Mask animation via expressions

[Shannon]

I just tested your script within AE 7.0 on OSX and found no problems.

Nice work!

[Christopher R. green]

Thanks, guys.
I’ll add help button stuff.

Some notes on the movies:

I guess the xmas tree stuff is pretty obvious – the one ‘tree branch’ vertex was ‘linked’ to the top of the ornament, which was animated using expressions respectfully stolen from jjgifford and dan e (two pendulum expressions and a spring expression). The rest is parenting for the different parts of the ornament. The scene was absurdly quick to build.
The cigsmoke movie uses an open mask with nine (out of ten) animating vertices, each linked to its own randomly wiggled ascending object (solid). Then various blur/noise/displacement stuff was added to make it somewhat smokey.

[Matthew Woods]

Wow! Am I glad I stumbled onto this thread. I have been wanting this functionality for years! Great script! The interface is a little cumbersome. I would love it if the vertex’s motion stayed linked with via expression rather than being key framed. If those two things were fixed, it would be perfect. Not sure if the second one is possilbe. Please post any updates you do.

Kudos and Thanks for the script,

-Matt

[Shannon]

If you plan to develop this script further, I have a cool idea.

Rather than pulling the user’s input from a guide layer’s position value, is it possible to use
the output from an animation assistant effect(point control)?

In that case, there would need to be one controller for each vertex. This might be something the script could add to the layer for you with respect to num of vertices in a selected mask.

If you use the point control effects to pull position data, then users could apply tracking data to the point controllers, run the script and have that data applied to their mask.

Just my 2 cents.

Great work crgreen.

[Thehardmenpath]

Hi CR Green.

It works well in my computer, though it took me too a while to understand what I exactly had to select. I wouldn’t say it needs two layers with the same size. Nice vertexchooser. Much better than ours. And thanks for the aknowledgments! It’s Alejandro with J, but truly, I don’t care. I am happy to see it was useful to you.

[Christopher R. green]

[Mattness] “The interface is a little cumbersome. I would love it if the vertex’s motion stayed linked with via expression”

Hiya. I’m glad you like the script, and thanks for the input. Could you give me a few words about what you find cumbersome?
I’m afraid this trick can only be done through keyframing. No aspect of a mask is accessible through expressions ( … thus the need for this script!).

-cg

[Christopher R. green]

[shannon] “Rather than pulling the user’s input from a guide layer’s position value, is it possible to use
the output from an animation assistant effect(point control)?”

As I understand it, you want to do the reverse of what the script does? In other words, link a point to individual vertices of a mask? Sounds like a different script: ‘link point to mask vertex’. Let me take a look in my bag of tricks …

Nope, don’t have it. 🙂 Maybe I’ll play around with this idea over the weekend. If I do, though, I’ll probably make it work with one vertex at a time.

Just to clarify because of your first clause above, the guide layer does nothing but give the user a visual guide as to which vertex is to be changed. The script takes the initially selected point value and changes the mask, one vertex at a time.

I hope this makes sense …

Thanks for the input!

-cg

[Christopher R. green]

[thehardmenpath] “it took me too a while to understand what I exactly had to select. I wouldn’t say it needs two layers with the same size. Nice vertexchooser. Much better than ours. And thanks for the aknowledgments! It’s Alejandro with J”

Hi, Alejandro.
Sorry about the ‘h’; it was a type-o.
So glad you like the vertex guide solution! Scratched my head for a few hours over that one.
I’ve been trying to figure out a way around the selection issue. I mean, I’m used to the way the script works, but I know it can be frustrating if you’re not used to doing that kind of thing on a regular basis. A friend of mine was convinced I was playing a trick on him when I sent the script to him for testing. It’s also a little annoying that you have to re-select after “Apply”ing.

Thanks again for the inspiration

-cg

[Matthew Woods]

You wanted some interface suggestions so here they are.

First, I find that you have to select the position property and mask element before you run the script a little unintuitive. I think you should keep that functionality, but also include a drop down menus “select layer, select mask” and select layer, select property.

Second, I find having to click next vertex or previous vertex cumbersome, especially if you are using the script repeatedly to link a number of vertices to a number of points. Again, you could keep those buttons, but add the functionality to select the vertex by number (numbers starting with the first vertex created, then counting clockwise along the mask).

Third, delete the guide when the script is over.

My Fourth suggestion is tougher, and has as much to do with functionality as interface. I would like to be able to link multiple vertices to multiple points with one run of the script. You could do this by creating a sort of project window for links.

Fifth, related to the fourth, I would like to be able to save this list of links as a file, and reload it and run the script again if I make updates to my points.

Those are my suggestions.

The last two are toughies, I know. Thanks for the script as is. If you make any updates to it, let me know. I would love to test it out.

-Matt

[Christopher R. green]

Mattness,
Great suggestions.
Re: Drop-down menus:
AE7! Yes. This was something I was planning on doing. Now if I can get my newly downloaded AE7 to stop crashing on launch …
Re: selecting vertex by number:
Another good idea. The latest version has direct feedback on the palette about which vertex is targeted, which is useful. I find that if I have a number of vertices to do, I name the “position objects” “0”, “1”, etc., and that way it is really easy to keep track of where I am. Incidentally, I may widen the window so as to allow for longer layer/mask names. Personally, I like having the vertex targetting device to look at, and the vertex number to read (added in version .8; see newer post). Entering vertex numbers seems to me more user-error-prone, but I’ll put this on lower priority on this list of ‘to do’s.
Re: deleting the guide layer:
This I have to disagree with, although I may add a ‘delete vertex guide after apply’ checkbox or something. Reasons: the layer is turned off on apply. The layer is a guide layer, which means it doesn’t render (unless for some strange reason you have changed that render setting). The layer can be re-used, and changed to suit the user, so you can change the color, mask, etc. I’d rather not take away this feature, but, as I said, maybe a checkbox is in order. Is hitting the delete key really so bad? 🙂
Re: multiple vertices/multiple points:
This would be more like Alejandro and Juan’s script. I’ve thought about expanding my script this way, but it may end up being a separate script, built from this one. When I set out to do this one, I intended for it to be a simplified streamlined version of what Alejandro and Juan did. Am I boring you yet?
Re: Saving/Loading:
Hmm. I’ll put it in a hopper if I can find the time.

Thanks a ton!

-cg