animating a "dance steps" diagram

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antoska
Posts: 5
Joined: October 17th, 2008, 2:56 am

I need to animate several "dance steps" diagrams for a DVD lessons. I have every element for animation done as a separate file (man/woman right/left shoeprints). Client sent me diagrams for use as templates to draw the paths in Illustrator. I'll have to draw a path for every shoeprint and export them to AE to control the movement in space (attaching each shoeprint).

The issue is that I need to control the position and rotation of every shoeprint to be in sync with the soundtrack (sometimes the rhythm of the voice of the narrator saying "one, two, three,.." and other times with the tempo of the song) while trailing the path. They have to move and sometimes rotate from one step to the next one, then stop several frames, move to the next step and so on. The stops have to occur in exact places of the path.

I thought that combining markers and expressions would be possible to get an optimal result but after being playing around with them and my poor experience about it I am completely lost.

I found an expression that allow me to stop the movement of the shoeprint layer ("right man" in this case) keyframing a slider controller.

stopTime = thisComp.layer("Slider right man").effect("right man control")("Slider");
t = Math.min(stopTime,time);
thisComp.layer("Path right man").transform.position.valueAtTime(t)

But as I have to sync with sound I would like to control the time of the movement with comp markers for the four layers (remember, man/woman right/left shoeprints). On this way every step of every layer will reach the next stop in sync and supposedly with just one slider controller.



Any help?
Any other suggestion would be very appreciated. Thanks
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