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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Expressions Delay Comp start time

  • Delay Comp start time

    Posted by Eric Sanderson on October 9, 2008 at 3:04 pm

    this is kind of hard to explain (maybe not hard but time consuming) so ill just start at the start. So i have in one comp a single “S” writing on and a weird speed ramped sort of way and ive comped that and made it 3d and have made about 25 duplicates. Using the index-1 method to push each new layer 45 pixels back in z and also used it to make each new layer brighter. And what i want is for each new layer to animate (write-on) about .2 or .3 seconds after the one above it, which i would usually use a valueAtTime for but the effect that is driving the animation is in a different comp. So how should i go about doing this? I thought maybe displayStartTime but i dont know what to apply that to…?

    Eric Sanderson replied 17 years, 6 months ago 2 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Dan Ebberts

    October 9, 2008 at 7:26 pm

    How about just something like this:

    comp(“other comp name”).layer(“layer name”).effect(“effect name”)(“property name”).valueAtTime((index-1)*.3)

    Dan

  • Eric Sanderson

    October 9, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    i was thinking something like that but what property do i apply that code to in my master comp? Since its just the time im trying to affect…actually i think i just gave myself an idea, ultimately i just need each layer to happen later without having to just move each layer down in time evenly, so maybe just enabling time remapping and using the time of the layers in the comp for a valueAtTime?

  • Dan Ebberts

    October 9, 2008 at 11:05 pm

    Maybe I’m not understanding what you’re doing, but I would think you would apply the expression to properties in the slave comps(to the same properties that you animated in the master comp).

    Dan

  • Eric Sanderson

    October 10, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    ya see thats the thing, there are no animated properties in the comp with the duplicates, the only animated properties are in the slave comp. I really have 3 comps for this object, And the 2nd comp ultimately ends up in my real Master Comp..where ive created this abstract 3d room, where massive, bent and sort of cut up letters (that spell out “design”) are protruding out of the floor, and the “S” is writing up out of the floor and i want the duplicates to write up in succession behind it. so basically heres what i have,

    1st comp- “S” keyframed animation using “write-on” revealing the S. 2d layer. And the reason i didnt Dup it in here was becuase there are 2 layers in this comp, the top slowly writing-on, the 2nd quickly and randomly flashing the full letter as the write-on slowly happens. So at the time i thought it would be cleaner to pre-comp that and dup that comp. so i did.

    2nd comp- “S” is color treated and duplicated in 3d space along the Z about 25 times. Only animated property is because i pickwhipped the distance for each dup to a single slider on a null so i slowly spread them apart over time…but no animated properties relevant to what im trying to do.

    (master)3rd comp- 2nd comp is brought in (along with the rest of the comps containing the letters, continuously rasterized and also made 3d.

    So hopefully that clears it up enough to tell me if what i want is even possible or if ill just have to move all the layers by hand to make them grow sequentially.

  • Eric Sanderson

    October 10, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    So i figured out i was making it much more difficult than it was, i just enabled time remapping and did a index-1 valueAtTime using that and got the result i was looking for.

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