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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Expressions Using Expressions to get automate animations

  • Using Expressions to get automate animations

    Posted by Sten Ritterfeld on August 24, 2020 at 6:06 pm

    Hi all,

    I have about 20 videos that each complete a step in a progress tracker. The videos are in Premiere Pro, the progress tracker is an AE file I connect using dynamic link. Since the progress tracker is part of a larger overview, and I zoom in into the tracker, the boxes that indicate each video that change to green when a video is “completed” are in a precomp down three layers.
    In other words: You finish watching a video, and the progress tracker appears and makes the box of that video green. That’s it.

    What I want is one composition per video, without having to duplicate the several precomps that contain the boxes.
    Now, I’ve found two rather unelegant solutions: one is to duplicate the layers into the composition for each video, and just make the boxes green for each video like that. But this is a very inflexible solution. I don’t like it.
    The other one that worked, but is horrendous, is to link the boxes to checkbox controls, where I can turn on each box individually. So yeah, then I’d have to manually export each video, and turn on the next box after each one. That seems rather cumbersome and unnecessary.

    But I haven’t figured out what expression (or script?) would allow me to do this.

    Here’s what I’ve tried:
    Make one large comp that includes all the progress tracker compositions for all videos, have a slider and link each box to the position of the slider with an if expression (so the slider is between a certain value in the main comp, the box is shown). And then link the comp to the videos and just have it start at a specific time. But even though I got no errors, this did not work. I think because the slider position does not correspond to where the boxes would appear?

    Would it be possible to have the opacity of one layer linked to the name of a precomp that it is in, and have it act ONLY in regards to that specific precomp? So if the box for video 5 only appears for videos 5 and later?

    I am not sure I am getting my point across properly, since I am myself not entirely sure whether it is even possible to achieve something like this in AE, but any help would be highly appreciated!

    Thank you

    Sten Ritterfeld replied 6 years ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Filip Vandueren

    August 25, 2020 at 2:36 pm

    If you want a precomp to have certain values depending on its context,
    you should look into “Master Properties” via the “Essential Graphics” palette in After Effects.
    It’s a rather new feature that’s designed specifically for your problem.

    Master properties can also be included in .mogrt exports for changing inside of premiere

  • Andrei Popa

    August 25, 2020 at 3:33 pm

    This is a very nice introductory video for master properties and how to use them.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz_YM0l6AFo

    Andrei
    My Envato portfolio.

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  • Sten Ritterfeld

    August 26, 2020 at 11:55 am

    You’re a lifesaver!

    Thank you so much. Took me a while to properly configure all the layers, but this should make it easier for the future.

    Amazing how you figured out what I was looking for – it’s perfect! Really appreciate it.

  • Sten Ritterfeld

    August 26, 2020 at 11:56 am

    This is awesome, thanks!!

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