Motion paths not wholly visible

I'm trying to simply move a solid with a motion path. I copy/pasted a mask path into the Position property of the solid layer.
Initially everything looks right after I paste the path -- however if I move the position keyframes apart (to make the motion slower) the motion path is no longer visible from beginning to end. As I scrub the time slider the solid is sliding along the path correctly, however I only see about 20% of the path at any one time. It's almost like the anchor point is providing 'light' and I can only see about 10% of the path in front and behind of my current location.
I don't get it.

> It certainly doesn't help that After Effects help file makes NO mention of it on the motion path pages.
"Show motion path controls"

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Custom speed not working in motion path behaviour of emitter

I am trying ot make a custom speed motion path along an open spline. Any amount of adjusting of keyframes and percentages produce no movement at all along the path. The emitter is stuck at the beginning of the path. All the other speed options work except for custom, in the motion path behaviour. What's going on here?

What's going on is a little complex.
When you first add a Motion Path and select Custom Speed, you get a "default" 0% - 100% over the life of the behavior [basically the same as Constant]. If you try to add keyframes in between, it can mess things up pretty good. The results you get can be unexpected.
If you "clear" the automatic default keyframing, then the Custom speed stays at 0% (there are no keyframes). If you move the playhead and change the Custom parameter, nothing "takes" since no original keyframe is set.
In order to make a Custom Speed on a path, you need to first, clear the default keyframing (on the right edge of the column, click on the disclosure triangle and select Reset Parameter). Then, set the position you want your object to start at and Set a keyframe. Then you can advance the playhead and move the Custom Speed control to position the object on the path.
HTH

Motion Path Madness

More specifically, the start and end points of the motion path. They are driving me crazy. Maybe I am overlooking something that is so ridiculously basic I am not finding it, but here's my issue. I've got a motion path on an object. The start point has a position of X: -77, Y: 16. I'd like the end point to be X: - 77, Y: 50, but everytime I try to move the end point, it ends up moving the X axis to something ridiculous like -77.78, clearly and visibly making my path something other than a straight line. Is there a way to get around this? I experience this issue quite a bit and have been unable to successfully find an answer. Perhaps I am just not using the right search terms? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hey Q*bert,
Thanks for the tip. I've also found that if you hold the Option key while dragging a point it seems to keep the coordinates at whole numbers. I was getting my problem with the snapping turned on as well, though I wasn't always at the beginning of the timeline when attempting a move.
I haven't been using keyframes just because I haven't really thought about it since getting Motion. The behaviors are just so much nicer to work with and the ability to scale and move them without worrying about the keyframe position is nice.

I cannot see the yellow motion path in the composition window

Yesterday the motion path was visible after unchecking and rechecking the motion path box in view options. But today it's not visible after trying several times the same thing. I'm trying to animate text using a path animation preset. I'm using an Imac with 24 gigs of ram and After Effects CC.
I am very new to this program so I could be missing something very simple. Please help if you can.
Thanks,
Surya Mayee

You may have pressed Ctrl/Cmnd + Shift + H and hidden all handles. Try resetting your workspace. Give us a screenshot of the whole project and don't scale it down. You can use this forum to upload the image by clicking on the camera icon. If the upload button does not light up then close the window and try again. Sometimes the upload window is buggy in Safari.
If you are new plese go through these 3 basic tutorials: AE Basics

Move whole motion path 300 up, 200 left

I have a complex motion path. I need to move the whole thing together, without changing it, 300 pixels up and 200 left.
Is there any way to select it all and move it together - either with the mouse or by entering new co-ordinates?
Thanks.

Oh, I thought you meant the keyframes disappeared.
I can't seem to make the element itself disappear from the Stage by grouping, although I can get it so the group appears empty, depending where the playhead is in regard to the the Location transition. But the element is always visible. That's not a bug, just the base state of the element when it was grouped. Maybe that's what you see?
Otherwise, without seeing your composition it would be difficult to say whether it's a bug, or in some state in the timeline where the image is not on the Stage or hidden. Doesn't seem too serious if it's all visible again when you ungroup.

How do you add the motion path of a tracking point to a separate clone stamp?

How do you add the motion path of a tracking point to a clone stamp without the clone stamp assuming the same initial/continuous positions of the tracking point?
Is there a way to keep the clone stamp's initial position and then add the path onto it?
I am using the clone stamp to remove unwanted duct tape that was used to keep lights on a wall.

