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Maintain Gap Between Text Layers, No Matter The Width Of Text
Hi guys
I have a comp with 5 text layers on the X axis.
I would like these text layers to be positioned 200px apart from each other.
I’m going to be duplicating this composition numerous times and altering the text using “thisComp.name” but I would like the distance between the layers to remain at 200px no matter how long the word happens to be, whether it’s 3 letters or 20.
These text layers will be animating along the x-axis from left to right (I’m not sure If this has any bearing on the expression).
I’ve done some searching on the forums and have found a few expressions that I thought would do the trick, but they always seem to end up with the text overlapping and not keeping the distance between the layers.
<font face=”inherit”>My knowledge of expressions isn’t that adept to be able to edit them so that’s where I’m probably falling with this one as I imagine it’s a simple task, so apologies if I’m posting something that has already been posted but like </font>I<font face=”inherit”> say, </font>I<font face=”inherit”> can’t get some of the expressions on here to work. </font>
Thanks in advance
Andrew -
4 Replies
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Something like this should work, add it to the position property and set the ‘target’ to be the layer that you want it to maintain 200px from.
target = thisComp.layer("LayerToFollow") ; rect = target.sourceRectAtTime() ; x = target.position[0] + rect.left + rect.width + 200 ; [ x, value[1] ]The expression assumes that the text layers are left-justified and none are parented.
If you animate the furthest left text layer, the text layers with that expression will follow it along the x-axis.
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Hi Kevin
Thanks for getting back with this. It did the job in the end so thank you so much for that 🙂
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Yeah, that parent business what a huge pain in my butt. I realized, after Basically finishing something, that what I had designed would have worked much better with a few child-parent relationships.
I haven’t come across it yet. Does AE let us do something like: thisLayer == child ? parent info : nonParented value;
I obviously wouldn’t do that shorthand, but just wanted to get the idea across. I’d Like to create a bunch of code snippets somewhere that I can reuse, and accounting for those things could definitely help, especially if a coworker uses a snippet for something they are working on.
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Hi Andy, checking that is possible with:
thisLayer.hasParent
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