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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Multi-object uniform scale wiggle + loop

  • Multi-object uniform scale wiggle + loop

    Posted by Rod Duarte on February 23, 2021 at 2:32 pm

    Hey guys!

    I’m trying to achieve this (attached image).
    So the way I’m tackling it, is I create the triangles in Illustrator, then properly prepare for export into After Effects.
    Once in AE, I import, convert to layered comp and all that jazz.
    But, since it’s so many of them, it’s tedious, slow and just…
    It just feels like I’m trying to brute-force something that probably has a better, smarter way to accomplish.
    I’ve thought of doing it using repeaters, but that doesn’t work because whatever effect I apply to the original is going to get replicated to the copies. Unless there’s some expression or some other way to have it NOT do that?
    I’ve also found plenty of posts about uniform scale wiggle + loop, but I couldn’t get any of them to work because none of the replies I’ve found, have both the uniform scale + wiggle AND the loop in one tidy expression. There’s a good chance I’m failing at putting these together.

    So to explain better, what I want to see happen is:
    – Screen filled with the triangles
    – Each one, independently and randomly, changes size via uniform scale wiggle (unless there’s a better way?)
    – When I get that done, I’ll use a fractal displacement map to control their opacity, so like in that picture, some of them disappear. Or maybe just by wiggling radically, that’d happen already? As in if the scale can be dropped to 0% for instance.

    Help?

    Rod Duarte replied 11 months, 4 weeks ago 2 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Filip Vandueren

    February 24, 2021 at 8:18 am

    If you use a font like Source Serif Pro that has unicode glyphs for triangle upa nd trianlge down, then you can do this with a text animator.

    Make a new empty text-layer, then paste these settings on them.

    This worked perfectly for me with these fontsettings:

    Source Serif Pro Regular, 64 px /38px leading, tracking -74,

    But you can tweak those to get more or less spacing. And you should use less repeats in the sourceText expression

    Adobe After Effects 8.0 Keyframe Data
    Units Per Second 25
    Source Width 1
    Source Height 1
    Source Pixel Aspect Ratio 1
    Comp Pixel Aspect Ratio 1
    Text Source Text
    Frame
    Expression Data
    (("▲▼".repeat(30)+"\r")+("▼▲".repeat(30)+"\r")).repeat(15);
    End of Expression Data
    Text More Options Grouping Alignment
    Frame X percent Y percent
    0 -33.3333
    Text Animators Animator #1 Selectors Text #1 Min Amount
    Frame percent
    0
    Text Animators Animator #1 Selectors Text #1 Lock Dimensions
    Frame
    1
    Text Animators Animator #1 Properties Scale
    Frame X percent Y percent Z percent
    0 0 0
    Text Animators Animator #2 Selectors Text #1 Min Amount
    Frame percent
    0
    Text Animators Animator #2 Selectors Text #1 Lock Dimensions
    Frame
    1
    Text Animators Animator #2 Properties Opacity
    Frame percent
    0
    Transform Position
    Frame X pixels Y pixels Z pixels
    -28 18 0
    End of Keyframe Data
  • Filip Vandueren

    February 24, 2021 at 8:39 am

    Forgot to mention: to get a perfectly looping wiggly text selector, you can do this:
    Set wiggles per second to 0
    add this expression to temporal phase:

    loopTime = 10;
    wigglesperSecond = 1;
    a=degreesToRadians(time * 360/loopTime);
    r=360*(loopTime*wigglesperSecond)/(2*Math.PI);
    Math.cos(a)*r;

    add this expression to spatial phase:

    loopTime = 10;
    wigglesperSecond = 1;
    a=degreesToRadians(time * 360/loopTime);
    r=360*(loopTime*wigglesperSecond)/(2*Math.PI);
    Math.sin(a)*r;

    So exactly the same except cos vs sin. This will get random values along a circle, so after loopTime we are back at the start of the circle and encounter the same randomvalues. Similar to two dimensions of a noise() function.

  • Rod Duarte

    June 13, 2022 at 9:27 am

    Wow, LONG time since I checked this.
    THANK YOU.

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