QuickTip – Creating Circular And Spiral Motion Paths

QuickTip – Creating Circular And Spiral Motion Paths

on Apr 8th 2010 with 28 comments
Tutorial Details
  • Requirements: After Effects, Trapcode Particular (optional)
  • Difficulty: Intermediate
This entry is part 7 of 14 in the The Complete Introduction to Particle Emitters Session
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Here’s a simple expression, using a little bit of mathematics, that will let you create circular and spiral motion paths. The expression can be applied to anything in After Effects with a ‘position’ property to create a variety of effects. Here it’s used with a light and Trapcode Particular.

Tutorial

Download Tutorial .flv

File size 32MB

 
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An ex-fruitpicker, oil rig technician, illustrator, musician, and teacher Ewan Smith is now a motion graphics artist and web designer based in Scotland, although his mother constantly reminds him it's never too late to get a 'proper job'...  

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  • Chris

    Great short tip. Math may be scary but it’s our friend. This could be great for doing any kind of spirals around people with a simple mask, or great for any kind of motion graphics. Again, great.

  • Stefan

    Great tip! Love it :) Good work mate.

  • Nico Gubler

    Thank you. Reduced to the max ;)

  • Alexander

    Nice Expression! Good job!

  • w1sh

    I’m new to AE and this wasn’t over my head or anything.
    I learned about expressions, and BEING ABLE TO CODE EFFECTS (omfg) without it dragging on for hours and hours.

    Thanks a lot for this and I hope to see more tips just like this in the future! Really appreciate the quality.

  • tvandang

    I love the quality and the simplicity of all your tutorials, unlike that guy Kumar. I am so glad that they took his tutorial off before someone else gets more confused. What is the actual mathematical formula for this circular motion path? Thanks!

    tvandang

  • http://www.webguide4u.com WebGuide4U

    thanks for the short tip.

  • Bonzo

    Really cool little tutorial, and it worked perfect on CC Particle World too (i’m too poor at the mo to get Particular) which was nice. Thanks

    • Luh

      Hi! coult you tell me how to make it work with the CC Particle World? (I’m poor too, so I’m interested on this, lol)

      Thank you!

  • http://www.uniexproductions.com Carlos

    Cool tip. Thanks

  • inlifethrill

    if you create a solid, make a circular mask with the pen too and then copy it over the position property of the light object the effect is the same, works in 3D and all :) It is 2 steps move. Great job on this one too, maybe it is more flexible.

    • Scott

      How do you do that? What are property are you copying from the circle mask to apply to the camera?

      • inlifethrill

        select the position property of the solid that has the circular mask. Copy it. Select the position propery of a null (parented to a camera) and paste. You see two new keyframes appear at null’s position propery. The length is by default 2 seconds. You can drag the 2nd keyframe further in time to make the null take much more longer to go a complete 360 spin..Yet completely editable and in 3D. Really smooth trick :)

  • inlifethrill

    what I wrote above applies for creating circles only. again – great job on the tut mate!

  • http://vimeo.com/user2183189/videos Rami

    Thanks for the great expression Ewan

  • ALX

    Ewan-if possible i would like to see your set up to creating the galaxy FX…very nice script.

    ALX
    NJ

  • alex

    In this clip, awesome dust from the particles. EWAN, please advise how to achieve such realistic result?

    thnx.

  • arien

    Hi Ewan,

    Nice tutorial.
    I have a question, if i have two Particulars and two light sources, how do i tell AE which particular will follow which light source?

    Thanx

  • Joshua

    Extremely helpful tutorial, Ewan! The math confounds me, though. How would you reverse the expression so that emitter spirals out?

  • randombob

    Im a noob at expressions as well. Quick question. How would I control the starting point of the expression? If I move the layers down in the timeline the animation has almost already played out, since its “using the time” of the comp to run. I want this effect to start later in the comp. I tried some things and they havent worked..

    Can anyone advise?

    Nice tutorial and script.

    Cheers!

    randombob

  • jnb

    Very neat tricky! Love this tutorial! Keep ‘em coming!

  • aee

    i was looking for this!! thank you =)

  • Eugene

    Hey,
    Really cool tut for creating spirals and using Particular. Been wandering though, how can you adjust the maths/expression in this to form an even corkscrew type spiral (with z depth) that does not decrease in size?
    Ive tried adjusting the expression values, but my maths is crap and I cant get there!
    Thanks in advance,
    ;)
    Eugene

  • dane

    If anyone wants a quick reference, here it is…
    For making spirals, use this expression for the emitter//
    shrink=time+1;
    radius=1000/shrink;
    angle=time*200;
    x=radius*Math.cos(degreesToRadians(angle));
    y=radius*Math.sin(degreesToRadians(angle));
    z=0;
    center=[640,360,0]
    add(center,[x,y,z]);

    or with z-depth

    For making spirals, use this expression for the emitter//
    shrink=time+1;
    radius=1000/shrink;
    angle=time*200;
    x=radius*Math.cos(degreesToRadians(angle));
    y=radius*Math.sin(degreesToRadians(angle));
    z=time*time;
    center=[640,360,0]
    add(center,[x,y,z]);

  • Daisuke

    Hi, one question. Please help.

    In following this spiral tutorial, I can not enable this script because of one error message
    coming up.

    It says
    After Effects warning: expression result must be of dimension 3, not 1
    Expression disabled.

    Does anyone know how it means and make this script enable?

    Thnx in advance:)

  • ADAM GODDARD

    For the circle animation expression, I have 6 logos I want to animate in a circle – how would I offset the starting points for each logo so that the are all moving in a circle once built on?

    thanks in advance

  • Qbz

    I cannot get this expression to work. I’m using CS6. When I enter it nothing happens. I am doing something wrong or maybe the expressions work differently on CS6?

  • http://twitter.com/pilosopotato alif

    That was amazing!