Using Echo on animated stroke path tutorial
Published April 2nd, 2006 in After Effects Tutorials, Intermediate After Effects Tags: 7, adobe, after, after effects, effects, interface, tip, tips, tutorial, tutorials.
So using Animate a stroke path tutorial as our starting point. We will now look at adding echo effects.
- Create New Composition and create a new solid.
- Add a bezier path to the solid (this is the path that your stroke will follow) and add Stroke Effect to the solid.
- In the Stroke Effects Panel
set Color to desired (I chose red)
Click stopwatch and set Brush size 3
Set Brush Hardness to 100%
Click stopwatch and set Start 0.0%
Click stopwatch and set Start 2.0%
Paint Style set dropdown menu to On Transparent
Go to the point in the timeline where you want your stroke animation to finish and change these values in Stroke Effects Panel, which should automatically set keyframes for the ending.
set Brush size 50
set Start to 95.0%
set End to 100.0%
See how the Start and End values of the stroke are never more than 5% difference. We now have our animated stroke.
We will now add an Echo Effect
- Ensure your solid layer is selected
- Add an Echo Effect by navigating to the menu Effect/Time/Echo
- Set Echo Time (seconds) to -0.020
- Set Number of Echoes to 40
- Set Decay to 0.85
You should notice that your animated stroke now has a trail that fades off
By adjusting the values you get get longer trails, less/ more fade. This technique helps add volume and a 3-dimensionality to you stroke.
