Keyframes with Expression

[Dan Ebberts]

Try it this way:

if (thisComp.layer("subline").text.sourceText.length > 0) {
  value;
} else {
  0;
}

[Duane Walters]

What if I wanted to scale the headline text down if there is a subline text present?

I’m getting that pesky “must be of dimension 2, not 1” error.

[Dan Ebberts]

Like this maybe:

if (thisComp.layer("subline").text.sourceText.length > 0) {
  value;
} else {
  [0,0];
}

[Duane Walters]

So, can you explain to me what the “value” is doing?

[Duane Walters]

Furthermore, is there a way I can sort of trigger the scaling to happen when the subline animation happens?

It would be cool to make it triggered, but just being able to delay the scale animation by frames or seconds would be cool too.

Thanks for all of your massive contributions to expressions Dan, you truly are amazing.

[Dan Ebberts]

value just says to use the keyframed/static value of the property. So in this case, it’s telling the expression not to do anything.

[Brendon Murphy]

What kind of animation is on the subline?

[Brendon Murphy]

I’ll assume that you are trying to drive the headline size by animating the subline’s Source Text. AE sees the length of an empty text layer as 1, so if you want the headline scale to be 0 when the source text is empty, you’ll need to do:

if (thisComp.layer("subline").text.sourceText.length > 1) {
  value;
} else {
  [0,0];
}

[Brendon Murphy]

Just for the heck of it –

if you would like to have the headline scale-in over a duration instead of just popping on, add a slider called “Scale duration” to the headline layer and use the below expression. Note that this assumes there are only two key frames on the subline, animating it from empty text to not empty. This also assumes that the headline has a uniform scale.

subText = thisComp.layer(“subline”).text.sourceText;

subTextLength = subText.value.length;

if(subTextLength>1){

heroKey = thisComp.layer(“subline”).text.sourceText.nearestKey(time);

scaleStart = heroKey.time;

scaleEnd = heroKey.time+(effect(“Scale duration”)(“Slider”)/(1/thisComp.frameDuration));

scalePerFrame = value[0]/(scaleEnd-scaleStart);

if(time<=scaleStart){

[0,0];

};

if(time>scaleStart&&time<scaleEnd){

[(time-scaleStart)*scalePerFrame,(time-scaleStart)*scalePerFrame];

};

if(time>=scaleEnd ){

[value[0],value[1]];

};

}else{[0,0]};