I have spent two days trying to find a solution to this exact same problem. I have seen some overly complex solutions that probably work but trying to figure out the explanations is like trying to understand someone describe drag coefficients of rotary wing aircraft. While I am sure they work, they are way above my comprehension. I wanted an intuitive and straight forward solution for something that shouldn't require some arcane technique to fix.
What I did:
1) I used the Clone Stamp tool to paint over the spot on the wall I wanted to remove.
2) picked a more easily discernible point of reference for Tracking. In my case, I used a poster on the wall.
3) As per the instructions here, https://www.video2brain.com/en/lessons/removing-an-object-with-clone-stamp, I pasted the Attach Point data from the Tracker into Clone -> Transform - > Position
However, that didn't work for me as the object I was painting was not the object I was tracking. The solution from the video was simply moving my cloned spot to the tracked object instead of leaving it where I wanted it. So...
4) I then manually adjusted the Anchor Point of the Clone back to the original spot I wanted to cover.
I played footage and the cloned region successfully moved with the spot I was covering.
This is what I was able to figure out. I'm not an advanced user. I only use After Effects every couple of months when I need to fix minor things in footage, so I've only learned to use what techniques I need for the job at hand. No doubt, experienced users may shake their heads at my simplistic fix. I'm sure my technique would be wholly inadequate for situations far more complex than fixing spots on a gray wall, which is why my eyeballs cross when reading suggestions that seem way more involved than one would expect for something as seemingly minor as this. It's just a spot! It should be super easy to remove, right? Well, that's what I was looking for and that's what I came up with. I hope it helps.

Mouse clicks and path not exporting to flash

Hey Guys, I've just started using Captivate v5 and all seems to work fine but when I export to Flash CS5, the mouse animates as linear and the click effect doesn't appear. If I preview from captivate the paths and clicks are there. If I click the mouse icon on the slides, they are all set to flash blue circle and straight pointer path is unchecked. The slides do not contain live film either, just screenshots. If I go into the movie in flash, the tween is there but no motion path. Any ideas? Thanks

Yeah, when I export to flash it opens the doc as AS3. Also, I noticed the default click effect does work, but when I change to any of the custom ones it gets ignored by flash.

FCE HD, confused by Motion Path (I want to change the speed of movement)

I am a huge FCE noob, let's get that out of the way. I have also been a member here since May of last year, but for some reason it now shows that this is my first post. (????) Anyway, I have figured out how to use a motion path, including curving the path, but I can't figure out how to alter the speed that a "motion path" video enters, or leaves, the screen.
While I'm here, I also want to learn how to use shapes (as in a circle/triangle/custom shaped border to a video clip) and I have not been able to find that info. I have Lisa Brenneis's "Final Cut Express HD for Mac OS X" book and have not been able to find the answers to these two questions there.
Thanks in advance for your useful help!!
BILL

The first and last keframes can have Ease In/Ease Out applied to smooth the start or stop action.
Clicking between two keframes on a a motion path should give you Bezier Handles. There a four blue dots on them, the inner two will control speed. Dragging an inner dot along the handle either slows or speeds the action.
Al

Basic Motion Tween not working?

I created a graphic symbol in Illustrator and copied-and-pasted it into Flash. I placed a keyframe further in the Timeline and scaled the symbol down on that frame. I went back to the first frame and right clicked on it and chose to create motion tween, though nothing visually happened between the first frame and last one like it did in previous versions, and the the symbol did not not animate. What did I do wrong?
Thanks.

Adobe has made it a wild goose chase. For me, it only works if I don't have a second keyframe. Baffling, why should it behave so differently than classic tweening?!
People like me have been hitting their heads against the wall for years trying to get this to work. Absolutely asinine.
For the record and to repeat my huge gripe, it behaves nothing like classic tweening, where you define an end point and then "tween" between them. You can end up doing that, but you can't create the tween between two existing keyframes (even if they have the exact same single object in them).
So this is what's working for me now:
1 - Create a timeline layer with one single object in an initial keyframe (black dot indicates a keyframe). No more than one object can be tweened in one layer, but Adobe will not give you any userful feedback about this while you're working.
2 - On that layer, farther out in the timeline where there are no frames (what is the name for these "non-frames"?), right click where you want the tween to end, and select "Insert frame". (You'll have a black dot keyframe, a row of grey empty frames, and white box as a blank keyframe.
3 - Right click anywhere on the active part of that timeline and choose "Create Motion Tween", even though there is nothing to tween yet. After you do this, the span of frames should turn blue and the blank keyframe white box should disappear. Congratulations, you've created your first motion tween, but Adobe doesn't want you to know that. You need to actually go to individual frames and move the object around to get tweening to happen, as I outline in steps 4 and 5. Assuming your object is where you want it in the starting position, I would recommend going to the last frame to determine the final position next. Then you can do any number of middle positions (each frame can have a new position).
4 - (optional step, helps with positioning on the timeline) Scrub the timeline and find a frame where you want the trajectory of your object to change (at the very minimum, you'll want to move the object for one frame, otherwise there will be no motion)
5 - Move the object on the stage.
6 - Repeat 4 and 5 for as many frames as you want.
If you're not seeing motion paths that chart the motion, play with the little buttons on the bottom of the timeline, such as Onion Skinning. Lastly, just move the playhead left and right. If you're not seeing your object move, then blame Adobe some more, because this is far from immediately intuitive.

