• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  How to reference a layer with a certain checkbox effect ticked

  Posted by Sami Bayley on November 30, 2021 at 11:47 am

  How would I go about doing this? I need to take position property from a certain layer with a checkbox effect ticked. But how do I reference this layer?

  This is my current solution, surely there is a better option? It’s such an awful work around as I have to have the checkbox effect applied to every layer otherwise after effects gives me the error “missing effect”:

  i = thisComp.layer(index+1).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i2 = thisComp.layer(index+2).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i3 = thisComp.layer(index+3).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i4 = thisComp.layer(index+4).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i5 = thisComp.layer(index+5).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i6 = thisComp.layer(index+6).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i7 = thisComp.layer(index+7).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i8 = thisComp.layer(index+8).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i9 = thisComp.layer(index+9).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i10 = thisComp.layer(index+10).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i11 = thisComp.layer(index+11).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i12 = thisComp.layer(index+12).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i13 = thisComp.layer(index+13).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  i14 = thisComp.layer(index+14).effect("First Word")("Checkbox");
  if (i == 1 ) {1}
  else if (i == 1 ) {1}
  else if (i2 == 1 ) {2}
  else if (i3 == 1 ) {3}
  else if (i4 == 1 ) {4}
  else if (i5 == 1 ) {5}
  else if (i6 == 1 ) {6}
  else if (i7 == 1 ) {7}
  else if (i8 == 1 ) {8}
  else if (i9 == 1 ) {9}
  else if (i10 == 1 ) {10}
  else if (i11 == 1 ) {11}
  else if (i12 == 1 ) {12}
  else if (i13 == 1 ) {13}
  else if (i14 == 1 ) {14}
  else {0}

  Dan Ebberts replied 4 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 1 Reply
• 1 Reply

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  November 30, 2021 at 5:43 pm

  Something like this would be more compact, I think:

  n = 14;
  result = 0;
  for (i = 1; i <= n; i++){
    if (thisComp.layer(index+i).effect("First Word")("Checkbox").value){
      result = i;
      break;
    }
  }
  result

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