I’m new to Natron (and indeed compositing in general - although not video editing). I’ve been through a lot of tutorials on YouTube and feel I have a good grasp of the program’s usage and workflow. However, as is often the way when using new software it takes time to learn how the various tools can be used and combined to achieve the desired results.
As a learning exercise, I’m attempting to create a ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’ style ‘travel map’. You can see the kind of thing here:
I’ve had no problems animating the map (using transform nodes etc) but I can’t figure out how to add the moving red line. I can draw shapes with RotoPaint (a long thin red rectangle, for example) but this seems incredibly cumbersome. I can also draw lines with the brush tool, but I can’t then animate this.
(As an aside, why is the icon for the ‘Paint Brush’ a Pencil, and the icon for the Pencil an ink pen!? )
I found a couple of tutorials on YouTube showing how to create this effect in After Effects, but I couldn’t map them to Natron.
I would have to look up how a vectorpath-reveal animation works in natron. I am sure this is possible.
You can always work around such things though, the possibilities are endless. Have the map in one node, the drawn path on a transparent background in another. Before you merge the path on top of the map, draw a mask that you animate the reveal of the path with. Then after you have merged this, do your crop in and transform to follow the path reveal. (not elegant, I am also sure there are a million other ways to do this, but it would get the job done)
Thanks Bob - yes, that makes sense. I suppose having the ‘track’ on a different image layer might work too. But I can definitely see a way forward now.
There are, as you say, always a million ways to do this kind of thing and I think that almost makes it harder for the beginner!
Using a RotoPaint node long-press on the Solid Paint Brush Tool to select the Pencil Tool then draw your desired shape.
In the properties of the RotoPaint node in the Stroke tab first give the path a Brush Size (and change the Brush Hardness if appropriate). Then, to animate it change the value in end value of the Visible portion start property. Here’s an example I made earlier
There aren’t many styling options for the path itself, nd you can’t import an svg if you want a pre-drawn path (see this bug report).
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