Display the name of the next visible layer below

[Steve Sierra]

Hi,

I think this will work :

a = thisLayer.index;
b = thisComp.numLayers;
for(i = a+1; i <= b; i++){
curLay = thisComp.layer(i);
if(curLay.inPoint < time){
curLay.name;
break;
}
}

Cheers !;)

[Steve Sierra]

This is even better :

a = thisLayer.index;
b = thisComp.numLayers;
for(i = a+1; i <= b; i++){
curLay = thisComp.layer(i);
if(curLay.inPoint < time && curLay.outPoint > time){
curLay.name;
break;
}else{
“”
}
}

😉

[Mike Foran]

Effing brilliant. If I might try to parse this so I understand what you are doing here, please let me know if I am getting it wrong.

– set a to the current layer index value
– set b to the total number of layers
– set a loop increasing i at each recursion from one over a until b
– set curLay to the name of the layer i
– check to see if the layer has an in point less than the current time
– if so display the name

What does the “break” command do?

Thanks for taking the time to do that!!

[Steve Sierra]

That’s exactly it !

The “break” stops the for loop if a layer is found underneath the text layer.

The second expression also :
– checks if the outPoint is after time, so it stops displaying the name once the layer is cut.
– the else part makes the text layer display nothing (“”) if there is no layer underneath.

Cheers !
😉

[Mike Foran]

That is better but it was not getting the data for an edit until 1 frame after the in-point. I added the “=” back in to the in point check, so it’s like this:

a = thisLayer.index;
b = thisComp.numLayers;
for(i = a+1; i <= b; i++){
curLay = thisComp.layer(i);
if(curLay.inPoint <= time && curLay.outPoint > time){
curLay.name;
break;
}else{
“”
}
}

Thanks again for taking the time on this. It will be very helpful for a number of projects.

[Dan Ebberts]

If you’re only after visible layers this one should skip over nulls, audio layers, and anything with its eyeball turned off:


txt = "";
for (i = index+1; i <= thisComp.numLayers; i++){
L = thisComp.layer(i);
if (! (L.hasVideo && L.active && L.opacity > 0)) continue;
txt = L.name;
break;
}
txt


Dan

[Mike Foran]

Excellent Dan, thanks. If I might ask, what does the exclamation point in the IF statement do?

[Dan Ebberts]

It means “Not”, so if anything in the parentheses isn’t true, the layer gets skipped.

Dan

[Steve Sierra]

Very nice !!
I didn’t know about the “continue”…
I see it stops the text layer from seeing the disabled layers.
Could you please explain how it works ?

Many thanks 😉

[Dan Ebberts]

It’s actually a variation of this:

https://motionscript.com/design-guide/source-name.html

Dan