• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Layer follow problem

  Posted by Sam Moulton on August 27, 2007 at 1:55 pm

  Ok so I’ve got this company timeline with kind of a tool tips window that follows along as a pointer moves. The problem is that I need to have the tool tips window stay put until the pointer gets to where it’s going. I control the X position of the pointer with a slider.

  Here’s the position code so far:

  y = value [1];
  val = thisComp.layer(“XSlider”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
  follow = val%100;

  if (follow > 9 < 10) { ease (follow, 9, 10, 0, 10) } else if (follow > 19 < 20) { ease (follow, 19, 20, 10, 20) } // a bunch of other else statements go here for 29 to 30 and so on up to 40 x = value + (follow * 10); [x, y] The problem I'm having is that the else statements don't seem to be working. my tool tips layer hangs at 0 until I get to 9 then smoothly moves from 9 to 10, but when the slider control gets to 19 nothing happens. The marks on the timeline are 100 pixels apart so I multiply the follow distance by 10 I'm probably missing something simple. Maybe this requires a logical operator.

  Sam Moulton replied 18 years, 8 months ago 4 Members · 8 Replies
• 8 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  August 27, 2007 at 2:36 pm

  Play around with this:

  y = value [1];
  val = thisComp.layer(“XSlider”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);

  period = Math.floor(val/10);
  x = ease (val%10 +1, 9, 10, period*100, period*100 + 100);
  [x, y]

  Dan
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  August 27, 2007 at 2:47 pm

  Oops,

  I that one had an error. Try this:

  y = value [1];
  val = thisComp.layer(“XSlider”).effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);

  period = Math.floor(val/10);
  x = ease (val%10, 9, 10, period*100, period*100 + 100);
  [x, y]

  Dan
• 

  Sam Moulton

  August 27, 2007 at 3:04 pm

  Thanks, I’ll give that a try.
• 

  Sam Moulton

  August 27, 2007 at 3:36 pm

  here’s what I came up with

  val = thisComp.layer(“Control”).effect(“XPosition”)(“Slider”);

  period = Math.floor(val/10);
  offset = ease (val%10, 9, 10, period*10, period*10 + 100);

  x = linear (offset, 0, 100, 600, 0)

  I’ve redesigned the project a bit and am using the offset filter instead of position because of some 3D and scale issues.

  Everything works except that I can’t go above 100 on the slider.

  Thanks again for your help…
• 

  Mike Clasby

  August 27, 2007 at 6:04 pm

  Can you right click the slider number and reset the Max on the slider?
• 

  Sam Moulton

  August 27, 2007 at 7:18 pm

  got it figured out. Used the remainder function (%) to loop the slider value at 100.

  Now if I could just get the thing to work with negative numbers…. but that’s another project.

  here’s the working code.

  val = thisComp.layer(“PositionController”).effect(“xPosition”)(“Slider”)%100;
  period = Math.floor(val/10);
  offset = ease (val%10, 9, 10, period*10, period*10);

  x = linear (offset, 0, 100, 1, 6000)
  y = value [0];

  [x, y]
• 

  Lord Scales

  August 28, 2007 at 4:22 pm

  It has an error…
  …
  x = linear (offset, 0, 100, 1, 6000)
  y = value [0];

  [x, y]

  The variable y should be value[1], like this

  x = linear (offset, 0, 100, 1, 6000)
  y = value [1];

  [x, y]
• 

  Sam Moulton

  August 29, 2007 at 3:39 am

  yup…. Just a type-0…

  Nice catch though

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