export variables form after effects?

[Walter Soyka]

I’ll assume you’ve already animated your scale and bounce with keyframes as you said.

Alt-click the Scale stopwatch to add the follow one-word, do-nothing expression:
value
Now right-click on one of the keyframes, then choose Keyframe Assistant > Convert Expression to Keyframes.

This will create one keyframe per frame for your animation. Select a range of keyframes and copy them to the clipboard. Paste them into Excel, Notepad, or TextEdit.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kai Hattermann]

hi walter,
this is a very good solution!
if the animation is not so simple it could get hard to get all of that code?
for example if i try it with a mask it just gets me the informations of the compositon.
or if one layer is connected to another layer (i dont know the english word. i mean that this layer
is getting a position depending on another layer), it is not working for example, it shows always the
same position values.
maybe this works just with simple animations?

[Walter Soyka]

Thanks, Dave.

We’ve missed you around here! Hope all is well!

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Walter Soyka]

[kai hattermann] “maybe this works just with simple animations?”

This will work for any value that an expression can access — though in some cases, you may need to translate or pre-process the data.

[kai hattermann] “for example if i try it with a mask it just gets me the informations of the compositon”

True, expressions can’t see mask data. I think that scripts can, though, so you might still be able to write a tool to get the data you need.

[kai hattermann] “or if one layer is connected to another layer (i dont know the english word. i mean that this layer
is getting a position depending on another layer), it is not working for example, it shows always the
same position values.”

It’s called parenting. You’d have to use the toComp() or toWorld() expressions to convert the child’s local position to global coordinates before using the method above to grab meaningful keyframe data.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Kai Hattermann]

wow- thanks a lot walter! this helps a lot already!