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Activity Forums Adobe After Effects Expressions Null object effect to play at any time

  • Null object effect to play at any time

    Posted by Andy Gregory on September 28, 2006 at 4:13 am

    Very difficult to expain this but here goes…
    I have a null object with an keyframed. I want to have this as an independant object that I can call on at any time to affect a layer on my main timeline as described by the null object. However, the expression linked layer is only affected on the same numebered frames as the null object. e.g.the null object is keyframed from frame 1 – 10. The object that I want it to affect starts at keyframe 20. The null object by this time (even though it isn’t included within the composition has already finished keyframing by frame 10.
    Reason I need this is because in th end there will be a vast number of layers using the same effect or part of the same effect and if I need to chage a parameter I could do with changing it just the once 🙂

    Thanks

    Andy Gregory replied 19 years, 7 months ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
  • 4 Replies
  • Dan Ebberts

    September 28, 2006 at 5:01 am

    Your details are a little sketchy, but maybe this will help. This Position expression example will have your “delayed” layer start doing (at its first layer marker) what Null 1 does at frame zero. So you just keyframe Null 1 and set a layer marker on the other layer where you want the motion to start.

    control = thisComp.layer(“Null 1”);
    if (marker.numKeys > 0){
    t = time – marker.key(1).time;
    control.position.valueAtTime(t);
    }else{
    value;
    }

    Dan

  • Andy Gregory

    September 28, 2006 at 3:04 pm

    You can put the effect you need onto a null object as well as on the standard layer. Then expression link the various properties of the effect on the standard layer to the effect on the null object. If you do this with multiple layers you only need change the properties of the effect on the null object in order to change the effects accros all the standard layers.

    Applying an effects favourite would work but if I wanted to change any of the properties of the effect I would have to go and change all layers (bearing in mind in the end I might have about 200 layers with the effect on!)

    Dan I will try your solution tomorrow – Thanks

    Andy

  • Tony Kloiber

    September 28, 2006 at 4:53 pm

    Would you have to use this expression on each parameter of the effect, or can you refer to the whole effect?

    TonyTony

  • Andy Gregory

    September 28, 2006 at 11:06 pm

    As far as I have worked out you have to expression each part of the effect seperatly as there is no stopwatch on entire effects

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