• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Beam effect and Coordinate Expressions for 3D Outlined Cube

  Posted by Sam Bass on February 7, 2017 at 4:07 pm

  I’m using the beam effect to make a 3D outlined cube and pick whipping the start and end point to the anchor points of nulls. I have 4 nulls to create the front and back faces of the boxes and then another set of 4 beam effect layers to make the sides of the box. I want to parent the 4 nulls to 1 null so I have more control over the position, scale, and rotation but when I do that it breaks the link to the beam effect and they no longer line up with the 4 nulls. I did figure out that if I pick whip the position of 1 of the 4 box face nulls to the position of the main null and add a +/- number to the end of the pick whip position expression i can move the null on the x-axis. All I need now is another piece of code to make it move on the y-axis but I can’t figure that out. Does anyone know an expression that can force position of a layer to a specific coordinate???

  Beam effect layer expression
Start Point - thisComp.layer("Btm_L").transform.position
End Point - thisComp.layer("Btm_R").transform.position

  Btm_L null pick whip expression
Position - thisComp.layer("Null 6").transform.position-100

  Sam Bass replied 9 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  February 7, 2017 at 4:48 pm

  I think you probably just need to use layer space transforms, like this:

  L = thisComp.layer(“Null 6”);
  L.toComp(L.anchorPoint)

  Dan
• 

  Sam Bass

  February 7, 2017 at 6:30 pm

  When I use that on the 4 nulls position it doesn’t do anything. I’d like to be able to have the 4 nulls parented to one main null that controls them but still be able to have the beam effect work.
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  February 7, 2017 at 6:35 pm

  Are you applying it to the Start and End points of your beam?

  Dan
• 

  Sam Bass

  February 7, 2017 at 7:05 pm

  I was not. Worked like a charm. Thanks!

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