Week 10: March 31, 2011

EFFECTS–PART 2

• Effects categories and noteworthy effects (continued)
• Time effects
• CC Force Motion Blur
• CC Time Blend/CC Time Blend FX
• CC Wide Time
• Echo
• Posterize Time
• Time Displacement
• Time Warp
• Simulation
• Explore the entire group
• Generate
• Ramp
• Fill
• CC Light Burst
• CC Light Rays
• CC Light Sweep
• Stroke (see the next section)

STROKE EFFECT

• To simulate handwriting, always use the Stroke Effect, NOT the Write-On effect (Effects > Generate > Stroke)
• Using the stroke effect:
• Create a solid black layer (Layers > New > Solids)
• Use the pen-tool to trace the shape you want to reveal. You don't have to close the mask path. If you do close the mask path, make sure to set the mask to "none".
• Create more masks for better timing control
• Add Stroke effect to the layer
• In the "Path" pulldown , chose a mask (you must create a new stroke effect for every mask you have)
• Adjust stroke effect settings: 
• color: always make it white
• brush size: make it slightly thicker than the shape you are revealing but not thick enough to reveal undesired parts of the shape out of order
• paint style: on original image
• Animate by changing the values of "Start" or "End"
• If you are animating multiple Stroke effects, set keyframes to the first one and duplicate (Command + D) in the "Effect Controls" window and change the "path" of each to correspond with the desired mask. When you duplicate a stroke effect, the keys are also duplicated.

TUTORIALS:
Stroke Effect:

http://layersmagazine.com/animated-handwriting-in-after-effects.html