• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Value range instead of creating each individual numbers

  Posted by Jo Craft on February 26, 2023 at 12:14 am

  Hi all!

  I am making a path based on data. I’ll have close to a 1000 X and Y points to place on that path once I get the full set. I am using the following expression to create said points using a JSON file with X and Y values. And I will eventually use Vegas or Trim Path or something of that nature to animate the path.

  createPath(points = [[thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 0")("X"),thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 0")("Y")], 
  [thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 1")("X"),thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 1")("Y")], 
  [thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 2")("X"),thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 2")("Y")], 
  [thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 3")("X"),thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline")("dataOutline 3")("Y")], [ETC...] inTangents = [], outTangents = [], isClosed = false)

  Now, is there a way to achieve that without having to create one line for each point with a value range or something of that nature? I have found a way to generate the 1000 lines I would need but I figured there might be a cleaner and probably less taxing on AE way to achieve it?

  Or is there a totally different / simpler way you would go about this?

  Thank you so much!

  Jo Craft replied 3 years, 5 months ago 2 Members · 4 Replies
• 4 Replies

• 

  Dan Ebberts

  February 26, 2023 at 12:27 am

  Can you post a chunk of your JSON file?
• 

  Jo Craft

  February 26, 2023 at 12:43 am

  Sure can, here is an extract, and it will look like this another 1000 times.

  {
      "YEAR": 2021,
      "MONTH": 1,
      "DAY": 6,
      "HOUR": 16,
      "MINUTE": 32,
      "X": 632,
      "Y": 643
    },
  
    {
      "YEAR": 2021,
      "MONTH": 1,
      "DAY": 6,
      "HOUR": 17,
      "MINUTE": 3,
      "X": 625,
      "Y": 642
    },
  
• 

  Dan Ebberts

  February 26, 2023 at 2:04 am

  I don’t know how efficient it will be, but you could tidy things up a bit like this:

  p = [];
  prop = thisComp.layer("JSON")("Data")("Outline");
  n = prop.numProperties;
  for (i = 1; i <= n; i++){
  	x = prop(i)("X");
  	y = prop(i)("Y");
  	p.push([x,y]);
  }
  createPath(p,[],[],false)
• 

  Jo Craft

  February 27, 2023 at 5:54 pm

  Dan, you are a the best. It works, and it’s much more efficient than the method I was using. Thank you so much. 🙏

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