• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Particle Playground expressions in Ephemeral & Persistent property mappers

  Posted by Paul Roper on October 27, 2011 at 5:26 pm

  Hello,

  I’ve just discovered what seems to be a bug. Here’s a copy of the bug report submitted to Adobe; I’ve put it here in case someone (eg. Mr. Ebberts!) knows of a workaround…

  Concise problem statement:
  Particle Playground effect produces unexpected results when using expressions.

  Steps to reproduce bug:
  1. Add a layer map to the Ephemeral Property Mapper
  2. Set the ‘Map Red to…’, ‘Map Green to…’ etc.
  3. Option-click the stopwatch next to any of the ‘Min’ or ‘Max’ operators and pick-whip any of the other Min or Max values to link them

  Results:
  An incorrect value appears in the linked value. Upon inspecting the expression, there is nothing to differentiate the target values:

  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“Min”)

  is produced regardless of which value is targetted. It is actually (always) getting the result from the first value (ie. Map Red to) in the Persistent Property Mapper.

  Expected results:
  The produced expression should be something like:

  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“MapBlueToMin”) …to differentiate the various ‘Min’ and ‘Max’ fields in the effect.

  Maybe I just need to animate the values the old fashioned, keyframey way!

  – Paul

  Dan Ebberts replied 14 years, 6 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  October 27, 2011 at 6:09 pm

  Good catch. I’m guessing that Particle Playground hasn’t been updated in a while. Having multiple occurances of the same parameter name probably wasn’t an issue before scripting and expressions. One workaround would be to use the parameter match names like this:

  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0554”) //Red Min
  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0555”) //Red Max
  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0558”) //Green Min
  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0559”) //Green Max
  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0563”) //Blue Min
  effect(“Particle Playground”)(“ADBE Playgnd-0563”) //Blue Max

  Dan
• 

  Todd Kopriva

  October 27, 2011 at 6:15 pm

  Thanks for submitting the bug report.

  ———————————————————————————————————
  Todd Kopriva, Adobe Systems Incorporated
  Technical Support for professional video software
  After Effects Help & Support
  Premiere Pro Help & Support
  ———————————————————————————————————
• 

  Paul Roper

  October 27, 2011 at 7:01 pm

  Ooo – that looks interesting, Dan. Where did you find those parameter match names?? (Or do you just know EVERYTHING that’s ever been written about expressions?!)

  And yes, it’s very much an olde worlde effect – not multi-processor aware and still has the same omissions (lifespan, WITHOUT property mappers, please?!) as it’s always had. But where I’m currently working won’t stump up the few bucks for Particular.

  I kinda get the feeling that Adobe have abandoned Particle Playground, assuming anyone serious about particles gets Particular. Any thoughts, Todd?

  Thanks for the quick responses!

  – Paul
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  October 27, 2011 at 7:10 pm

  You can get the match names with one of Jeff Almasol’s amazingly handy scripts:

  https://www.redefinery.com/ae/view.php?item=rd_GimmePropPath

  Among other things, it gives you the paths to properties in both script and expression format, using either the regular name or the match name.

  Dan

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