• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  maintaining distance dynamically

  Posted by Steve Mintz on June 2, 2020 at 1:40 am

  Hello.

  I have a bracket that is a shape layer.
  I have text in the middle, that will be changing as it is data driven.
  I want the gap between the text and the line to be dynamic and maintain the same distance along the x-axis. The bracket point on the end has a node attached to it.
  This idea will repeat for the right side as well as there will also be a bracket.

  How do I do this?

  Andrei Popa replied 6 years, 3 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Andrei Popa

  June 2, 2020 at 8:14 am

  If your text is center justified, this expression to position should work.

  Left bracket
  textLayer = thisComp.layer(index+1);
textRect = textLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
textPos = textLayer.position;
diff = 20;
[textPos[0]-textRect.width/2-diff,value[1]]

  Right bracket
  textLayer = thisComp.layer(index+1);
textRect = textLayer.sourceRectAtTime(time,false);
textPos = textLayer.position;
diff = 20;
[textPos[0]+textRect.width/2+diff,value[1]]

  On the first row you must link your text layer. Select the ” thisComp.layer(index+1)” part and pick-whip your text layer.
  You can modify diff to increase/decrease the distance between the bracket and the text.

  Andrei
  My Envato portfolio.

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