Stranger than Fiction and PopUp Video

[Mike Clasby]

Wherever you are on the timeline in AE, if you press the * (asterisk) on the numeric keypad, you will get a Marker (a layer marker actually, there are also comp markers but I don’t use them), that looks like a little triangle. That marker will trigger the expression for decaying rotation. If you double click the Marker you can type in info and it will appear on the layer, very handy for leaving yourself notes in a project. There are other keyboard short cuts, check Help.

Markers are also used to tell you where things happen, like if you wanted to drop a markers with the beat of music, RAM preview ( 0, numeric pad) and hit * at each beat of the music. When you are done you have markers at the beat.

Dan has a nifty new CS3 tut for markers to trigger animations, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/design-guide/marker-sync.html

Markers are used for other things too, very handy little critters.

[Mike Clasby]

Oh, yeah, to set the marker you have to have the layer selected when you hit *.

Pop ups.

1) Dan has a Jack-In-the-Box, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/jack-in-the-box.html

2) If you want text (or whatever) to appear from nowhere with a little bounce at the end, try this:
First set a keyframe (stopwatch) for Scale to zero, then go down 3 frames (Page Down three times) and set the Scale to 100%. Also hit that * key to set a marker, then add this expression to the Scale property:

n = 0;
if (marker.numKeys > 0){
n = marker.nearestKey(time).index;
if (marker.key(n).time > time){
n–;
}
}

if (n == 0){
value;
}else{
max_dev=40; // max deviation in pixels
spd=35; //speed of oscillation
decay=5; //how fast it slows down
t = time – marker.key(n).time;
s = max_dev*Math.sin(spd*(t))/Math.exp(decay*t);
value + [s,s];
}

The marker you set will trigger a bounce after it hits 100% (keyframed). Change the max_dev, spd, and decay to taste.

This is a combo of two Dan expressions.

3) Dan also has a Squash and Stretch that might be what you want, here:

https://www.motionscript.com/expressions-lab-ae65/squash-and-stretch.html