Moho Animation Forum

I need to have a vine-like strand grow, that loops back on it's self several times. It could also be thought of as a calligraphic flourish. The thought of doing this as point to point animation, or growing all the bones necessary for the complex curves, well it sends me right back to the animated brushes in After Effects. But, After Effects brushes are not as controllable or clean.

I did a quick topic search without success. A link or suggestion would be appreciated.

Well, to create lines that grow, you might like and try the Layer Trail Script ....

Create a vector-layer and draw a little circle (that will be your brush).

Use the Translate-Layer Tool (1) and move it into your starting position.

select Set Origin (0) and move it into the same position.
(or draw your brush at the Origin point)

Now start animating your brush-layer with the Translate-Layer Tool along your chosen path , move your time-slider along to set keyframes and
drag your brush-layer to a new position, you will see blue squares (your keyframes) and a thin blue line between them (your path).
Don’t forget to check show path (top of your viewport).

If you are done go to Script/Layer Effects/Layer Trail...
choose your settings and click OK.
Creating more Vector Layers and brushes, draw as many lines you like...
(maybe start a new one where an old one finishes, or any other point)

If you don’t like to see your brush, open the Layer Properties and uncheck Visible. (move the frame-slider to frame 0)

Render your movie.

If you like here is a very basic video demonstration:
http://web.mac.com/nolan.scott/Gallery/ ... lines.html

Cheers
Nolan

thanks for the info on the layer script!

Holy cow that's fun!

I could spend hours making stuff grow all over the screen.

-vern

Nolan,

Thank you for the demo. To get what I needed, I erased all but the first and last of the automatic keyframes in the 'created' layer from the script, then morphed the shape of the line while it wrote on. Plus, I could easily keyframe the taper of the line. This helps out immensely.