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I made a stroke with round cap dashes and used start property of trim paths to move the doted line and I used end property make the path short and I had to put a keyframe of end excatly in the center time of 2 keyframes of the start property and I had to use keyframe hold for some keyframes.
One of the problems is that the dots don't remain 5 but keep increasing from the first dot up ahead and another problem is that the whole path with all the dots appear at the end of the keyframes.
Thanks 🙂
Start by setting up your dashes and gaps to get a dotted line. Then, set a Dashes/Offset keyframe at zero and another a few frames later, moving the dots to exactly five spaces. Then add trim paths, set the first Trim Paths/End keyframe at zero, then move down the timeline, and set a second keyframe for the end to a value that reveals the five dots you want to move and the Trim Paths/Offset keyframe to zero. Move down the timeline to where you want the first dot to reach the end of the line and
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Use text on mask paths.
Mylenium
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This was a LOT simpler.
Need it for for a loop path all full of dots. A problem is that linking first margin to last margin makes 2 dots connected to each other!
Any solution?
Thanks Mylenium!
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Start by setting up your dashes and gaps to get a dotted line. Then, set a Dashes/Offset keyframe at zero and another a few frames later, moving the dots to exactly five spaces. Then add trim paths, set the first Trim Paths/End keyframe at zero, then move down the timeline, and set a second keyframe for the end to a value that reveals the five dots you want to move and the Trim Paths/Offset keyframe to zero. Move down the timeline to where you want the first dot to reach the end of the line and just the Trim Paths/Offset value to move the first dot to just before the end of the line.
The last steps are to duplicate the Trim Paths/End keyframe, move down the timeline the same amount of time between the first two keyframes, and set the Trim Paths/Offset to 360º and the Trim Paths/End value to zero.
That should give you something like this:
It's a slightly more convoluted solution than Mylenium's text on a path solution, but it will give you the option to make the dashed like look any way you want it to look.
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Thanks Rick, you rock!
It worked. Could you please also explain a little logic behind it to understand the technique and apply without needing to follow the steps.
Thanks again!
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Is there any way we can loop all these with one expression code or some other way that we can use to loop multiple prperties with one step?
We can't edit posts or replies here, right?
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See the three little dots and the word MORE at the bottom of your post. That's where you Edit a post.
The logic is pretty simple: Get your five dots by changing the end value of trim paths to reveal only the first five dots. Use the Dashes/Offset value to match the movement of those five dots with the reveal, then just animate the Trim Paths/Offset value to keep the dots moving at the same speed. Just before you reach the end of the path and the first dot appears at the start of the path, animate the end value back to zero to make the dots disappear.
You could come up with three expressions that used a slider to set the total number of dots, set the amount of time you wanted to take for the dots to reveal, control the offset by calculating the speed and percentage of the distance moved to move the string of dots along the path, then calculated the out point and end value of trim paths to get the animation to stop. It would take a little doing, but it could be done.
To loop an animation like this, the easiest thing to do is to trim the layer to the end of the animation plus any pause you want to add in, Pre-compose the layer, move all attributes to the new comp, and trim to layer length, then apply Time Remapping to the pre-composed short layer. This will allow you to make the layer as long as you want it to be. Go to the last time remapping keyframe, then move back one frame and use the diamond in the middle of the keyframe navigator in the timeline to add a new keyframe. It looks like this: <∆ > with a diamond instead of a ∆. You can use Ctrl/Cmnd + left arrow to move back one frame, then use the L key or the > in the keyframe navigator to move to the last keyframe and delete it, or use the diamond to delete it. Then, add a loopOut() expression, and you'll have a layer that will loop as long as the layer is. You can adjust the timing by moving the last keyframe. I use this all the time for repetitive animations in a lot of my graphics packages.
You could also select the Shape layer and the Contents part of the shape layer and save an Animation Preset. That will give you the ability to repeat this process with a simple double click of your custom animation preset with no layers selected. You can then edit the shape of the path and fiddle with the timing and the numbers.
I hope this helps.