Random change to a specific color

[Michael Szalapski]

You might try asking this in the Expressions forum.

– The Great Szalam
(The ‘Great’ stands for ‘Not So Great, in fact, Extremely Humble’)

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[Roland R. kahlenberg]

Heya Michael, I think Colorama will do the trick.

Apply Colorama onto an Adjustment Layer and create colors in the Output Cycle property that coincide with the colors that you want for your squares. The sequence that you want the colors to appear in the comp panel should start clockwise, starting from the 12 o’clock mark on the Output Cycle’s circular widget.

Then animate Cycle Repetitions which denotes the number of times you want the colors to be recycled.

Should you want more control over the starting colors, you may do so with the Add Phase property within the Input Phase section. To do this, you will need to create a grayscale representation of your grid. Each grid item in the comp panel will be affected by the intensity (lightness) of the corresponding grid item of the grayscale image.

HTH
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Asia.

[Walter Soyka]

Nice suggestion, Roland.

I’ll add that you could use a couple instances of Colorama on separate adjustment layers with masks to break up the cycling a little.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Roland R. kahlenberg]

[Walter Soyka] “I’ll add that you could use a couple instances of Colorama on separate adjustment layers with masks to break up the cycling a little.”

Or perhaps messing about with the Input Phase layer to create the randomness. I just saw that Dan has provided an Expression script as a solution – cool stuff!

Cheers
RoRK

Intensive AE & Mocha Training in Asia.

[Walter Soyka]

[Roland R. Kahlenberg] “I just saw that Dan has provided an Expression script as a solution – cool stuff!”

Nice! There’s always more than one way.

I’ve approached a similar problem differently in the past.

I created a precomp that contains one square and built the color animation into it with solids and a series of dissolves. In the main comp, I arranged multiple instances of the precomp into the pattern that I wanted, then used Time Remapping (driven by an expression which incorporates the layer’s index) to drive the animation.

Approaching the problem this way allows you to add specific patterns to the animation based on the layer’s positions in space and stacking order in the timeline, or randomness by altering the expression or stacking order.

Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
RenderBreak Blog – What I’m thinking when my workstation’s thinking
Creative Cow Forum Host: Live & Stage Events

[Bram Rusman]

Thanks guys for giving help!
I also posted this question in the expressions forum. There I got a nice solution with a expression from Dan Ebberts. I applied this to a color overlay layer style. And it works fine!

colors = [[141,203,235,255]/255,
[187,223,243,255]/255,
[164,213,239,255]/255,
[205,219,143,255]/255];
easeTime = .2;
segDur = 2;

curSeg = Math.floor(time/segDur);
t = time%segDur;
seedRandom(curSeg,true);
idx1 = Math.floor(random(colors.length));
seedRandom(curSeg-1,true);
idx0 = Math.floor(random(colors.length));
ease(t,0,.2,colors[idx0],colors[idx1])

I’ll have to try the solution you mentioned. But for now I’ll use the expression. Deadlines….
Thanks a lot people!