• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  increment gaussianRandom expression

  Posted by Beth Kaufer on July 25, 2007 at 8:36 pm

  I have a layer that I want to randomly place in 3D space and duplicate so I have many instances of the same thing. I have applied this expression to the position of the 3D layer

  minX = 0;
  maxX = 2000;
  minY= 480;
  maxY = 520;
  minZ= 0;
  maxZ = 500;
  gaussRandom([minX,minY,minZ],[maxX,maxY,maxZ])

  It works fine except that the layers can cluster together. Is there any way to alter the expression so that the Random values could only be generated in increments of say 25pixels. That way I can control how close together the layers could get?

  Thanks for your help.

  -BK

  Darby Edelen replied 19 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  July 25, 2007 at 11:44 pm

  Something like this might do it:

  factor = 25;
  minX = 0;
  maxX = 2000;
  minY= 480;
  maxY = 520;
  minZ= 0;
  maxZ = 500;
  temp = gaussRandom([minX,minY,minZ],[maxX,maxY,maxZ])
  x = Math.round(temp[0]/factor)*factor;
  y = Math.round(temp[1]/factor)*factor;
  z = Math.round(temp[2]/factor)*factor;
  [x,y,z]

  Dan
• 

  Darby Edelen

  July 26, 2007 at 5:46 pm

  [Bark00] “It works fine except that the layers can cluster together.”

  Isn’t that the nature of a Gaussian function?

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaussian_function

  Overall, the information on this page goes a little over my head, but the graphs should be the telling parts.

  Darby Edelen
  DVD Menu Artist
  Left Coast Digital
  Aptos, CA

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