SCRIPT: Determine the number of values in a property

[Tomas Bumbulevičius]

Hey Yoan, the problem is that even though two dimensional property is set to 2D, it reads three values?

propertyValueType actually returns a four digits number, specific for the property. If you are dealing only with transformations, you could use that number to specify counts.

[Yoan Boisjoli]

Thanks for the reply Tomas!

Yeah I don’t think I’m on the right track with propertyValueType I’m starting to think that I should maybe use value.length instead.

I actually managed to do it in the expression editor in after effects with:

var p = thisComp.layer("Orange Solid 1").transform.position;
var numVal = p.value.length;
if(!numVal){
	1;
}else{
	p.value.length;
};

When there was only one value, it returned nothing that my reasoning behind the if(!numVal).

But can’t get it to work in the script.

[Filip Vandueren]

Like Tomas said, behind the scenes position is always a 3D property, it’s just that when the layer is set to 2D, the 3rd value is 0.

Just like normal rotation is still called Z rotation for a 2D layer, it’s probably programmed so values don’t need to be copied around into different properties when a layer changes.

In Epressions, AE seem to do some logic so they see it as 2 vs -long arrays, but not in scripting alas.

[Yoan Boisjoli]

I manage to obtain the result that I wanted by checking if the layer is 2D or 3D and manually targeting scale, position and anchor point. But if I select an effect’s property, I still have to figure out how to let the script know about it. Right now I’m manually putting the index of the effect’s property.

Here’s what I have so far:

function getPropertyValuesCount() {
    var activeItem = app.project.activeItem;
    if (!activeItem || !(activeItem instanceof CompItem)) {
        alert("Please select a composition.");
        return;
    }
    var selectedLayers = activeItem.selectedLayers;
    if (selectedLayers.length === 0) {
        alert("Please select a layer.");
        return;
    }
    var selectedProperties = selectedLayers[0].selectedProperties;
    if (selectedProperties.length === 0) {
        alert("Please select a property.");
        return;
    }
    var property = selectedProperties[0];
    var layer = selectedLayers[0];
    var valuesCount = 0;
    var is3DLayer = layer.threeDLayer;
    var isEffectProperty = property.propertyGroup(1).matchName.indexOf("ADBE Effect Parade");
    if (property.propertyValueType !== PropertyValueType.NO_VALUE) {
        try {
            if (property.value && property.value.length) {
                valuesCount = property.value.length;
                // Check if the layer is 2D and the selected property is either Position or Scale
                if (!is3DLayer && (property.matchName === "ADBE Position" || property.matchName === "ADBE Scale" || property.matchName === "ADBE Anchor Point")) {
                    valuesCount = 2;
                }
                // Check if the property is within an effect and has two values
                if (isEffectProperty && valuesCount === 1 && typeof property.value[1] !== "undefined") {
                    valuesCount = 2;
                }
            } else {
                valuesCount = 1;
            }
        } catch (e) {
            alert(e.message);
            return;
        }
    } else {
        alert("The selected property has no value.");
        return;
    }
    alert(valuesCount);
}
getPropertyValuesCount();

[Filip Vandueren]

Well for Effect Properties I think you can just use value.length ?

They use Point controls or 3D Point controls and those don’t do the switching around like position parameters do based on 2D/3D status ?