• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  get name from effect controls and add them to expression

  Posted by Sam Catt on May 16, 2018 at 10:05 pm

  So i’ve been pondering on this for a while now.

  I want to select a layer and, in an AE UI input text field specify how many iterations of an effect control I want: I.E

  Target 1
  Target 2
  Target 3
  Target 4
  Target 5

  etc etc. I have this working perfectly. Now I want to be able to take the effect control names and add them to the layers expression

  I.E:

  – start of expression here –
  target 1
  target 2
  target 3
  target 4
  target 5
  – end of expression here –

  my guess, is I would have to create an array? and then link back to the arrays name in the expression = “”;

  Though I have no idea how to actually go about doing that exact thing. My current code is below, ignore the “5” in for (var n = 0; n < 5; n++){ it’s a dummy for selecting 5 in te UI text box

  app.beginUndoGroup("Dynamic Parenting");

  var myComp = app.project.activeItem;

  if (myComp == null || !(myComp instanceof CompItem)){
  alert(errorNoCompSelected);
  } else {
  var selectedLayers = myComp.selectedLayers;

  if (selectedLayers.length==0) {
  alert(errorNoLayerSelected);
  } else {
  for (var i = 0; i &lt; selectedLayers.length; i++){
  selectedLayers[i].property("Rotation").expression = "Target 1";
  var effectLocation = selectedLayers[0].property("Effects");
  var effectCount = effectLocation.numProperties;
  for (var n = 0; n &lt; 5; n++){
  var addEffect = selectedLayers[0].property("Effects").addProperty("Layer Control");
  var nPlusOne = n+1
  addEffect.name = "target" + " \""+nPlusOne+"\" ";
  var addEffect = selectedLayers[0].property("Effects").addProperty("Slider Control");
  addEffect.name = "fade" + " \""+nPlusOne+"\" ";
  }
  for (var m = 1; m &lt;= 1; m++){
  var currentExpression = selectedLayers[0].property("Rotation").expression;
  selectedLayers[0].property("Rotation").expression = " \""+currentExpression+"\" " + "something";
  }

  }
  }
  }

  app.endUndoGroup();

  Sam Catt replied 8 years ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
• 0 Replies

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