Building and animating a CGSnake
Posted on 09. Mar, 2007 by Jerzy Drozda Jr in After Effects
Build your first chain-based rig in After Effects. Find out how flexible this technique is and how you can turn the rig into a snake.
Click here to watch the video tutorial
Learn how to create a dynamic animation based on a “chain rig”. Animate one layer using keyframes, expressions, or both, and make other layers follow the leading layer. See how you can texture the rig and find out how flexible it is.
First 9 minutes will show you how to build a basic “chain rig”. The rest of the tutorial is about texturing and making the final look.
Download: Tutorial project file (After Effects CS2)
The idea for this tutorial came from CGTalk forums, where someone who calls himself GetToTheTop asked for a way to create a snake in After Effects. See the oryginal thread.
17 Responses to “Building and animating a CGSnake”
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Suzanne
15. Mar, 2007
Great tutorial! I love how you incorporated using expressions and the slider. I will certainly use some of this knowledge for any of my future projects.
Luis Beyles
07. Jun, 2007
finally i figure out how to add texture to a stroke, thnks!
Adam
02. Oct, 2007
Fantastic tutorial Jerzy, thanks for sharing.
Plus, I remember Alien Vs. Predator too! Such a scary game, haha.
Cheers,
Adam
Maltaannon
02. Oct, 2007
Glad you like it. There is a lot of potential in this technique. Snake is just a simple example.
Paul Jones
18. Oct, 2007
This is just about the most awesome thing I’ve seen done with expressions to avoid those pesky keyframes. I’m using it along with the looping expression to make a conveyor belt in a factory. Cheers Maltaanon, your tutorials are always enjoyable.
Maltaannon
18. Oct, 2007
Sounds so cool. Make sure to pass me a link to a preview or something. I’d love to see how it looks. Cheers!
Joe
03. Dec, 2007
For some reason, this video stops at 1:26 on both my work and home computers. The work one is, sadly, a windows machine and the home computers are all Macs.
Maltaannon
03. Dec, 2007
Thanks for the tip. It should be working now. Sorry for the inconvenience.
rol247
10. Jan, 2008
malaannon youre pretty cool man, thanks dude!
expressions are still a bit compilcated for me… i have to get into that…
rock on man
Paul Jones
19. Jan, 2008
Here’s the factory I did that borrows from this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_iMqKM8ZO4
Sorry it took so long to respond, been kinda busy recently.
fredrik olsen
10. Feb, 2008
that was pretty amazing :] i really enjoy your tutorials dude…
Fred B.
08. May, 2008
Wow. Really cool tutorial. There is a lot of potential in this technique to create some other awesome effects, i think!
Thank you and keep on blowing my mind :)
—> Fred
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Samantha
01. Mar, 2010
First comment in a while, but this tutorial was great! It really helped me out on my animation assignment. Thanks!