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Question from the book 'The Power of Expressions'
I’m working my way through the book and on pages 88-90(if you have the book), is a expression to create a cascade effect on layers, sort of recreating the windows OS dock.
All layers have a scale expression to increase scale as cursor moves close to it.
cursor = thisComp.layer(‘CURSOR’).position;
x = length (position,cursor);
linear (x,0,300,[200,200],[100,100]);Leader layer is the bottom of the stack, and follower layers are above it and have this expression in the position parameter. (I’ve attached the project if I was unclear.)
layerBelow = thisComp.layer(thisLayer,1);
[layerBelow.position[0]+ layerBelow.scale[0]*0.7, layerBelow.position[1]];The concept I’m confused by is the (thisLayer, 1). What is happening there? I replaced that with (thisLayer.index+1) and got the exact same result, so is (thisLayer, 1) another way of referencing the index of a layer, or is this something a little different. And if it’s different, why would you use one method instead of the other? I’m just trying to wrap my head around what is happening here.
Thanks.
replied 2 years, 9 months ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
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2 Replies
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It gives you the same result. layer() is pretty flexible. You can give it a single argument which can be either the name or the index of the layer (which is what you did), or you can give it two arguments–first a layer object and then a relative index from that layer (which is what the book did).
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Been working with AE for 20+ years and expressions are still a struggle for me. Lefebvre done a good job with his book, but some times the ‘why/how’ explanation is lacking. So thanks for dumbing that down for me. If you ever make it to Grand Rapids MI, beers on me.
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