• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Reeplace content of a layer

  Posted by Peter Parker on October 28, 2015 at 2:24 am

  Hello ,

  I am new to After Effects scripting and I have been playing with the language. This is the visual setup of the project I have :

  

  Now , as a test , I have the following script :

  app.project.activeItem.layers[1].sourceText.setValue('Hello World')

  If I run this little script, I am able to change the text of my layer 1 from This is a test to ‘Hello World’.

  My question is , how can I do this operation when I am not active at the layer?

  As far as I know , if we run :

  var activeItemid = app.project.activeItem.id;
alert(activeItemid)

  I am able to get the id of the current item :

  

  But , If I try :

  app.project.item(activeItemid).layers[2].sourceText.setValue('This is just a test')

  It does not work.

  Can you explain me how does this work?

  Thank you.

  Peter Parker replied 10 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Miguel De mendoza

  October 28, 2015 at 9:47 am

  You can’t access to comp by name directly, you must do it by index or by writing a findComp function like this:

  function findComp(compName){
var proj = app.project;

  for(var i = 1; i <= proj.numItems; i++){
var comp = proj.item(i);
if(!(comp instanceof CompItem) || comp.name != compName){
continue;
}
else {
return comp;
}
}
}
  Other problem is that you only have one layer on your comp, so you can`t acces layer[2]. In layers case, you can acces layer by name. You can write this bellow findComp function:

  var myComp = findComp("Text 01");
myComp.layer("Layer 1").text.sourceText.setValue( "Your value");
• 

  Peter Parker

  October 28, 2015 at 11:08 am

  This is exactly what I was looking for. proj.item(i); was the key , and that function you provided is pretty useful. Thank you!

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