sonictk
12-16-2006, 01:01 PM
http://www.projectchaos.info/flash/home.php
(Skip the intro, and just click on the news link)
I've been wondering about these kind of effects, that is, "growing" effects, sort of having shapes automatically appear bit by bit, as if they were being masked by something above it. However, for complex shapes such as tentacles, I have not been able to find a way to get a mask to follow both a motion path AND continue "expanding" as if it were "painting" like a brush, so that the object beneath it would have that kind of effect. (If that even makes sense)
So far, whenever I found the need to produce this kind of "growing" animation (for lack of a better term), I've resorted to frame-by-frame animation, which, due respect to other animators out there, is kinda old, and I believe that there should be another method that doesn't have me resorting to 2 hours of work for 10 seconds of such simplistic 2D animation.
Could anyone help out in this respect?
Also, another related question: How would one go about doing this kind of animation as well in 3D, without having to make a billion polygon mesh right at the start? For example, if I wanted to animate tentacles or plant vines growing out from the ground from an inital stump? Is there a way to dynamically create polygons as the mesh becomes more complex?
EDIT: If you still have no idea what kind of animation effect I'm talking about, I sketched up a quick frame-by-frame of what I'm trying to achieve without having to actually do it frame-by-frame, literally.
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3381/screenieop3.th.jpg (http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenieop3.jpg)
(Skip the intro, and just click on the news link)
I've been wondering about these kind of effects, that is, "growing" effects, sort of having shapes automatically appear bit by bit, as if they were being masked by something above it. However, for complex shapes such as tentacles, I have not been able to find a way to get a mask to follow both a motion path AND continue "expanding" as if it were "painting" like a brush, so that the object beneath it would have that kind of effect. (If that even makes sense)
So far, whenever I found the need to produce this kind of "growing" animation (for lack of a better term), I've resorted to frame-by-frame animation, which, due respect to other animators out there, is kinda old, and I believe that there should be another method that doesn't have me resorting to 2 hours of work for 10 seconds of such simplistic 2D animation.
Could anyone help out in this respect?
Also, another related question: How would one go about doing this kind of animation as well in 3D, without having to make a billion polygon mesh right at the start? For example, if I wanted to animate tentacles or plant vines growing out from the ground from an inital stump? Is there a way to dynamically create polygons as the mesh becomes more complex?
EDIT: If you still have no idea what kind of animation effect I'm talking about, I sketched up a quick frame-by-frame of what I'm trying to achieve without having to actually do it frame-by-frame, literally.
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/3381/screenieop3.th.jpg (http://img81.imageshack.us/my.php?image=screenieop3.jpg)