Follow multiple paths

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Jkoseattle
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Follow multiple paths

Post by Jkoseattle »

I have a scene in which I want to set up a layer to follow several different paths over the course of the scene. There is a little time between each path following bit. As I understand, the path has to be directly beneath the layer that's doing the following. How should I accomplish this? I can think of a couple ways, but am wondering about gotchas. Advice?

1. Merge the different paths into one big path and just control the following over the course of the whole scene - Complicated as hell. Also, these paths are using stroke exposure to create a drawing effect, so I have to sync up the path following with the stroke exposure. Would be way easier to keep them separate
2. Have identical but separate layers, each set up to follow one of the paths, then just set visibility on the right path at the right time - Since it has to look like a single object, that means when I switch visibilities, the layers need to be in exactly the same spot. Sounds like the most doable, wondering if that's really the best way though?
3. Split it into separate scenes, one for each path - There's an existing audio track it needs to sync with - this sounds unnecessarily complicated

I'm leaning to #2, but is there anything I'm not thinking of?
Most of the time I'm doing music stuff. Check me out at http://www.jimofseattle.com/music.

Thing I did for work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgFYGqifLYw
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Greenlaw
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Re: Follow multiple paths

Post by Greenlaw »

It's hard to say without seeing what you're trying to do. Is the problem because the animation is very long in duration? The paths overlap a lot? Both?

It seems to me that it would be easier to animate the layer if it was following one continuous path (option 1). But, yeah, it depends on exactly what is being animated and how complicated that path becomes.

Option 2 sounds perfectly reasonable. I do this often for cheating parenting of complex rigs/animation, or to switch between differently rigged versions of the same character. You should be able to cut between multiple follow paths, and it should be fine if you find ideal 'cut-points' in the animations. The tricky part might be that you might not be able to use onion skin across the separate pieces. In these situations, I like to use Epic Pen to mark the frames I'm matching to.

Epic Pen is a digital version of using a dry erase marker on your screen, and it lets you easily switch between screen marking mode and working with the current program's tools. I use it with many animation programs including Moho. The downside is you don't want to pan or zoom your workspace after you've marked up the screen. If you need to do that, just use Moho's Freehand tool in a separate layer to markup the screen.

As for layer order for Follow Path, I don't think it matters. The path and follow layer doesn't even need to be in the same group.

Hope this helps.
Last edited by Greenlaw on Tue Jul 24, 2018 3:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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synthsin75
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Re: Follow multiple paths

Post by synthsin75 »

The layer order likely only matters if you are also animating the path to be followed. In which case, you probably would want it somewhere below the following layer.
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Jkoseattle
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Re: Follow multiple paths

Post by Jkoseattle »

For anyone else who wonders, here's what I discovered.

* You cannot simply duplicate the follow layer, set visibility, and set the copied layer to follow a different path. Notice that when you duplicate the layer, your duplicate already has the squiggle on its icon in the layers palette. Even if you remove Path Following keyframes from this duplicate, the squiggle remains and the layer is still "infected" with following the path that the original layer is following. To get around this, create a new layer and copy the shape or whatever it is from the original layer rather than duplicating the whole layer. Now this duplicate has no knowledge of the first layer's path following and can be set to follow whatever path you want.
* The follow layer does not have to be immediately above the path layer.
* The Transform Points tool must be used both to set the origin of the following layer AND to set the location of that layer to match where the previous layer was when they swap visibilities. This only works if you first transform to the path, and only then transform to match the layer it is duplicating.
Most of the time I'm doing music stuff. Check me out at http://www.jimofseattle.com/music.

Thing I did for work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgFYGqifLYw
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