How to smoothen text path of a tracked shot

[Sascha Engel]

Hi Roland,

but how to I restrict the smoothening only to the y coordinates?

Sascha

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Sascha, I’ve already given you the script, in my previous post, to do just that. It actually helps, more often than not, that you do what we have asked you to do.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer

[Sascha Engel]

I am sorry Roland, I did not understand, that it was specifically to the y-coordinates.
Would it be too much to ask, what determines exactly what parameter in this script.
I tweeked it with the trial & error method, but would like to understand it.
Just, if it does not make you upset – cause that would really not be my intention.

Thanx a lot.

Sascha

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Hi Sascha, apologies if I sounded upset. I was only wanting you to try the script out – often times, you will discover more by trying things out and such is the case with AE/compositing/VisualFX.

The script I gave you earlier;
//Start Script
Scalar = smooth(2,20);
(value[0],Scalar)
// End of Script

should be applied to the Null’s position property. The variable, Scalar, is defined using the smooth Expression method. Hence, after the first line is read by the Expression engine, when the word (variable) Scalar is used again, it would be as though you were writing smooth(2,20).

The second and last line of the script includes two parts; with the first part describing the value for x-position and the second (after the comma) for y-position. As you can see, value[0] references the first parameter of the position property, which is x-position.

Typing value[0] tells the script to take the actual values of x-position without any changes. Hence you will get the original x-position values of the Null layer. The second part, Scalar, references the smooth Expression method. The smooth Expression applies the smooth method to the keyframe values based on the two input values, (2,20).

Hence, the Expression will only affect the y-position values.

The following is a cut/paste routine from AE’s online manual –

smooth(width=.2, samples=5, t=time) Return type: Number or Array. Argument type: width, samples, and t are Numbers. Smooths the property values over time, converting large, brief deviations in the value to smaller, more evenly distributed deviations. This smoothing is accomplished by applying a box filter to the value of the property at the specified time. The width value is the range of time (in seconds) over which the filter is averaged. The samples value is the number of discrete samples evenly spaced over time; use a larger value for greater smoothness (but decreased performance). Generally, you’ll want samples to be an odd number so that the value at the current time is included in the average. Example: position.smooth(.1, 5)

HTH
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Singapore and Malaysia
Adobe ACE/ACI (version 7) & Imagineer Systems Inc Approved Mocha Trainer

[Sascha Engel]

Thanx a lot Roland.
Now it’s crystal clear.
I really appreciate your effort to explain that.
Makes expressions look much less scary now – at least this one 😉

Sascha

[Michael Szalapski]

Dan Ebberts has a website dedicated to helping people learn about expressions: https://www.motionscript.com/ It may help you to become more familiar with how to use them and continue to make them less scary to use.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

No trees were harmed in the creation of this message, but several thousand electrons were mildly inconvenienced.

[Sascha Engel]

Thanx, I gonna read into that, after project is off my table.

Sascha