Create new random number each time it plays?

[Dan Ebberts]

I’m not aware of a reliable way to do it. You can use something like this to get the current milliseconds since 1970:

d = new Date(Date(0));
d.getTime()

So in theory, you could use that as a random seed like this:

d = new Date(Date(0));
seedRandom(d.getTime(),true);

The problem is that the cache doesn’t get invalidated by this so to get it to actually change you have to purge the cache. On top of that, there’s no way to restrict it to happening only at the first frame, so your random numbers won’t be consistent througout the preview.

Dan

[Greg Neumayer]

Hmmm. Bummer. Yeah, I can’t get it to do anything refreshable. I’ve got a series of Particular emitters flying in unison, so as a stop-gap, I’ve linked all their Random Seed values to an external RefreshCache slider. Now I just change that slider value to refresh Particular. Not elegant, but it works.

Thanks for checking.

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com

[Greg Neumayer]

Oh, just to be clear, they all link to the slider multiplied by their index to keep their numbers unique.

i.e: thisComp.layer(“control”).effect(“RefreshCache”)(“Slider”)*index;

Antifreeze Design
https://www.antifreezedesign.com