How to animate a progressive effect?

I primarily edit video using FCP and After Effects and I love SA as a potential tool in my arsenal. From all the examples I have seen, SA paint effects are usually added to the entire vid clip frames. I want to do something different and create a moving image that progressively draws on while the portion drawn continues to have the effect and animate too. Does that make sense? I have used the write on effect successfully and this gets close but it is static, not dynamic with the moving image. I thought maybe if I create an alpha layer to reveal another layer which has the paint effect applied, then animate the alpha reveal using the write-on technique might work. Problem with this is the alpha reveal and the effect layer wont match strokes, cutting the brushes off at the alpha edges. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this? Or do I need to clarify? It has been somewhat difficult to wrap my mind around this program, let alone articulate what I want it to do so bear with me. thanks in advance. td

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  • Let's address the mask problem you had with your approach above first.

    You could build your PASeq so that you generate a selection mask off of your alpha layer. Then you could set the Mask popup to the path mask setting, when you use this mask setting the full nib of the brush will draw at the edge (as opposed to being clipped by the mask). Or you could use the Path Start Inhibitor set to SelectRegion Only, which will force all the paint paths to start in the selected region but then draw where ever they draw. Both of these options will give you a more realistic paint look without clipping while at the same time restricting the paint strokes to the selected areas.
    • This forum is awesome and much needed. Thanks for the reply.

      That's all greek right now but I'll dig into both of those techniques and see what I can figure out.

      Thanks again. td
  • I have used the following approach, many times, and with great pleasure, matched only by the huge files sizes I ended up with!
    ;-)
    Let's say I have "clip 1" as an exported FCP QT movie.
    I open it in SA and treat it with a PASeq with sequential keyframing.
    I then import the resulting QT movie ("clip 2") in FCP and add it to another track above the original track, playing with compositing methods until I get something that "works."
    I may once again export the results as another QT movie ("clip 3") and reprocess it through yet another (or the same!) PASeq ("clip 4"), and by doing this many times, I discover things as "gifts" that I would never have been able to foresee.
    If the PASeq applied to the existing QT movie is carefully crafted, it will animate/modify only sections of the original clip, and when teh results are conposited with the original clip, really interesting things are possible.
    I first ran across that process when preparing a 50 minutes movie that was to be the base of a live happening at the "Festival du nouveau cinéma" in Montréal, in 2005, and that opened up avenues I haven't stopped exploring since.
    An excerpt from that happening is visible here, it shows many instances of what I am talking about above:
    (www.madhattersreview.com/issue4/gallery2_jeandetheux.shtml)
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