May 17, 2009

Radial ray Shape projects

Todd Kopriva answers a question on how to make radial rays in After Effects with an easily tweakable project and oblique pointers on how you make one on your own.



It's reminiscent of a recent video tutorial from Precomposed, Vector Sunburst. This tutorial (pictured right) includes a download of some Photoshop shapes and shows you how to construct a Photoshop Shape and use it in an AE Shape layer. You might miss the animation controls available to AE Shape layers as seen in Todd's example, but both should have better edges than a similar effect produced in Premiere with the Pinwheel transition.

For background on Shape layers, see Shape Layers in After Effects CS3 by Total Training host Steve Holmes at Layers magazine. Motionworks has a tutorial movie also, Mask to Shape Layer, Aharon Rabinowitz added a podacst An Introduction to Shape Layers, and Chris & Trish added The Shape of Things to Come: Shape Layers Introduction.

Update: Todd added another method (inspired by an Illustrator tutorial) on his blog, "Make a shape layer containing a single big circle. Set the stroke width to be the same as the diameter of the circle. Make the stroke a dashed stroke. Set the dash length to taste."

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