Angle Measure expression

[Dan Ebberts]

How are you creating the lines?

Dan

[Josh Coleman]

At the moment I am using Generate>Beam, but is there is a better way i’m all for it.

[Dan Ebberts]

Depending on how you have things set up, some variation of this should work:

beam1 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer”).effect(“Beam”);
beam2 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer”).effect(“Beam 2”);
v1 = beam1(“Ending Point”) – beam1(“Starting Point”);
v2 = beam2(“Ending Point”) – beam2(“Starting Point”);
radiansToDegrees(Math.acos(dot(normalize(v1),normalize(v2))))

Dan

[Josh Coleman]

And which layer(s) should i put this into?
I don’t use expressions that often, so i’m a little new to this.

[Dan Ebberts]

If you want to display it, I’d put it in the Source Text property of a text layer in the same comp.

Dan

[Josh Coleman]

ok so all of
beam1 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer”).effect(“Beam”);
beam2 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer”).effect(“Beam 2”);
v1 = beam1(“Ending Point”) – beam1(“Starting Point”);
v2 = beam2(“Ending Point”) – beam2(“Starting Point”);
radiansToDegrees(Math.acos(dot(normalize(v1),normalize(v2))))

goes into the text layer, as long as my two beam layers are called ‘beam1’ and ‘beam2’?

[Dan Ebberts]

The way the expression is written, it’s expecting two Beam effects (“Beam” and “Beam 2”) on a single layer (“Beam Layer”). It would be easy to change though, if your beams were on separate layers (“Beam Layer 1” and “Beam Layer 2”). That would be more like this:

beam1 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer 1”).effect(“Beam”);
beam2 = thisComp.layer(“Beam Layer 2”).effect(“Beam”);
v1 = beam1(“Ending Point”) – beam1(“Starting Point”);
v2 = beam2(“Ending Point”) – beam2(“Starting Point”);
radiansToDegrees(Math.acos(dot(normalize(v1),normalize(v2))))

Dan

[Josh Coleman]

Ok thank you, I’ll play about with it and see what I get.

[Josh Coleman]

In the current situation, the expression is outputting “0”

I’ve tried moving the beams and rotating them but no change.

[Dan Ebberts]

Hard to say without seeing how you have it set up. The expression assumes that the beam layers are not rotated or non-uniformly scaled. If that’s not the case, the expression needs to be more complex.

Dan