Using sliders to change time of opacity shifts

[Andrei Popa]

Is this like a loading animation that accelerates or something?

What i understand you want to do:
Layer one becomes invisible when meets the checkbox. Other 4 layers follow at a given delay(your frameRate). You want to modify this framerate over the time? You also want to modify the cycle time to fit the new “frameRate”?

Am I correct in my assuptions?

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Luke Mckinney]

Your assumptions seem to be correct! I’ll include some more info here to try to help clarify everything.

This is creating a replacement animation effect using video rather than shooting stills frame by frame. The effect is an allegory for the character’s emotional state so we need to be able to speed up and slow down the speed of the effect, which is why I’m trying to keyframe the frame rate slider.

Ideally, the keyframes would auto-move to the end of a cycle before changing to the new frameRate.

Thanks for trying to decipher both my code and my concept!!!

13736_screenshot20190921at12.03.01pm.png.zip

13735_screenshot20190921at12.04.09pm.png.zip

[Andrei Popa]

Hey. I’m not at the office until monday morning CET and I don’t have After Effects at home.
I’ll try to make something work then and reply, in case anyone else does not do it before me 😀

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Luke Mckinney]

Thank you!

[Andrei Popa]

This has been way harder than i first imagined ????

You need 3 sliders on your control layer: Forground layers, Duration and Number of layers.
Add this expression to opacity to each of the layers:
layersNumber = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Layers Number")("Slider");
forGroundLayers = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Foreground Layers")("Slider");
dur = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Duration")("Slider");//Duration for the animation

function extractCycles(myDur){
cycleValues = [inPoint];
for (var i=1; i<=myDur.numKeys; i++){
cycleValues.push(cycleValues[i-1] + myDur.key(i).value * layersNumber);
}
if (myDur.numKeys == 0) var cycleValues = myDur.value;
return cycleValues;
}

cycleStarts = extractCycles(dur);
lastCycleEnd = cycleStarts[cycleStarts.length-1];
myIndex = index-1-forGroundLayers;

if (dur.numKeys>0){
if (time < lastCycleEnd){
//Check to see in which cycle we fit
var i = cycleStarts.length-1;
while(cycleStarts[i] > time && i!=0){
i--;
}
cycleLength = cycleStarts[i+1]-cycleStarts[i];
thisDuration = cycleLength/layersNumber;
(((time-cycleStarts[i]-myIndex*thisDuration) % cycleLength) <= thisDuration) ? 100 : 0;

}else{
//Continuously loops with the last duration
(((time-lastCycleEnd-myIndex*dur.key(dur.numKeys).value) % (dur.key(dur.numKeys).value*layersNumber)) <= dur.key(dur.numKeys).value) ? 100 : 0;
}
}else{
((time-inPoint-myIndex*dur) % (dur*layersNumber) <= dur) ? 100 : 0;
}

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Andrei Popa]

This has been a bit more difficult than i first imagined.

You need to create a control layer with 3 sliders: Duration, Forground layers, Layers numbers.

The expression takes one value from duration keyframes as the duration of the animation for each cycle. Ex: Duration has 3 keyframes:1,2,3. The first 3 cycles will have the duration of the animation 1,2 respectively 3. It does not matter where the keyframes are in time. After 3 cycles, the animation continues with the last duration for all the folowing cycles.

If no keyframe is present in Duration slider, it will take its value and create cycles with that.

You need to add this exression to the opacity of your layers:

layersNumber = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Layers Number")("Slider");
forGroundLayers = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Foreground Layers")("Slider");
dur = thisComp.layer("Control Layer").effect("Duration")("Slider");//Duration for the animation

function extractCycles(myDur){
cycleValues = [inPoint];
for (var i=1; i<=myDur.numKeys; i++){
cycleValues.push(cycleValues[i-1] + myDur.key(i).value * layersNumber);
}
if (myDur.numKeys == 0) var cycleValues = myDur.value;
return cycleValues;
}

cycleStarts = extractCycles(dur);
lastCycleEnd = cycleStarts[cycleStarts.length-1];
myIndex = index-1-forGroundLayers;

if (dur.numKeys>0){
if (time < lastCycleEnd){
//Check to see in which cycle we fit
var i = cycleStarts.length-1;
while(cycleStarts[i] > time && i!=0){
i--;
}
cycleLength = cycleStarts[i+1]-cycleStarts[i];
thisDuration = cycleLength/layersNumber;
(((time-cycleStarts[i]-myIndex*thisDuration) % cycleLength) <= thisDuration) ? 100 : 0;

}else{
//Continuously loops with the last duration
(((time-lastCycleEnd-myIndex*dur.key(dur.numKeys).value) % (dur.key(dur.numKeys).value*layersNumber)) <= dur.key(dur.numKeys).value) ? 100 : 0;
}
}else{
((time-inPoint-myIndex*dur) % (dur*layersNumber) <= dur) ? 100 : 0;
}

And here is the aep project

Andrei
My Envato portfolio.

[Luke Mckinney]

It works a lot more cleanly than what I came up with!!!! Thank you so much!!!

I can’t find anything in the expressions manual I downloaded on cycles or variables. Do you know of any good resources for learning about this. Just trying to avoid having to bother you for help again. Thanks!