Master Properties animations not working with Time Remap

[Richard Garabedain]

I cannot understand any of that at all…but why would anything work with time remapping? if you time remap anything the time is going to be way off..even if you put in some math formula

[Andy Engelkemier]

Yeah, that’s probably my bad in guessing poorly on what to explain.

So the time remap isn’t actually Changing the length of time. I’m guessing everyone here uses it to essentially add hold frames. You add time remap, then just extend the front and back. If you don’t stretch the keys, you aren’t changing the time.

So that’s what I’m doing. But I have that split in two. For simplicity’s sake, lets say i have a set of keys 0-2 seconds, and I keep them 2 seconds apart. Then I have another set of keys 5-8 seconds, and keep them 3 seconds apart. This allows me to slide those keys in my Main composition to match where I need that animation. I’m not effecting the timing of the animation at all.

So what confuses me is how the master property works. If I set keys, it looks like it sets keys In the precomp, but shows them to you in your main/parent comp. So if the times don’t match up, like if you’re using time remap, then is just doesn’t work.

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Andy, I just made a read of whole post twice… And still not actually sure what is an issue. Below are few guesses:

You want to control time-remap inside pre-comp from master comp, but it doesn’t work as expected, because times are different among the comps in your expression?

Also, it’s not clear what master properties you are referring to.

Please let us know if above describes the scenario, or is it somewhat different.

Find out more:
After Effects Tutorials: motion design, expressions, scripting.
Boxer – Dynamic Text Boxes Template with a Live Preview

[Andy Engelkemier]

So “Master Properties” is a new feature from Essential Graphics.
This allows you to do things like have one composition, create instances of it, and have each instance Different. Previously, you’d have to duplicate the composition and make a change to it. Or do changes with effect on each instance.

In my previous post about using that feature I was asking about having one element, a checkmark, in my animation change to different colors. Using “change color” effect, you have some work to do to be sure you don’t have halos of another color. Passing this over as a Master Property allows you to do that.

But I’ve found that Animating master properties isn’t working as I had hoped.

I have found several unexpected behaviors with essential graphics, mainly with the protected regions. I’ve read as much as I’ve found on protected region, and I can tell you that they do Not work as you would expect. And if you remove a protected region after you’ve used one, you should Definitely go back and delete the layer that used it, and add it back in. Because time ends up Really messed up. It sort of uses a sudo-time remap that you can’t visually see. It’s one of those features where they tried to make something easy, but messed it all up.

So far, with questions surrounding it, I’m getting the feeling that no one is actually using the features. It seemed like a good idea, but it seems like Adobe kind of messed them up, so it took more work to undo after it didn’t work. So wasted a lot of time.

[Albert Espinosa]

Having the same issue here! Resurrecting this post just to see if you did find a solution/workaround? Thanks!

[Andy Engelkemier]

Ha! Not only did I not find a solution, but I had forgotten about it long enough that I did a search for this issue and found my own question.

If you are using time remap, it feels very random which keys will work and which won’t. It really feels buggy. In one case, if I set a key on an opacity value then it didn’t work. With no keys, I could set the value.
My workaround in that case, that doesn’t always work, was to use an expression for that value that just looked at the opacity value of an adjustment layer. That worked, and setting keys on the adjustment layer Also worked.

I’m pretty sure this particular issue happened within the latest release. I believe they keys here were working, did an update, and then they weren’t. That’re really difficult to know for sure though.

Oddly, I have another layer in the same composition, Also just attached to layer opacity. That one was still accepting keys while using time remap.

I tried the expression workaround elsewhere and it didn’t work. My thought process there was that when you add a key, it attempts to add a key value inside the composition you are referencing. With time remap active, maybe that wouldn’t produce proper results. So I figured if I add an expression, it should just take the current frame and set the value to the layer I’m pointing to. Then next frame, repeat, and it shouldn’t matter if I have time remap active. It worked in one instance, and didn’t in another.

So good luck I guess, but hopefully you have better luck. Some of these things definitely are buggy though. I had one case where I exported a mogrt to use in premiere and I was using an expression to change the font style to all caps. It worked in premiere, but decided to make just a small handful of letters not work when rendered out with media encoder. You just never know what you’re going to get.