- Exercise-4-1 Applying the Grow preset
- Exercise-4-2 Growing into the current appearance
- Exercise-4-3 Growing, twisting, and unfolding objects
- Exercise-4-4 Applying a rotation preset
- Exercise-4-5 Creating custom rotations
- Exercise-4-6 Changing the rotation point
- Exercise-4-7 Setting a custom, external rotation point
- Exercise-4-8 Creating an animation proxy
Exercise-4-8 Creating an animation proxy
ADV
The Scale and Rotate properties options give you a lot of flexibility when working with objects. However, they don’t have a motion path. And without a motion path, there’s no animation proxy shadow. This makes it difficult to judge what your settings will look like. Fortunately, you can use a slight trick (workaround) to see the shadow as you work.
The finished file for this exercise is Exercise-4-8-finished.indd.
- Open the file Exercise-4-8-start.indt. We’re going to start by creating a really short motion path for the Glasses group.
Use the Ellipse tool to draw a line no greater than 2 points from top to bottom. Use the Control panel at the top of the screen to set the amount (A).
Select both the glasses and line and click the Convert To Motion Path button at the bottom of the Animation panel (B).
A microscopic motion path appears (C). Zoom in and you’ll see it’s got an arrow at the end — just like any other motion path.
With the Glasses group still selected, click the Show Animation Proxy button (D).
The shadow appears. Since there are no other animation settings applied to the Glasses group, the proxy is over the glasses (E).
You may want to use this preset in the future on other objects.
Choose Save from the Animation panel menu. The Save Preset dialog box appears. Name the preset (2 point path) and click OK (F).
From now on you’ll be able to apply this preset from the Preset menu before you change any of the rotation or scale settings (G).
Select the glasses. Change the Rotate field to 125° and set the width and height scale to 50%. Also change the transformation point to bottom left (H).
You now see the proxy shadow appears outside the glasses (I). This shows the size of the glasses and where they will start the animation. Use the EIP panel to preview the animation.
Experiment with negative and positive rotations, scale amounts from 0% to 200%, and changing each of the nine transformation points.
As you change the settings, the proxy shadow moves to give you a better idea of how they will affect the animation (J). It’s faster and easier than constantly using the EIP panel.