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Expressions and Sequence Layers
Hi There,
I am fairly new to the expressions in After Effects but I’m getting really interested.
I now have the following issue:
Let’s say I have a comp with 5 layers. Every layer has a duration of 3 seconds and I use “sequence layers” to make them appear after each other with an overlap of 1 second.
No biggie here.
Now for my first layer (layer1) I have made a fade-in. 0 sec Opacity = 0%, 1 sec Opacity = 100%.
I apply the same effect to the others, by using the expression:
thisComp.layer(“layer1”).transform.opacity
So that in the future, I only have to adjust my first layers timing of opacity and it will change for all the others as well, instead of copy-pasting…. (in the real project I have about 148 layers)
Now as you might expect, this effect doesn’t work when I apply the “sequence layers” to it, since layer2 will start later than layer1 and therefore will already have a 100% opacity.
So here is my question:
What would the expression look like when it automatically adapts the time in between the layers?Just adding the time into the expression wouldn’t work, cause I would still have to go over all the layer to copy and past the expression. EG. Layer1 starts 2 seconds earlier than layer2, but layer1 starts 4 seconds earlier than layer3…
I hope that my explanation is somehow clear to you guys. I find it hard to describe the issue with the right words 😛
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3 Replies
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Something like this should work:
L = thisComp.layer(“layer1”);
L.transform.opacity.valueAtTime(L.inPoint + time – inPoint)Dan
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Dan,
I’m speechless!
You’re the man. Thanks!!
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Also new ish to expressions. This is something that I tend to want to use a lot.
Say I have 5 duplicated layers of a box scaling from 1-100 over 2 seconds. Each layer’s start point is offset by 20 frames. I would like to set an expression to the scale of 4 of the layers so that I can simply adjust the scale on the root layer and have it effect all.
So I would like the applied expression to effect each layer from it’s in point. For some reason the above solution keeps breaking for me!
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