restricted area for random layers

[Alex English]

The following worked for me. Just set the windowpercent variable to whatever percentage of the area of the comp you want to block out in the center. So, say you need a window in the center that is 20% of the comp width wide and 20% of the comp width tall, you would set windowpercent = 20/100

x = 10;
f = thisComp.frameDuration * x;
posterizeTime(1 / f);
minPos = [0,0];
maxPos = [thisComp.width, thisComp.height];
loc = random(minPos, maxPos);
windowpercent = 50 / 100;
widthleft = thisComp.width * (1 – windowpercent);
heightleft = thisComp.height * (1 – windowpercent);
finalpos = []
if(loc[0] < (thisComp.width - widthleft / 2) && loc[0] > (widthleft / 2))
{
side = (thisComp.width / 2) – loc[0];
if(side < 0) finalpos[0] = thisComp.width - widthleft / 2 - side * (1 - windowpercent); else finalpos[0] = widthleft / 2 - side * (1 - windowpercent); } else finalpos[0] = loc[0]; if(loc[1] < (thisComp.height - heightleft / 2) && loc[1] > (heightleft / 2))
{
side = (thisComp.height / 2) – loc[1];
if(side < 0) finalpos[1] = thisComp.height - heightleft / 2 - side * (1 - windowpercent); else finalpos[1] = heightleft / 2 - side * (1 - windowpercent); } else finalpos[1] = loc[1]; finalpos;

It seems like there should be a much simpler answer than this, but it’s what I came up with. It worked for me to do what I think you were asking for. Hopefully it can serve as a functional base for you to develop what you need.

[Christian Buettner]

Well … what worked for you just worked for me!

Thanks a lot, I wouldn´t have figured that out on my own;)