Control values from two locations

[Andrei Popa]

How would the position property know where to take its values from?

[Paul Ducco]

That’s the conundrum though isn’t it…they’d both be right…because they’d both be the same value. Just how they are set might vary. i.e, a user might set some keys with the Point Controller, but then decide to adjust those keys in the Comp window (directly and visually).

Make sense?

(In the same way we could position a layer in a comp with value controls, and/or just grab the layer and move it.)

I know this might be a bit of a brain-breaker…but I SWEAR there’s a potential use case for this.

[Filip Vandueren]

Just add +value to the end of an expression and fix the value to 0,0

So you can tweak it keyframe an extra offset in 2 places. They just get added together.

[Paul Ducco]

HAHAHA. Gold. Thanks Filip.
Here I was using all sorts of wild if() statements.

Thanks mate.

[Paul Ducco]

Actually. testing that now…it works…however keyframes aren’t getting set. i.e, if the Point Controller is used it will key it there, but not on the shape layer and vice versa. Or have I misinterpreted your explanation?

[Filip Vandueren]

I thought that was the whole point, being able to keyframe both parameters?

You can’t move the layer and have after effects interpret that as having to add a keyframe to a point control.

If the effect is selected, and show extras is enabled, the point control is visible though and can be set /keyframed from within the comp-viewer too

[Paul Ducco]

Yep cool. See…dreaming. 🙂

Thanks again Filip, I guess I was overthinking it