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Hello, so I am having a major problem and I have been searching forums for the past day and a half trying to find an answer and haven't found any so I've resulted in making my own in hopes of finding the answer!
I am trying to have a shape move along a tilted oval path. For now, I have simplified the design into simple shapes: (The oval in this picture is just to show you the shape of the path)
Now when I paste the path that I created with the pen tool onto the position layer of the arrow shape, the arrow always jumps to the other side of the composition:
How can I make sure the shape stays in the same spot when the path is pasted on the layer?
I am a beginner in After Effects so I may be missing something really obvious
Rules for turning a vector path (mask or shape layer path) into a motion path.
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Well, you could adjust the nachor point and point order by defining a new first point for the path. These are simply limitations in teh workflow. You have to be super-exact and prepare your content suitably. AE has no magic way of knowing the relations between your pasted paths and the layers it is applied to. It's all just abstract data.
Mylenium
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It turns out AE does have a magic way to do this.
First to say that I know nothing about AE, you're already miles ahead of me. But, I am extremely good with Google searching, and I now know a lot more about AE!
Before you copy the pen ellipse, select its path, then with the Selection Tool select a handle where you want the animation to start. If there isn't something there to select, use the pen tool to add a handle. Once it's selected go to Layer/Mask and Shape Path/Set First Vertex.
Now copy the path and paste it onto the position of your arrow, and the arrow will jump to the location of the first vertex you set.
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Rules for turning a vector path (mask or shape layer path) into a motion path.
I hope this helps. It looks to me like your only problem is that you did not expect what happened. From your screenshot it looks like the anchor point of the layer containing the arrow is in the center of the triangle and it moved to the first vertex. That is exactly what should happen.
If you want to arrowhead to be there but the arrow to be pointed in the a different direction then you have to either set the transform options (Ctrl/Cmnd + Alt/Option + o) to auto orient to the path or adjust the rotation property of the layer manually.
If you expected the arrow to follow the path and bend around it then you did not follow the right workflow. You needed to create the path using a shape layer, apply trim paths to get a line segment to move around the path by animating the start and end points of trim path, then create the arrowhead on another shape layer, copy the path and paste to the arrowhead position and auto orient to the path. Your comp would look something like this:
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Thank you! I haven't seen any tutorials about adding a trim path - after I do, do I select "Path 1" as well as "Trim Path 1" and copy it onto the position layer of the arrow?
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Let me give you a quick step by step.
That's about it. Pretty simple. The only limitation is that you can't make the trim paths go through the first vertex but you if you really need to start the arrow with the tip at the first vertex just open up the path property, select the last point before the first vertex, or add a point where you want the end of the arrow to be and make that the first vertex. You'll have to then stop the arrow before it gets to the last keyframe. There are a couple of ways to get the arrow to make a complete loop around the path. Let me know if you need that kind of thing. If you look carefully at the screenshot that I posted you'll see pretty much what I described.
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I think that "quick" does not mean what you think it means! (to paraphrase The Princess Bride)
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It took longer to type the list than it takes to do it.