• Adobe After Effects Expressions

  Turn off beam effect when targets are behind the camera.

  Posted by Jim Huffaker on March 29, 2011 at 3:33 am

  I have a crazy dilemma that needs fairly urgent attention.

  I have a series of points that need to be connected by lines in specific constellation patterns, and in 3D. I’ve resigned myself to using the Beam effect (even with all the painstaking work involved) with the start and end points targeted to dots in 3D space using the toComp() method.

  All is fine and dandy until the camera moves past the dots. Then the lines go crazy, I’m guessing because AE can’t calculate toComp if the points are behind the camera.

  Is there an expression that would make it so that if the dot is behind the camera, the beam line size could be reduced to zero? If I was just moving the camera backwards and forwards in z-space it would be easy, but I’m not sure about this one.

  Thanks

  Jim Huffaker replied 15 years, 1 month ago 1 Member · 0 Replies
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