Crowd into circus tent.

tonyg · Post by **tonyg** » Fri Oct 30, 2009 11:46 pm

I'm using AS 5.6 and looking to create a short anim of a crowd entering a circus tent.
A little bit like this Disneyshort but a higher angle and much simpler images (circles would do).
I have tried with particles but can't find a way to get them to move towards a single point or area. I did a search and there was talk of a magnet tool but I can't find it so guess it never made AS 5.x.
I then tried vectors images which got closer but was cumbersome, difficult to cycle even when I created an action.
How would you do it?

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 12:02 am

You could try animating particles outwards and then running the animation in reverse...

wena · Post by **wena** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 2:53 pm

I didn't know you could run in revers, how?

Wena Parry,

South Wales. U.K.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 3:37 pm

Instead of fiddling with particles, though jahnocli's idea is pretty ingenious and would probably work with some fiddling (you could have like an expanding particle thing, render it out in Quicktime, reverse it somewhere else in an editing program unless AS lets you reverse movies, and bring it back into AS as a movie).

But my guess is that trying to find an 'easy' way to do it would take more time than just animating every circle going into the tent.

Or, if you don't mind the circles getting slightly smaller as they go in, create all your circles on one layer, or put them all in a group.

Using the SCALE LAYER tool, set a keyframe for when they're about to go in, and then let's say, 4 seconds later, set another keyframe, where the group or layer is scaled down quite a lot. Be sure to set the layer or group origin in the middle of the tent.

This way, you're scaling down all the circles towards a point so it'll look like they're all going into a tent.

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 4:22 pm

Just for fun I tried that particle solution and reverted the result in TVP.

http://www.slowtiger.de/examples/circus.html

The particle settings are there as well. I turned the whole particle layer sideways. I gave two of the seeds moving feet (vertically oriented). The problem with particles is that they overlap - there's no setting available to change this.

Mikdog · Post by **Mikdog** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 5:33 pm

Ha ha ha. That's awesome. "Roll up roll up to see the circus!"

Here's my token thinking:

tonyg · Post by **tonyg** » Sat Oct 31, 2009 7:42 pm

Thanks everybody.
I reckon overlapping will be OK. I'll try making them evenly spaced and the same speed.
Failing that maybe I can do them individually (in blocks) and move one block to the start point of another.