Trapcode’s 3D Stroke

[ddinisco]

Does anyone know if there is a plugin for Flame that mimics Trapcode’s 3D Stroke? It is basically an organic way of drawing of lines in 3D space.

Thanks
David

[kalthans]

hi david

we did a project awhile back where we merged the 3D stroke plugin with work done with flame

the way i found to approximate the traveling 3d line in flame is as follows:

parent yoru camera to an axis+light+particle generator combo. use the axis to place the light+generator out in front of the camera somewhere. set your particle generator to emit spheres (or squares with a small circle texture set to wrap) that have speed of ZERO.

now, animate your CAMERA around in the scene. wherever your camera travels the parented particle generator will leave behind a stream of particles. you can combine the animation of the camera with animation of light’s axis to produce some really fluid and interesting effects wtih the line. make sure you mess with the particle gen’s timesteps to get a good smooth line. depending on the # of particles you need to emit to get a good smooth line it might be better to emit squares instead of spheres….i’ve found the sphere geometry takes can really choke the system if you have a LOT of them in a scene….changing over to squares textured with a small single frame of a white circle (say 200×200) really reduces the load on the system

the only drawback to this technique is that you cannot manipulate the line/particles once you have drawn/emitted them.

i can send you a visual sample of this type of work if you are intersted in the results.

good luck!

[ddinisco]

This sounds like an interesting technique, although a bit more work than the simple plugin. If you have a sample QT handy I would love to look at it.

Thanks
David

[kalthans]

i’ve emailed you an action setup demonstrating the technique

if particles aren’t the solution for you then maybe try some of the features in autopaint

if you convert the shapes in your EPS file to a font you can then paint it onto the screen as text after you’ve converted the outlines to geometry shapes.

k

[Tom]

what a great idea. thanks for sharing.
tom

[ddinisco]

Thanks a lot. I’ll check it out.

[Author]

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