Expression VS. Keyframes

[Dan Ebberts]

It certainly could, especially with a complex expression. Whether or not it’s worth the extra step (and the cleanup if you need to change the expression) would depend on your situation.

Dan

[Matthieu Foulet]

Actually, I am working on a rather complex project, which includes hundreds of 3D layers, all moved by expressions to keep random motion, nested and collapsed comps, often duplicated, etc.
I can’t pre-render comps since they are collapsed and I would lose some of my 3D objetcs, so I was wondering if keyframing a few of my expression would improve my workflow.
I think will give a try.
Thanks

[Sumanth Peddamatham]

You can think about it this way. When rendering to disk, each expression, in each layer is called for each frame of your project. So, depending on the number of instructions per expression, the speedup can be exponential.

Render time = (# instructions per expression) * (# layers) * (# frames)

Of course, this assumes each expression is the same number of instructions. You can find a rough upper bound by using your longest expression. (Once again, assuming your longest expression compiles into the slowest code, which may not always be the case)

Best,

Sumanth P.