User Manual

Animating and Tracking Paint Strokes
In some ways, animating paint strokes is no different than animating any other effect in the
Inspector. Each parameter that can be animated includes a gray diamond Keyframe button
along the right side. Clicking the Keyframe button sets a keyframe on the current frame and
enables auto-keyframe mode for the parameter. However, more commonly, the paint stroke is
tracked using one of Fusion’s trackers, or for motion graphics, animated using the Write-On
Start and End sliders.
Animating with Write-On Controls
The Stroke and Polyline stroke types include Write-On controls located in the Stroke controls
section of the Inspector. These Write-On controls animate the appearance of a stroke along the
path. You can animate the Write-On controls using either the Stroke Animation drop-down
menu or using the Start and End sliders.
Stroke Animation Drop-Down Menu
The Stroke Animation drop-down menu includes six options for auto-animating a paint stroke.
The first two options do not truly animate the stroke as much as set a duration. The Limited
Duration option uses the Duration slider to set the number of frames the stroke is onscreen.
To auto-animate the stroke, you can choose one of the three Write options or the Trail option.
Choosing Write On automatically creates a write-on animation. The duration is set by two
keyframes that get added when you choose Write On from the menu. The Start keyframe is set
on the frame where you first created the stroke. The End keyframe is added on the current
frame when you choose Write On from the menu. The remaining options in the menu set their
Start and End keyframes similarly but change the direction of the animation based on the menu
selection.
Write-On Start and End Parameters
The Write-On Start and End parameters allow you to manually control the start point and end
point along any stroke’s path, and use keyframes to animate each parameter individually. The
Start parameter determines the point at which the stroke begins, measured as a percentage
offset from the beginning of the stroke’s path. For example, a Start value of 50 moves the
starting point of the stroke to the middle of the stroke’s path. The End parameter works the
same way but from the other end of the stroke. You can animate a stroke onscreen, creating a
handwriting effect by setting keyframes for the End parameter from 0 to 100 over
several frames.
Tracking a Paint Stroke
You can animate the position of a paint stroke using any of Fusion’s trackers. For instance, if you
cloned out a flag pole from a clip, but the camera moves, you can track the flag pole and attach
the resulting path to the paint stroke.
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