• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  orient layers towards ‘wall’

  Posted by Johan Hoogendoorn on July 7, 2008 at 6:18 pm

  Hi,

  I lhave 3 layers that are standing on a round platform linked to a null in the middle, so that when I rotate the null the 3 layers move correspondingly.
  It’s like this: https://www.flickr.com/photos/10752691@N06/2646207377/sizes/o/

  now, when sliding over the floor, I want the layers to be oriented at the “wall” behind the camera

  I tried this expression

  LookAt = “ball”
  look = look_at(position, this_comp.layer(LookAt).position);
  [look[0], look[1], look[2]]

  but it does not seem to work..

  Anyone a clue?

  regads,

  Jochem

  Johan Hoogendoorn replied 18 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  July 7, 2008 at 8:28 pm

  Do you need the auto orientation to occur on an axis other than the layer’s y axis, and/or do you need it to orient to a direction other than to the front? If not, it might be as simple as applying this to each layer’s y rotation:

  v = toWorldVec([0,0,1]);
  -radiansToDegrees(Math.atan2(v[0],v[2]))

  Dan
• 

  Johan Hoogendoorn

  July 8, 2008 at 6:11 pm

  Hi Dan,
  it’s double ‘no’, and your expression does the trick
  great, thanks, I can move on..

  Johan

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