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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Expressions Better corner pinning with clever nulls

  • Better corner pinning with clever nulls

    Posted by Harry Hoag on March 28, 2014 at 6:25 pm

    Hi guys,

    This may have been done before but a quick search came up empty. I want to be able to put four nulls into a comp wherever I like, then use those as the anchors for cornerpinning. I’ve had a quick go with the expressions needed but quickly realised I’m out of my depth!

    For example the top left null would have to keep it’s ratio with the top left pin, and at the same time it would need to move the 3 other pins around to keep the other nulls locked to the correct part of the image you’re trying to distort.

    I hope this makes sense! I’m wondering if this is even possible with expressions as you would have to have data coming from all four null positions to all four pins simultaneously. Any ideas?

    p.s. I don’t like the way cc power pin works, although it’s slightly better. And I believe there might be a red giant or sapphire cornerpinning plugin that does this, but i wont be able to get those on this job.

    Harry Hoag replied 12 years, 1 month ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Kevin Camp

    March 28, 2014 at 7:16 pm

    here’s a link to dan’s 3d corner pin expression.

    https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/threeD-corner-pin.html

    it will link the pins to 3d nulls… though, i don’t think it is exactly what you are looking for, see what it can (or can’t) do for you, and then we’ll see if we can accomplish what you need from there.

    Kevin Camp
    Art Director
    KCPQ, KZJO & KRCW

  • Harry Hoag

    March 29, 2014 at 5:04 pm

    thanks for that kevin, yes i’d found that one while i was searching for cornerpin expressions. This will just link the pins directly to the 3d nulls position but not allow you to adjust the relative positions of the nulls compared to the pins. I use this expression often for making shine into 3d volumetric light.

  • Harry Hoag

    March 30, 2014 at 2:46 pm

    Ok guys, to help things along a bit, i’ve attached a comp that tries to explain what I’m after.

    So if you look at the comp, I want to distort the text in the precomp to match exactly the text in the main comp. To do this with normal corner pin you’d have to fiddle backwards and forwards with the pins until the text matches.

    In my comp I’ve set up four nulls. If the corner pins were properly linked and anchored to those nulls then it would take no time to line up the text. Currently with the expressions, I’ve crudely parented the pins to the nulls by hard coding their start positions. But this is not better than the original. I need help linking all the points to each null so that the image is properly anchored to the nulls. I hope this makes sense.

    If we managed this, with adjustable start positions of the nulls, it would vastly improve the standard cornerpin! What do you think?

    I’ve made it cs5.5 for max compatibility.

    7310_cornerpinwithnulls01cs5.5.aep.zip

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