• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Looping within Ebberts’ marker-driven animation

  Posted by Danny Askew on June 29, 2011 at 11:15 pm

  Hi,

  I couldn’t find an answer to this anywhere else so I figured I’d register to ask the question here. I’m using Dan Ebberts’ fantastic “Triggering Animation with Markers” example from motionscript.com. The way it works though is that when reaching the end of an action marker’s ‘segment’ it simply stops on the last frame before the next action marker.

  The change I’d like to make I think is pretty simple, which is simply to loop back to the current action marker’s time and play out its ‘segment’ again. Ping-pong would be cool too. I’m just not sure how exactly that bit of the expression works and I’m hoping someone cleverer than I can figure it out. 😉

  Thanks in advance!

  Here’s the code from Dan’s site for reference:

  action = comp(name).layer("action");

  n = 0;
  if (marker.numKeys > 0){
  n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (marker.key(n).time > time){
  n--;
  }
  }

  if (n == 0){
0
}else{
m = marker.key(n);
myComment = m.comment;
t = time - m.time;
try{
actMarker = action.marker.key(myComment);
if (action.marker.numKeys > actMarker.index){
tMax = action.marker.key(actMarker.index + 1).time - actMarker.time;
}else{
tMax = action.outPoint - actMarker.time;
}
t = Math.min(t, tMax);
actMarker.time + t;
}catch (err){
0
}
}

  Danny Askew replied 15 years, 2 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  June 29, 2011 at 11:49 pm

  I don’t have time to test this out, but I think you should be able to replace this line:

  t = Math.min(t, tMax);

  with this one:

  t %= tMax;

  Dan
• 

  Danny Askew

  June 29, 2011 at 11:55 pm

  Brilliant as always! Works perfectly! Thanks!

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