Graphics

I am tasked with doing an animation of a partial stroke outlining a quad. In Cinema 4D or After Effects, this is child's play (animated Sweep in the former, or a Stroke effect on a Mask in the latter), but in XPression, the best I have been able to conjure up is a series of thin quads, re-positioned anchor points, scaling, position, and masking for each side, with carefully orchestrated timings for each side, so that the illusion holds. This is a VERY cumbersome and onerous process, and will become a bottle-neck in this package as every element uses it.

So, before I get too far down this rabbit hole, I thought I would ask if there are others who have done this sort of thing, and maybe found an easier, more scaleable, sustainable approach.

Thanks in advance

I'm honestly thinking at this point, it's just easier to crank it out in AE, export it as a movie, and overlay it atop the elements in XPression... It would be cool though to have animated strokes in XP...
#XPression

It would be easier to create this in AE and then drop it in the XPN scene.
#XPression

I once executed a highlight of a rectangular stroke (and highlights of several other still layers) using masks and the continuous animation capability. Using this approach, I was able to rebuild a look that would have been two or three layers of video otherwise. It seemed to be less costly on resources.
#XPression

You achieve this effect by rendering the stroke outline as a mask, for each side in AE.
Then you can import it, have each mask mask only one side of your rectangle.
If you do your timings right, you can stretch w/e expanding portion of your rect. The velocity should be consistent as long as your clips are in the right order in Scene Director.

Am doing this for a show currently.
#XPression

Thanks, but I have found it far easier to just render the animated strokes for the element in question out of AE as a single video, which I apply as a texture on a quad, its fast to setup, and even faster to render, so if a change is needed, the swap is easy to execute. I'd prefer to not have to choreograph multiple overlapping animations one by one.
#XPression