• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Link punctuation layers to text, and then animating with two values

  Posted by Tyler Jack on March 24, 2020 at 2:22 pm

  Hey there.

  I’m animating a quote, where the quotation marks scale up centrally and then animate apart, perfectly landing at the start / end of my linked text layer. I’ve used the following expression (my bounding box matches the size of the text and the quotation marks are set to the left / left + width)

  x=thisComp.layer(“Bounding Box”).sourceRectAtTime(time,true).left +
  thisComp.layer(“Bounding Box”).transform.position[0] +
  thisComp.layer(“Bounding Box”).sourceRectAtTime().width + 16;
  y=thisComp.layer(“Bounding Box”).sourceRectAtTime(time,true).top +
  thisComp.layer(“Bounding Box”).transform.position[1];
  [x,y]

  Is there a way in which this above code can be made as a B value, with an A value as the central 960, 540. I’ve been trying to use

  linear(thisLayer.effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”), 0, 100, value, value)

  and then somehow define my two values.

  Any help would be appreciated – even if it it’s to tell me this isn’t possible. I’m working up a template and in an ideal world it would be fully reactive to any changes in the main text layer.

  Thanks,
  TJ

  Tyler Jack replied 6 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Andrei Popa

  March 26, 2020 at 7:56 am

  I hope I understood you right. But this will only work on one-line texts. Or perfectly justified, because if the last line is shorter, the quote will be at the end of the entire paragraph.

  x=thisComp.layer("Bounding Box").sourceRectAtTime(time,true).left +
thisComp.layer("Bounding Box").transform.position[0] +
thisComp.layer("Bounding Box").sourceRectAtTime().width + 16;
y=thisComp.layer("Bounding Box").sourceRectAtTime(time,true).top +
thisComp.layer("Bounding Box").transform.position[1];
B = [x,y];
A = [960, 540];
linear(thisLayer.effect("Slider Control")("Slider"), 0, 100, A, B);

  Andrei
  My Envato portfolio.
• 

  Tyler Jack

  March 26, 2020 at 9:49 am

  Thank you Andrei – this is exactly what I needed. It works perfectly.

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