Welcome back to lesson five of Animated Loops.
In this part,
we're going to add our character into an isometric scene and learn how to create
a loop with multiple characters running in different intersecting directions.
Let's get started here.
Here I have the running character from the first part of this lesson,
and I also have a copy of this character where I've changed the color of the
body and limb Shape layers to blue.
Then I have the main scene,
a 1080 by 1080 composition with the yellow character in this composition
positioned roughly in the middle.
I have an End marker at 72 frames,
so our 24 frame run cycle loops three times.
Name the character layer Character1'.
Then we'll create a null to control the movement of the character.
Name this 'LineMove1'
and rotate it 30 degrees.
Go to the first frame where the front foot is flat on the ground because we
can't really see the back foot. Position
this null on the bottom of the foot,
and I'm going to track a point on the foot again.
Add a Position keyframe here.
Then scroll through the frames to the last frame where the foot is still flat on
the ground. Move the null here to the same point on the foot as before.
Then let's add a Loop Out Offset expression.
Move the keyframes back to Start at 0.
Then select these keyframes and in Keyframe Assistant select Time Reverse
Keyframes so the null moves in the other direction.
Then at the Start, parent Character1 to LineMove1.
This makes the character run off screen.
By rotating the MoveNull that means we can adjust the Position of the character
along the line easily by just sliding the Position if we need to.
We want to reduce the Size of the character so let's create a new Null in the
Middle to control that.
Name this 'LineScale1'.
Parent LineMove1 to LineScale1.
Scale down LineScale1 to 50%.
I like to color-code every line of characters so make all of these layers a
different color. Duplicate
Character1 at the Start,
unparent them,
go to the End and reparent them to LineMove1.
Now we have one looping character.
We want to add another one in the middle.
So go back to the Start, duplicate the original character,
unparent them,
then go to the middle of the loop at 36 frames. Shift
the timing of this layer six frames earlier,
then reparent it to LineMove1.
Duplicate this new character at zero,
unparent them,
go to the End and reparent them to LineMove1.
At the End frame, duplicate this bottom-right character, unparent them,
go back to the Start and reparent them to LineMove1.
Now we have a line of characters with every other character out of sync.
Now let's reorder these character layers so the front is at the top.
The second character is below them.
The third character is third.
Fourth is fourth.
And, finally, the fifth at the bottom.
Now we'll create more characters,
but first create a new null to control all of the lines
name this 'CharactersYellow'.
And we're going to rotate this -30 degrees.
Parent LineScale1 to CharactersYellow.
Now let's duplicate all of the characters and the move and Scale nulls,
move them just below the CharactersYellowNull and give them a different color.
And on LineScale2 move this around 475 pixels to the
left.
Because it's parented to a null which is rotated 30 degrees,
we can just adjust the Position to easily offset the whole line to the side like
this,
in line with the isometric grid.
This position should make the characters vertically aligned to the
MiddleCharacter2.
Select all of these new character layers and offset them three frames earlier.
Now we have a new line of characters out of sync with the other line.
Duplicate this new line,
move these layers below the first line and recolor the layers.
Then change LineScale3's Position to 475 to the right,
and offset the timing of these new characters nine frames earlier.
Now we have three lines of characters with each character's animation equally
out of sync with each other.
Let's create some more characters running in the opposite direction. Duplicate
all of these layers and move them to the top for now.
Rename CharactersYellow to 'CharactersBlue'.
Flip the scale to -100 and
the Rotation to 30 degrees so they're all facing to the left. Color-code
each of these new lines of characters.
Select all of the new characters and replace them with the blue character, by
holding Alt or Option while dragging it in from the Project window.
Offset the timing of all of these new top layers 18 frames earlier, which
at the Start should put them in line with the yellow characters,
but facing in the opposite direction.
This creates an extra character visible at the Start on the top two blue layers.
So at the Start frame, select this character, duplicate them,
move them to the bottom of that line's characters, unparent them,
go to the End frame and reparent them to that line's LineMoveNull.
Do the same for the other line.
Now we have two perfectly looping groups of characters running in opposite
directions, but we need to make them intersect.
This is just a case of reordering the layers properly.
Scroll through until the characters start overlapping incorrectly.
First, we'll just be moving blue characters. Select an overlapping character,
then
move them down the layers until they're just below the character they were over.
Stay on that frame and do it for all overlapping characters.
Then scroll through until the next point where characters start to overlap,
and repeat.
Once that frame is cleaned up,
scroll along again and now you should have yellow characters overlapping blue
ones.
Repeat the process with those characters.
Now scroll right to the End to check that there aren't any more incorrectly
overlapping characters.
Go back through to the Start to check it's all good, which it should be.
Now you'll have two groups of characters moving in different directions,
all intersecting with each other.
Well done.
This is why it's very important to color-code your layers as now they're all
mixed up,
but you can still see which characters are part of the same line as they're all
the same color.
As long as your characters are all evenly spaced and all moving at the same
speed,
then you could have even more lines of characters moving in even more directions
as this view from above shows.
How far you want to go with it is up to you, but for this lesson,
that's where I'll end it.
I'll see you in lesson six.
Thanks for watching.