Errors with interactive pdf containing motion paths

I have created an interactive pdf in indesign with simple motion paths. In the preview in indesign it works perfect, but the animations do not work in the exported pdf. This is created in CS6 and I have the creative suite standard installed.

I have tested with both Acrobat Pro X (10.1.1) and Acrobat Reader XI (11.0.0.). Due to IT restrictions I am unable to use such "transfer files" providers, so I am bit stuck. I have tried to put the different animations in layers and in one layer only, with same results. I am
beginning to think that there are internal restrictions that make this happen

Multiple motion paths in CS5?

Hi-
I'm new to Flash and have a question. I'm creating a Helium atom for my technology class and am trying to get 2 electrons to circle the nucleus. I've successfully created a classic motion path where one electron circles the nucleus. How do I create another (duplicate) motion path for the other. I'm not sure this can be done, hence the question.
Any suggestions for the newbie would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Mark

Select the frames where your motion path is being placed on, right-click and select "Copy Frames" and paste them on a new layer

Using Light as Motion Path for Trapcode Particular

Hi,
I am trying to make an animation for a project, but I cannot figure out some things. I am trying to create the effect that a person is throwing money out the back of a car. I have the live shot of the person in the car, but I cannot get the money to behave how I want it to. I am trying to use the Trapcode Particular, but I can't get the particles to follow any motion path. When I set the settings to motion path, it prompts me to create a light. I create a light, but can't figure out how to make that light have an actual path rather than simply being a spot light. Please help! I'm sorry if I don't make any sense, please ask me to clarify if you need it.
Nicole

KWNWY wrote:
I am trying to use the Trapcode Particular, but I can't get the particles to follow any motion path. ...
Because you are doing it all wrong! If you wanted to use the Motion Path option in the Air physics model, your light would have to be exactly named like that - Motion Path 01. It's not what you want, though. I'm 100% certain of that. You are looking to create a conventional light emitter, which is a whole different thing. For that, your light should be named Emitter (or whatever other prefix you define in the plug-ins Options/ Settings panel). Then you must set the emitter type to Light. If you use spot lights and want your money to emit directionally, you need to set the emitter to Directional as well. Apart from that, Particular will use the light's color, cone angle and intensity to colorize and eject the particles. After that, you can animate the light in 3D space to whatever you need it to do.
Mylenium

Sometimes Circles -- Sometimes Bowen Knots: Motion paths made in Illustrator

I am doing a very meticulous animation in after effects CS6. To execute this project I made all paths in illustrator CS6. Think of the shape as being the Earth, and the motion path as being Earth’s orbit around the sun. I parented the shape (the shape that will follow the motion path; Earth) with a null object, the shape parented by a null object will then be parented by another null object (the path I created in illustrator CS6, at this point I paste the shape (motion path; Earth’s orbit) into Transform: Position.
The problem:
Some motion paths go around the originally made circle, in a perfect cyclical motion. This is what I want. Some motion paths go around the four paths in a square direction, resembling the command symbol on a mac keyboard, also know as the Bowen knot. I do not want this.
My questions:
How do I make every motion path (the perfect circle I made in Illustrator) to function cohesively and dissimilar to the original circle, and not like the command symbol? Why is the conversion doing this to some, but not all shapes?
Best,
Chris

Everyone – thank you to all who responded.
A personal thank you to Rick for spending time and executing a visual explanation.
It turns out my video wasn't published originally, if you need more information click: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1dba60_a-letter-1_creation
To answer your questions: the Earth's orbit refrence is a simile.
I understand the process seems irrational; I being with illustrator because I’m trying to find the exact angle to the center point, in addition to the size of the circle. In other words, a circle has four points, turn the circle the correct amount of degrees and one point starts on the center point (the black dot), the other half ends on the colored dot. The only way I know how to do that is by using a plug-in with illustrator (to get the angle from the colored dot to the center point, and the size of the circle), an analog of this plug-in is not offered in after effects.
My original question: why when I paste the circles (that are already made in illustrator) into the null: position in after effects, some give me a perfect circle, some give me a Bowen knot? I appreciate the suggestions about only in after effects, unfortunately the circle paths were already made in illustrator.
Best,
Chris

Motion path handles disappeared

I've been working in After Effects for a little while now and am having some of my motion path handles not appear when they should. I'm working on a slideshow and they seem to appear for all of my other pictures. What I do is go in between the start and end point of a path and move my picture away from the main (straight) motion path I created which usually creates a new keyframe on my timeline and inserts a point on my motion path with two handles I can adjust to make the path curved. This time it just creates the point on the motion path and keyframe, but doesn't allow me to make the path curved. It's really strange and has happened to me before. The way I solved it earlier was to remove the point where it wasn't working and insert a new one, and it would magically turn on, but that doesn't seem to work now.
I've only been able to find one other person that had a similar problem online, which was solved by going to view---->view options and enabling 'view handles'. This didn't solve my problem so I figured I would ask on here. Thanks in advance for the help.

