I want to be able to create a shape and have dotted lines as my outline. I want the outline to move like ants marching. In the attached, I want the blue outline to move in a square.

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Posted 1 year ago
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Hi there
As far as I'm aware, there is no way to accomplish it using the standard tools that are offered. But you could create a few images that have offsets, then place them in a new project and render that out as a video that would make it appear to work.
You would then import that rendered video into the project where you want to use it and employ the "Remove a color" feature to make all but the blue become transparent.
Cheers... Rick :)
As far as I'm aware, there is no way to accomplish it using the standard tools that are offered. But you could create a few images that have offsets, then place them in a new project and render that out as a video that would make it appear to work.
You would then import that rendered video into the project where you want to use it and employ the "Remove a color" feature to make all but the blue become transparent.
Cheers... Rick :)
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Will you forgive me that stupid idea?
I put in 3 dashed boxes with 3 different sizes (10/11/12) and copy&paste them in a line. It gives the illusion of some movement aside from growing thickness back+forth. As I said just a silly idea and I just have+can afford Camtasia2-for-mac:

I put in 3 dashed boxes with 3 different sizes (10/11/12) and copy&paste them in a line. It gives the illusion of some movement aside from growing thickness back+forth. As I said just a silly idea and I just have+can afford Camtasia2-for-mac:

(Edited)
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Frank, you are my man!! It worked! Doing tutorials for work on our software, and this was one of my pet peeves! Awesome! THANK YOU!
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Nice job Frank,
I wanted to get in on the action/fun.See what I could do.If you scrutinize this GIF you'll see the dashed lines don't rotate 100%.

There's a way to pull this off in After Effects flawlessly but I spent enough time on this as it is. This is Photoshop and Premier Pro's work.I'm sure there's a better approach in Photoshop as well.
I created two loop-able 5 second animations using the PNG format. The PNG transparent format works on Windows I don't see why it wouldn't work on the MAC.
There both red. One has a black outline on the dashes for better visibility.
There just over 500 x 500 pixels square and should re-scale to work in most situations without looking to soft or jagged.
If your interested you can download them here.
I wanted to get in on the action/fun.See what I could do.If you scrutinize this GIF you'll see the dashed lines don't rotate 100%.

There's a way to pull this off in After Effects flawlessly but I spent enough time on this as it is. This is Photoshop and Premier Pro's work.I'm sure there's a better approach in Photoshop as well.
I created two loop-able 5 second animations using the PNG format. The PNG transparent format works on Windows I don't see why it wouldn't work on the MAC.
There both red. One has a black outline on the dashes for better visibility.
There just over 500 x 500 pixels square and should re-scale to work in most situations without looking to soft or jagged.
If your interested you can download them here.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/14am38i3o8vqwo9/Marching-ants-Dashed-lines.zip
Regards,Joe
(Edited)
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As I ́m more familiar with 3d apps I set up a parametric object carrying a tiled texture and keyframed the mapping offset:
You can grab a zip-file containing two 5 sec 12fps clips (512x512px/ProRes422) here:

You can grab a zip-file containing two 5 sec 12fps clips (512x512px/ProRes422) here:

(Edited)
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Haha - nothing beats the real ehem virtual 3d thingy. ;-)
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I'm just glad you did it. You saved me the trouble of figuring out how to do in in After Effects.I was starting to look into it.It would have been animated lights on a path.
I didn't like what I created earlier.
I didn't like what I created earlier.
(Edited)
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I can't live with poorly done animations. Especially ones I created by myself.
That's just the way I am. So even though Frank created a perfectly good animation I couldn’t leave this post be.
So I made a clockwise rotating one in After Effects. There I am in the image looking at my previous upload. I’m Okay now.LOL

If you want to use it great. If you apply Visual Effects. Add a Color or Color Adjustment you can squeeze a few more colors out of these animations.
http://www.mediafire.com/file/e54q3e57rywrz4z/Marching%20Ants.mov
I'm out.
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