-
expression help
hi everyone, i posted this a couple of days ago without any luck getting much hoped for replies or help, but i think (hope) my post only went missing in the confusion when the posting server lost the plot.
anyway, i’ve been useing of of Dan Ebberts scripts from a tutorial he has here on the cow, where one simply distributes layers stacked at the top of a comp in z-space based on their index value with the help of a slider, as so:
position+[0,0,(index-1)*this_comp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Slider Control”).param(“Slider”)]
however, what i would love to make it do is to, as well as space the layers in z-space, also rotate each layer on it’s y axis, with a delay, based on when the last layers left it’s original position and the slider reaches it’s end keyframe. (i.e. as the layers spread in z-space the one farthest away starts turning 90 degrees on it’s y-axis and x frames/secs later the last layer finishes it’s turn on y-axis. hope i’m getting my point across here…
i’ve been trying to figure something out, but however much i pride myself in understanding tutorials and other scripts and use them i am so far hopeless at developing my own ones. is it a math-someting script on the rotation property i need, maybe??
hopefully someone knows exactly how to do this and thanks so much for any help! /d 🙂
-
6 Replies
-
That’s funny because I justposted moments ago on your earlier request.
Here’s my hack of an answer:
To get what you want, if I read your post correctly, we need to a two new sliders and modify some expressions.
This is modified (a yikesmikes hack) from Dan
-
dude, wow what a reply! thanks so much! did you just make all that up as you went or have you worked on it before? anyway, it looks like it’s exactly what i’ve been after, so i’m super grateful. i guess it’ll take me a minute or two to make heads/tails of your mini tute (or not so mini for that matter)
i feel really silly as i’ve read everything on dan’s web pages a hundred times and sort of understand how use the scripts individually, but not how to cross-use them or get how they really work.anyway, thanks a million again for your reply and sorry for missing your reply on my first post, i guess we ran past each other on that one.
/d 🙂
-
Actually, I read you question and then tried to figure out how to do it. I just got the Meyer’s book Volume 2 and there’s great stuff on expressions, between that and Dan’s Stuff (he’s in their book too) I’m trying to learn expressions. So I try to patch exsisting expressions into what I want to do.
Dan probably has a cleaner way to do this, but short of a brain transplant, my hack is the best I can come up with.
-
cheers again then!
i’ve got the mayer’s ae in production second edition. got some expressions in there. never got the motion grapics vol 1 though. would you advice to get the motion graphics in ae vol 2 straight off or start with vol 1. obviously i’m interested in getting my head around expressions too, but i find the books overlap sometimes.
/d -
haha, it works a charm! you put me to the test a little bit even though your solid walk-through of the process 🙂 …
the bit taken from Mr Ebberts script reading:
delay = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”).effect(“Slider delay”)(“Slider”); //number of frames to delay
d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(1).thisComp.layer(“curlyQ.ai”).rotationY.valueAtTime(time – d)…obviously (took me half an hour to figure out) needs the curlyQ.ai bit taken out to leave:
thisComp.layer(1).rotationY.valueAtTime(time – d)or just exchange that whole row for a pickwip expression to the ‘y rotation slider’ with teh valueAtTime bit tagged onto the end of it … funny enough both variations seemed to work the same, or if they didn’t i couldn’t see the difference.
all in all it seems a fairly solid way of doing the whole thing! 😀 and it’s very easy to keyframe the values and control the whole thing. what i want to use it for is to present video shots masked off into same shaped bits to fold out and create walls that then transform into a room. i tried to use trapcodes echo-space plug, which i love, but as that duplicates the same image i needed a way of making different bits of teh same image do sort of the same thing…
i got to get better at this expression-thingie!
thanks again for the detailed help/ d
-
Sorry about the delay, but this reminds me of my sortByZ script:
https://www.aenhancers.com/viewtopic.php?t=197
Reply to this Discussion! Login or Sign Up