Trim Path Animation Help

[sonnyb82870557]

Hi there, 

I'm currently working on a project that I need a little help with. The storyboard is attached. 

I'm trying to figure out a couple of things: 

1. The line needs to move across the screen revealing the logo, I've got an animated feathered mask to reveal the text however I'm not sure how to animate the arrow. Traditionally I would use a trim paths but as the arrow is sectioned into 3 gradiented bits I can't do that. 

2. How to animate the arrow growing and presenting the final form. I'm guessing it would have to be a path animation but not sure if there's a quicker way! 

Any help would be amazing, thank you so much!!

[Rick Gerard]

the text layer should be on a separate layer. The easiest way to wipe on the text is with the Effects/Transition/Linear Wipe tool. 

Since the Arrow appears to rotate and grow I would take the illustrator artwork of the Arrow and set up a blend, then release the blend to layers, set up about 30 steps, and then save the new AI file and import it as a composition retaining layer size. You can then sequence the blend to create a smooth animation. Here's an old tutorial that shows you the basics. In the latest versions of AE and AI you don't have to expand the blend, you can just select the blend, right-click in the layer panel, sequence the layers, then drag them above Layer 1.

Another example of the very same idea. One of these days I'll do an in-depth tutorial on this workflow. I've been using it since you could import AI files as comps. I think that's bout 15 years and I still haven't found a better way to do this kind of animation.

[sonnyb82870557]

Thank you so much Rick! That's interesting that the only way to do something like this in AE is to do it this way, will that limit how much control I have over the speed and the timings?

[Rick Gerard]

If you think you want the animation to take 2 seconds and your comp is 30 fps then set the number of steps for the blend to something a little higher than 60. Pre-compose the sequenced layers and add Time Remapping to the pre-comp to control the timing. Different frame blending modes will give you a little different result but with a little planning, it's pretty easy to figure out an ideal number of frames to use. I find that I almost always speed up these kinds of animations. My typical logo animation for me runs under 1 second for the reveal and about 3 seconds for the hold. I usually start out planning on about a 2-second reveal and a 5-second duration and then speed things up to match the tempo of the rest of the edits.

[Mylenium]

Well, to be honest that screams "3D animation". Fiddling around with this in 2D in AE will be a major pain, whereas in a 3D program it could be as trivial as having an extruded, tapered triangle for the arrow tail piped through a path deformer and the head being a cone that has a "flat" material to always give the illusion it would be perfectly facing the camera. Otherwise in AE I would imagine this could easily end up requiring at least four or five comps for the individual segments of the swoosh (Don't even try to do this as one single comp!) that need to have invisible transition points when joined.

Mylenium

[sonnyb82870557]

Hi Mylenium, thanks for your suggestion! Unfortunately my skills with any sort of 3D are very limited, nor do I have the time at the moment to learn a 3D program so I'm going to have to attempt to do this in 2D in AE. I think doing it multiple comps (as suggested) will be the way forward. Do you have any idea how I can animate the arrow that flies across the scene? Before the client changed the visuals it was a solid gradiented arrow but now it's in 3xsegments so I can't do a trim path animation which you can see here ... https://streamable.com/l96r1d 

Any ideas? Thank you so much for your help already!