That worked, although it's a few extra steps that I shouldn't have to take (and haven't prior to this). I held down alt by mistake at first and it only gave me one handle, but if I just tap alt and then click--->drag away from the point, it does provide me with a handle in each direction, which is what I was ultimately needing. Here is a screenshot of that layer although it's pretty standard.
When I selected a keyframe that was in between the beginning and end of the motion path, pressed G, and then hit alt it does exactly what I want it to, but usually it adds the handles automatically, and want it to always. This extra step is very annoying because I'm dealing with a lot of motion paths and plan to in the future as well.

Flash CS4 - motion paths

Hi,
Im confounded to why this is happening and when it looks so much like a program error, it is sold on the shelves as a final product.
My frustration at CS4 is that the new motion paths are already on the object, identified by a dotted line which you can edit to change the direction of the motion. When I want an object to go from A to B and then on to C, trying to select the object and position it to B is impossible. I always seem to select a bezier point. After attempting to mvoe it to B and then C, zooming in to take a close look at the path its a mess, overlapping in many points and jsut a MESS.
Am i doing something wrong?
To get round the problem I've copied the object in it's location and made another layer and continued the object motion on to B or C.
I'm animating a mouse curser over my visuals and I've now got multiple layers of the cursor object because of this pathing issue.
Any advice would be gratefully received.
thanking you

The above advice is good. It sounds like you have created some kind of motion path, and you are wanting to further edit it. There are many ways to edit, and some will work out better than others. Editing a motion path differs greatly depending on what kind of path you have.
1) If you started with a path where you have pasted, say, a stroke as your path (you drew something with the pencil or pen, and pasted it onto your tween), you will be dealing with a lot of auto-generated keyframes -- especially if you used a pencil line instead of a pen line. If you drag your object around, where those keyframes are will affect the resulting path. What to do: Try to modify the path using the Pen tools, or start with a pen drawn path. This way you have fewer keyframes to accomodate for. If you have a pencil-drawn path, try removing keyframes and then adjust the path using beziers. Alternatively, paste the motion path as a raw path on a new layer, adjust it by bending, and then repaste it onto the tween.
When you ask Flash to auto-keyframe a pasted path, there's really no way around this. Flash has to create keyframes for you, and isn't able to know how you may want to further edit it. So the above ways are necessary, and unfortunately it's a bit of work whatever way you go.
2) You may have a path that you have curved, but you want a linear path "down the road" (later on the tween). In this case, the motion tween is inserting curve property keyframes, because you have curved the path. To make the line straight, you need to convert the points to linear points. You can do this on the path or in the motion editor using the Convert Anchor point tool. Or, you can go in the motion editor, right-click the keyframes and choose "Corner point" or Linear Left/right as needed.
3) You applied an ease and you're dragging the instance on the Stage. This can be tricky. What you've asked Flash to do when applying an ease is for motion math to take over an animate the position of the instance in relation to values (the original path). The instance is controlled by the ease, and Flash accomodates each time you move it. Oftentimes you can't really tell what's going to happen, especially on the Stage (Flash is doing what's mathematically correct and necessary, but it might not be what you actually want!). In this case you probably want to turn off the ease, create your motion path, and then re-enable the ease and see how that affects the path. Adjusting your work in the motion editor might be easier, as you can see the dotted eased values in the graph, which tell you what's actually going to happen to the motion (the "real" value post-ease).
4) You used the transform panel or Free transform tool on the motion path, which gave wacky results and then you're moving the instance and things are getting worse. This is one area where motion paths can have less desirable results, as it's using a traditional tool not really designed for the new feature on a new feature. My recommendation is to avoid the transform panel, and use the Free Transform tool instead. In a nutshell, the Transform panel traditionally deals with shapes, and the motion path is not a traditional shape - so there are a lot of calculations swapping back and forth behind the scenes to try and give you what you want. Things can get wacky here, so if you already have something very complex (such as a pasted path with tons of keyframes), your transformations may not be what you actually wanted. Free Transform is better, or even better, manually adjust the beziers. Another alternative is to, again, copy the motion path as a static raw path, transform it and make your adjustments, and repaste it onto your tween.
Let me know if you need additional help, or are running into something else entirely.
Thanks,
Jen.

Motion paths not wholly visible

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