looping but with a pause feature?

[Blake Goulette]

Not exactly what I wanted (or thought I could get away with!), but looping the animation in the precomp (and extending its timeline longer than necessary), I can use hold keyframes with Time Remapping to more or less accompish my goal. It’s not as elegant or customizable as I hoped, but it seems to work for now. Still open to any better options, thanks!

[Dan Ebberts]

How were you thinking of controlling the hold time?

[Blake Goulette]

Hi Dan. I had hoped I could add, say, a checkbox control: if checked, let the loop progress; if unchecked, keep the loop where it was when the checkbox value was changed (on a particular keyframe). But that threw errors: I didn’t know what to use for an else condition, and the loopOut() itself didn’t work. Something like this:

allowLooping = thisComp.layer(“N FX”).effect(“Checkbox Control”).value;
if (allowLooping)
{
loopOut();
}
else
{
// ?!
}

But, obviously, that’s broken. Thanks again for asking!

[Dan Ebberts]

Try this:

p = thisComp.layer("N FX").effect("Checkbox Control")("Checkbox");
t = 0;
if (p.numKeys > 0){
  n = p.nearestKey(time).index;
  if (p.key(n).time > time) n--;
  if (n > 0){
    for (i = 1; i <= n; i++){
      if (p.key(i).value == true){
        if (i < n){
          t += p.key(i+1).time - p.key(i).time;
        }else{
          t += time - p.key(i).time;
        }
      }
    }
  }
}
if (numKeys > 1){
  if (t > key(numKeys).time){
    t = key(1).time + (t - key(numKeys).time)%(key(numKeys).time - key(1).time);
  }
}
valueAtTime(t)

[Blake Goulette]

Dan, thank you so much! That seems to do the trick! I appreciate your help!

While I’m here, what do you suggest I read/study to get a better understanding of just what exactly all that code is doing? Or how to know what elements/properties to manipulate to achieve what you shared above? I can hamfist my way though some stuff, but other times I have no real idea of where to start. Thanks again!

[Dan Ebberts]

Other than a few basic JavaScript manipulations, I think you’ll find everything I used there in the Expressions Language Reference section of AE’s help, specifically in the Properties Attributes and Methods and the Key Attributes and Methods sections.

[Brie Clayton]

Thanks for solving this one, Dan!