Wind animation?

[Admiral Halsey]

Hi, guys!

I have problem with wind animation. I need to animate a very strong wind and I don't know how to do that properly. I mean I know how to do that on paper but I can't achieve same effect in anime studio. All I need is just wavy lines flying very fast across display - appearing and disapperaing all the time. Sounds pretty easy, but since it's not possible to use freehand tool and delete points for animation it's starts to be real pain.
All I can think is - draw bunch of wavy lines, then translate layer in wind's direction and constantly switch layer's opacity from 0 to 100 and back.
But I don't believe this would be the best solution. Maybe someone around here has better ideas?

[slowtiger]

Put some lines on a layer, then move that layer?

[Víctor Paredes]

Switch layer should work too.
Also, you could make the trick using the follow path tool.

[Admiral Halsey]

Put some lines on a layer, then move that layer?

That won't look like a wind - it will look like a bunch of lines flying across the screen. I need lines to appear and disappear in random parts of the screen just like someone is drawing them - just like that: point appears --> point turning into a line and getting longer ---> line disappears.

Switch layer should work too.

Do you mean I can start with tiny line which has many points and then just stratch it up? Looks like it's the only option for me.

[2ner]

I think you should try particles.

[Admiral Halsey]

Im a newbie and I don't dig particles effect yet. Once I tried to animate rain using particles and it looked horrible. I wasted some time playing with settings but in the end I was dead tired and decided to do that manually. It took some time but result was way better than one with particles. I know thats a noob thing to say, but at this point I find it more convenient to animate things by my own.

[funksmaname]

1) draw lines with curls etc across the screen, with blue stroke - use random line widths along the line
2) use stroke exposure to make a 'wisp' along the line (start reduced to zero, then enlarge, then using control+drag animate the back of the line to follow the front so it doesn't get too long, until the back reaches the end and the whole thing dissapears)
3) At the same time, animate the transparency of the line fill
4) repeat with several lines

the result should be similar to what you described above...

[sbtamu]

Here is a good example to study. It can be reproduced in AS very easy.

[neeters_guy]

There are other special effects worth studying in there as well, including snow, fire, smoke, steam. And see how nicely the table cloth is handled.

Thanks for linking that charming example.

[Admiral Halsey]

1) draw lines with curls etc across the screen, with blue stroke - use random line widths along the line
2) use stroke exposure to make a 'wisp' along the line (start reduced to zero, then enlarge, then using control+drag animate the back of the line to follow the front so it doesn't get too long, until the back reaches the end and the whole thing dissapears)
3) At the same time, animate the transparency of the line fill
4) repeat with several lines

the result should be similar to what you described above...

This! Funksmaname you are saving my day again! I really need to buy you a beer or something. This is brilliant solution and I already have some nice results with that. I only didnt understand how to animate transperancy of the fill, but I was using layer opacity settings to make lines disapperar and appear again. Too bad stroke exposure works only in one direction.

[Víctor Paredes]

Too bad stroke exposure works only in one direction.

I'm not sure what do you mean, but anyway you can animate the stroke exposure reversed by dragging with alt pressed on the keyboard.

[Admiral Halsey]

Too bad stroke exposure works only in one direction.

I'm not sure what do you mean, but anyway you can animate the stroke exposure reversed by dragging with alt pressed on the keyboard.

Gosh, I didn't know that! It could save me tons of time today! But thanks for letting me know, Selgin!

[Víctor Paredes]

Gosh, I didn't know that! It could save me tons of time today! But thanks for letting me know, Selgin!

You are welcome. Most of this tips appear on the status bar when you select a tool.

[funksmaname]

When I said control+drag in (2) i meant alt its usually one or the other and I usually mix them up if the app isn't in front of me!
Glad you worked it out.
If you change the stroke colour (or alpha) on frames other than 0 it will put down a keyframe... so you can animate the colour by creating several keyframes for the colour.
(note: you can't see alpha effects while the stroke is selected)