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Activity › Forums › Adobe After Effects Expressions › Expression illiterate. Please help me with this basic expression:

  • Expression illiterate. Please help me with this basic expression:

    Posted by Jeremy Garchow on May 3, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    I am key framing two layers of text for position, I need the bottom text layer to be the exact same position as the one on top, except the the x value needs a value of 4 added to it (to move the bottom layer 4 pixels to the right of the top layer).

    Does this make sense? I can’t figure out the expression language and key framing them all is cool but annoying, and this seems like a perfect time to learn a simple expression to train my expression feeble mind. Thanks a lot in advance.

    Jeremy

    Jeremy Garchow replied 19 years, 5 months ago 3 Members · 5 Replies
  • 5 Replies
  • Lord Scales

    May 3, 2007 at 9:11 pm

    x = thisComp.layer(“name”).transform.position[0]+4;
    y = thisComp.layer(“name”).transform.position[1];

    [x, y]

    Lord Scales

  • Jeremy Garchow

    May 3, 2007 at 9:51 pm

    You are and king/queen among men/women.

    I take that back, you are a lord of scales.

    Thanks!

    Jeremy

  • Filip Vandueren

    May 4, 2007 at 1:19 am

    In Motionscript, you can add two vectors simply together like this:

    [10,10] + [2,4] => [12,14]

    since the position contains a vector, the expression can be as simple as:


    thisComp.layer(“name”).transform.position + [4,0];

    (this used to not always be the case – 5.5 ? -there was a function called Add or vectorAdd, or something like that)

  • Lord Scales

    May 4, 2007 at 1:30 am

    Nice info, Filip! I guess this function was addVector(?).

    I really like the variables. Even this being a simple expression, I have to simplificate it. Since I started to study Dan Ebberts’ Motion Script.com, I started creating variables to everything.
    They are really useful and the best is that we can add a lot of names to them and it is easy to memorize.

    Lord Scales

  • Jeremy Garchow

    May 4, 2007 at 3:09 am

    If the text layer is 3D, it’s as simple as adding a z vector, no?

    thisComp.layer(“name”).transform.position + [4,0,0];

    Thanks again. Extremely helpful.

    Jeremy

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