attaching a object to a path, that's the reasonmy png was keframed to the path. Thanks again.

[ShiveringCactus]

There's actually nothing wrong with copying keyframes,  it's a really convenient way to have an object follow a path.  Where are you run into trouble was because you needed to alter those keyframe properties.  As you say after effects is quite deep and there's lots of different ways to achieve some outcomes.  Glad you've got it working.

[Mylenium]

I think the cactus has you covered. Re-create the expression links after the duplication and you should be good to go. The only thing I'm not quite clear about is how you scale and transform the path. If you do it manually using the bounding box then it should work, but if you only change the parametric values and e.g. scale by -100% to mirror, you may have to re-do the whole step using the other method or else the coordinates won't get converted correctly.

Mylenium

[bongp]

The initial png are quite large. I scaled 1 down and pickwhipped the other png's to that scale.