How to morph multiple paths into one path After Effects

[JND98]

Hey, I've been trying to find a solution to this for a while but there doesn't seem to be any useful information out there.

What I'm trying to achieve:

Morph the solid map of Wales into the dotted map of Wales.

However the dotted map of Wales has a path for each circle, whereas the solid map only has 2 paths. This means I cannot simply copy and paste the paths of the dotted map onto the path of the solid map. Can anyone think of an efficient way of doing this?

Thank you!

[Mylenium · Accepted solution]

Morphing such stuff is just a bad design idea and. Simply scale the dots individually until they form a solid are which can then be masked out with a track matte or conventional mask applied in the parent comp. Similarly, the points could have position animation to swarm into place and/ or melt into one another as they scale to make the illusion less uniform.

Mylenium

[JND98]

This seems the best way to do it. The shape of the solid map cuts off the edges of some of the outer circles when acting as a mask. But by adding some distracting elements and speeding up the animation, it's barely noticeable. Thanks!

[David Arbor · Accepted solution]

When you say you want to morph the dots, do you really just want to have the gaps in between the dots fill in? If so, you can use the solid map as a track matte, then animate the size of the circles to scale up. This will have the effect of the gaps filling in, but the otuside shapes won't spill outside of the borders since they will be clipped by the matte.

[JND98]

Yeah doing it this way has definitely solved my issue. Cheers for the help!

[Mark27952296mg41]

But, is there a way to morph a multi-path shape into another shape? I have been trying for weeks!