• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Code newb.Accordion code

  Posted by Carly Crawford on March 8, 2011 at 7:33 pm

  So.. the effect I’m going for is an accordion in 3D space where the code is driven by the z axis of the first layer out of 10. However I don’t think I’m even saying this correctly in plain English to attempt to convert it into code.

  I’m trying to say:
  Alpha is equal to this compositions layer index 1’s z orientation
  When Alpha increases, divide it by .75
  The new variable cannot go below 0 on the z axis

  As it goes down the line I’d like index 2 to follow index 1’s orientation and index 3 to follow index 2’s orientation and so on an so forth.

  So I started:
  X=0
  Y=0
  Alpha=thisComp.Layer(1).orientation(2);
  thisLayer.orientation(2)=(Alpha/.75);

  but it says error when I put it in.. I also wonder if I’m suppose to enter this code in the orientation box too..

  Please help, frustrated and sad.

  X=0
Y=0
Alpha=thisComp.Layer(1).orientation(2);
thisLayer.orientation(2)=(Alpha/.75);

  Dan Ebberts

  

  replied 15 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  March 8, 2011 at 8:33 pm

  I don’t really understand what you’re doing, but maybe this will help. If you have a string of layers laid out end-to-end along the x axis, and you move each layer’s anchor point to its left edge and make each layer the child of the layer to its left, you can add this z rotation expression to the second layer from the left:

  -thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.zRotation*2

  and this one to all the layers to the right of that:

  -thisComp.layer(index-1).transform.zRotation

  So, all the layers except the left-most one end up with an expression. Now if you rotate the left-most layer around its z axis, you’ll get an accordion effect. It uses z rotation instead of z orientation, but the process would be similar.

  Dan

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