Change expression at a certain point in timeline

[Dan Ebberts]

You can do it like this:

if (time < 6){ // interesting code here }else{ // different code here } Or, you can execute different code based on proximity in time to layer markers or keyframes. In any case, you're correct that all the code snippets will be in the same expression. Dan

[Tobias Gommer]

Hi Dan, thanks for your time! I went along with “time” and I ended up with this the following: I thought It was going to count up to 10.000 and after 6 seconds it would count down to 1000. Cleary I’m wrong because the output it undefined. (this is al happening at a textlayer)

if (time <6){
doCounter(0,10000,5);
}
else if (time > 6){
doCounter(10000,1000,5);
}

function doCounter(startCount,endCount,countDur){
s = "" + Math.round(linear(time,0,countDur,startCount,endCount));

if (s.length > 3){
s.substr(0, s.length -3) + "." + s.substr(-3);
}else{
s
}
}


[Tobias Gommer]

Okay I have been playing with this and I found out the 2nd paramater in the linear function is actually some sort of delay. My problem turned out the 2nd function did run, except it showed the endCounter result. When the expression is fired, the counter is already counting at the same time as the first counter. So when the movie reaches 6seconds it has already been there in the background. So I came up with this
go = 0;
if (time < 7){ doCounter(0,10000,5); } if(time >= 7){
doCounter2(10000,1000,12);
}

function doCounter(startCount,endCount,countDur){
s = "" + Math.round(linear(time,0,countDur,startCount,endCount));
return s;
}

function doCounter2(startCount,endCount,countDur){
s = "" + Math.round(linear(time,6,countDur,startCount,endCount));
return s;
}

I couldn´t find some sort of reference list of all the expressions, although I found Dan´s site and some others, but there´s no index or something. Thanks for reading this.

[Dan Ebberts]

You could consolidate your code a little by addining another parameter to your function, like this:

t1 = 5;
t2 = 7;
t3 = 12;

if (time < t1){ doCounter(0,0,10000,t1); }else if (time < t2){ 10000 }else{ doCounter(t2,10000,1000,t3-t2); } function doCounter(startT, startCount,endCount,countDur){ s = "" + Math.round(linear(time,startT,startT+countDur,startCount,endCount)); return s; } The section on interpolation methods in Adobe's Expression Reference might be helpful to you: https://help.adobe.com/en_US/AfterEffects/9.0/WS3878526689cb91655866c1103906c6dea-7a06a.html

Dan