Wiggle Path
Organic wobble on the outline — hand-drawn, rough, or torn.
Wiggle Path displaces the outline with smooth seeded noise. A perfectly straight edge becomes one that a person drew.
This wobbles the shape's outline. The Wiggle modifier wobbles the whole layer. They do different jobs and stack fine together.
When to reach for it#
- Hand-drawn borders and illustrated frames.
- Torn paper and rough-cut edges.
- Taking the machine finish off a geometric shape.
How it works#
The outline is resampled, then each point moves along its normal by a noise value. Detail controls how quickly the noise changes along the path: low detail is a slow bow, high detail is a fine tremble.
The noise is seeded, so it is fixed unless you change the seed. It does not animate on its own — if you want a boiling line, keyframe the seed or stack the Wiggle modifier on top.
Parameters#
Maximum displacement in pixels. Under 5 reads as hand-drawn. Over 20 reads as damaged.
How many wobbles fit along the path. Low values give long slow bows; high values give a fine tremble. Combined with a large size, high detail turns the shape into noise.
Picks which wobble you get. Keyframe it with hold interpolation for a frame-by-frame boil.
Recipes#
A hand-drawn frame
- Draw a rectangle with a stroke and no fill.
- Add Wiggle Path with Size around 3 and Detail around 4.
- Add a second Wiggle Path after it with Size 1 and Detail 14 for the fine tremble.
Two passes at different scales is what separates a hand-drawn look from a wavy line. One frequency alone reads as a deliberate curve.
Frame-by-frame boil
- Add Wiggle Path with a small size.
- Set keyframes on Seed every two or three frames, with hold interpolation.
- Give each keyframe a different seed value.
Things that catch people out#
Seeded noise is static. A stationary wiggled path stays exactly as wiggled. Animate Seed, or add the Wiggle modifier for movement.
See also#
Something here wrong or missing? Tell us in the community.