• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Variables using a dummy / null layer ???

  Posted by Alex Dinnin on June 4, 2009 at 1:14 pm

  I’m not sure if I can do this.. but

  I have a layer with a drop shadow effect on it..

  there is an expression on opacity, angle and depth to slider controls in another comp..

  they look like this

  A = comp(“TVP_12_SEC_IDENT”).layer(“CHEESE_02_PC”)
  ;
  A.effect(“SHADOW_OPACITY”)(“Slider”)

  all the expressions are reference to “A” is there a way I can have a dummy expression window where I could put the layer name.. it would read like

  A= Dummy window;
  ;
  A.effect(“SHADOW_OPACITY”)(“Slider”)

  That way when I added it to a new layer.. I would only need to change one line instead of three.. possibly more !!!

  I hope this makes sense.. I appreciate I have waffled a bit..

  can this be done ??

  Alex

  Dan Ebberts replied 17 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
• 3 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  June 4, 2009 at 1:22 pm

  It seems like you should be able to use a Layer Control (if the layer you want to reference is in the same comp as the control). Otherwise, you could stick the layer name in a text layer somewhere and reference it that way.

  Dan
• 

  Alex Dinnin

  June 4, 2009 at 1:49 pm

  Hey Dan,

  Unfortunately it’s referencing another comp…

  However I’m liking the idea of putting it into a text layer..

  so all I would do was pick whip the source text ????

  i’m rendering at the moment.. I’ll test it in a bit

  thanks for you great help.. your a legend !!!

  Alex
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  June 4, 2009 at 2:30 pm

  Say your text layer is named “layer name”. Then something like this should work:

  theName = thisComp.layer(“layer name”).text.sourceText.value;
  A = comp(“TVP_12_SEC_IDENT”).layer(theName);

  Dan

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