Parenting layers for short amounts of time?

[Kevin Camp]

to get full control over pickup and setdown positioning, it seems easier to use layer markers (with layer selected hit the ‘*’ key) to control the position.

paste this into the position expression field:

target = thisComp.layer(“hand”).transform.position;
if (marker.numKeys < 2) { value } else { pickup = marker.key(1); setdown = marker.key(2); if (time <= pickup.time) target.valueAtTime(pickup.time); if ((time > pickup.time) && (time < setdown.time)) target; if (time >= setdown.time) target.valueAtTime(setdown.time);
}

then add 2 markers to the layer. the first will be the pickup marker and the second will be the setdown marker.

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Daniel Haskett]

hey man,

thanks alot that works a treat and is so simple to do once the expression is in place with many different objects.

out of interest how would you add an offset into the expression? so maybe you could use a slider control to change the offset so the object moves around a little. i spose you could also use a wiggle for a more random effect. can u add a wiggle expression at the end? or an offset?

sorry im getting better with expressions, but not really found anywhere that teaches about doing long expressions!

cheers for your help,

dan

[Kevin Camp]

yep… you’d probably want 2 sliders, one for x and one for y. then your expression would be like this…

target = thisComp.layer(“hand”).transform.position;
xOffset = effect(“Slider Control”)(“Slider”);
yOffset = effect(“Slider Control 2”)(“Slider”);
if (marker.numKeys < 2) { value } else { pickup = marker.key(1); setdown = marker.key(2); if (time <= pickup.time) target.valueAtTime(pickup.time) + [xOffset, yOffset]; if ((time > pickup.time) && (time < setdown.time)) target + [xOffset, yOffset]; if (time >= setdown.time) target.valueAtTime(setdown.time) + [xOffset, yOffset];
}

}

if you wanted some wiggle, you would probably need to add the wiggle expression to the slider values, either:

value + wiggle(1,5)

or just

wiggle(1,5)

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW

[Kevin Camp]

actually, you could apply the wiggle expression to the anchor point, too…

Kevin Camp
Designer – KCPQ, KMYQ & KRCW