Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Adobe After Effects skip from layer to layer every 4 frames

  • skip from layer to layer every 4 frames

    Posted by Tom Van on May 13, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    Hi,
    I was wondering if there is an easy way to play 4 frames from layer one, then 4 frames from layer 2, then back to 4 frames for layer one etc…

    Both layers are image sequences, so I could just do it through selecting the files and creating a new sequence, but I was wondering if theres a better solution?

    Thanks a lot for looking.

    Cheers

    Tom

    Tom Van replied 16 years ago 3 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Bob Root

    May 13, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    On your top layer, set three opacity keyframes.

    The first one should be a value of “0” at time 0 in you timeline. Goto 4 frames and change the value to “100”. Goto 8 frames and change the value back to “0”.

    Now change your keyframe interpolation to “hold” for these 3 keyframes.

    [option] or [alt] click on the opacity stopwatch to open expressions for your top layer.

    Paste the following line as your expression.

    loopOut(type=”cycle”)

    This will loop the opacity keyframes you have entered for your top layer.

    Hope this helps.

    Bob

  • Kevin Camp

    May 13, 2010 at 9:07 pm

    if you had a fear of expressions, you could use the strobe effect.

    as in bob’s suggestion, place both sequences in the same comp.

    add the strobe effect to the top layer.

    set the strobe duration to the number of frames divided by the comp’s frame rate (4/29.97, for example — you could just type that into the duration field, you wouldn’t need an expression). and set the period to cycle duration to frames divided by the comp’s frame rate (8/29.97, for example).

    set the strobe to ‘makes layer transparent’, and that should do it.

    now, if you wanted the sequences to ‘pause’ while the other was showing, then ‘play’ while the other was hidden, you’ll need time remapping and expressions, or possibly the posterize time effect and expressions…. ooooh what fun.

    Kevin Camp
    Senior Designer
    KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

  • Tom Van

    May 13, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Thanks so much for all your help, I’m going to have a go tomorrow and I’ll let you all know how it goes.

    Thanks again!

    Tom

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy