-
Color change challenge
I’ll put this question as a challenge to make it a bit more interesting for you guys. Suppose you are given a layer (solid or text) and it is colored blue. Now you want to change it to green for one second. Let’s say from t=10 to t=11. How do you do it in the fewest key strokes? Please give your answer in as much detail as possible so we can clearly determine the winner. 🙂
I need to do this on a rather industrial scale. Hence the question.
Thanks in advance!
-
5 Replies
-
Since I’m not actually going to do this, I’ll just give an idea of how I might approach it.
I’d make an expression that uses a slider value to pick the fill color from a set of pre-defined colors, with 0 representing the original unchanged color. I’d likely use a fill effect so that I can copy it once and paste it onto all solids.
Once that is done it should be four steps: 1) click on solid, 2) click on slider control value, 3) type in value, 4) press enter.
Something like that.
It might be possible to do it with layer markers and expressions with less steps.
-
Thank you! That might be a bit too industrial. Will that work for text also?
-
The colors will change from project to project, as will the exact time values, but there will only be two colors. Does a fill effect work with text?
-
That simplifies matters further.
Yes, the fill effect works on text as well.
If you create the effect once, keyframing the effect opacity on and off, you can select the effect, control select the color and the effect opacity keyframes, copy and paste the whole lot to any layer thereafter — or even multiple layers at a time. It will paste the first keyframe at current time indicator. Then all you have to do is to move the last keyframe.
It is still four steps but much faster:
1) select the layer
2) put current time indicator in right spot
3) paste
(4) move end keyframe if needed)If the color needs to change in several layers at the same point in time, select them all before pasting.
Actually, if the timing (how long the color effect is on) is the same for multiple layers, change the end frame position to that and copy the effect (plus color plus keyframe) newly before pasting, and all the target layers will have the right timing upon paste.
-
Thanks!
Actually, what I decided to do was to create about 60 animation presets with the fill and the keyframes. Reason for 60 being that there are only about 60 possible time values. That way, I never need to go in and adjust keyframes–especially that pesky third one that is needed just to make sure the original color is set for the first part of the layer.
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up