Speed up/down along a mask path

[Adam Mall]

anyone ha ?

[Walter Soyka]

Can you post your AEP (or a reduced AEP) that shows the problem so I can take a look?

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Adam Mall]

trying to upload file

[Adam Mall]

I’ve uploaded it but it doesn’t show up on the thread at all ..

[Adam Mall]

13521_wooverlayversion1withplanetsforreduced.aep.zip

[Walter Soyka]

Adam, your example is more complicated because you are using expressions to drive multiple position properties from one single location.

Something like this ought to work for you:
motionLayer = thisComp.layer("Motion Path 1");
keyframeLayer = thisLayer;

keyframeEffectProp = keyframeLayer.effect("Progress")("Slider");
motionLayer.transform.position.valueAtTime(linear(keyframeEffectProp, 0, 100, keyframeEffectProp.key(1).time, keyframeEffectProp.key(keyframeEffectProp.numKeys).time));

The first two lines are important. They set up where the expression will look for position values and our keyframed “Progress” slider.

As written above, leave motionLayer set as it is, and put the animated Progress slider control on each individual layer. If you want to refer to one Progress slider from multiple layers, modify that keyframeLayer reference (line 2) to indicate whatever layer actually has the Progress effect.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Adam Mall]

Thanks for all of that. I appreciate it…. unfortunately it’s still not working.. but it’s getting far too complicated for me/skill set.

I am now looking at the total speed of the actual planet from a CVS data file that I have converted to JSON (this is the preferred method). I am hoping I can reference that data to drive the planet at the correct speed around the ellipse … but this will be complicated too no doubt

[Walter Soyka]

If you can share the data, I will try to help you.

Walter Soyka
Designer & Mad Scientist at Keen Live [link]
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
@keenlive   |   RenderBreak [blog]   |   Profile [LinkedIn]

[Adam Mall]

I can’t share it in this forum.. is there a way I can e-mail it to you? I’ve also conversed with Dan Ebberts and it has some complications to it, but it’s definitely way beyond my understanding of expressions too. Let me know ! I still want to try it, maybe I’ll suddenly be blessed with great knowledge and understanding haha – thanks!

[Adam Mall]

UPDATE: solved

I’ve found an entire workaround that is so easy. I can’t program or come up with expression solutions, but I was able to get the exact animation of the orbits from someone who created the orbits in Python .. so what I did was motion tracked the dots/planets.. all the orbital paths and speeds tracked perfectly. For the orbital path outlines I just took a still from the mov file 1920 x 1080 and dumped it into illustrator and traced the paths/or made ellipses to copy the exact paths. Later I copied each path back into after effects as shape layers … and placed it under the tracking ..

So this solution worked out really well — as long as the data has been compiled in something you can track in 2D … for someone like me that has no programming experience this is an effective solution.