valueAtTime and yRotation

[Dan Ebberts]

Your expression assumes that your first follower layer is layer 2 in the stacking order, the second follower is layer 3, and so on. How did you want to set it up?

Dan

[Jeff Mcbride]

My setup right now is this:

Layer 1 – No expressions, Keyframed yRot changes
Layers 2+ – Expression on yRot property:

delay = 2; //number of frames to delay
d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(“Layer 1”).transform.yRotation.valueAtTime(time – d)

It doesn’t change the yRot of any of the secondary layers based on the keyframes set in Layer 1. Is this the correct setup?

[Dan Ebberts]

The only problem I see is that I think it should be rotationY instead of yRotation.

Dan

[Filip Vandueren]

I’ve tested and found no problems or errors.

What version af after effects are you using.

I think the ‘transform’ property was introduced in a later version, you can leave it out like this:

delay = 20; //number of frames to delay
d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(“Layer 1”).yRotation.valueAtTime(time – d);

The only other thing I can think of is that there is another layer called “Layer 1” that’s not animated…

[Jeff Mcbride]

If I switch to RotationY, AE automatically switched back to yRotation.

If I drop the transform property I get the error:

Class ‘Layer’ has no property of method named ‘yRotation’ Expression disabled.

So neither of those suggestions seem to work, unless I have something else screwed up.

I’m running 7.0 Pro. Thanks again for all the help!

[Mike Clasby]

Filip’s works for me on AE 6.5, try this, just keyframe orientation (Y Orientation for yours) then you don’t have to worry about which rotation you’re using:

delay = 20; //number of frames to delay

d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(1).orientation.valueAtTime(time – d)

The top layer controls all below that have this expression.

[Jeff Mcbride]

Well I figured out my problem. The control layer wasn’t the first layer in the stack. There were layers above which I didn’t realize would make a difference, does the (index-1) tag always reference the top most layer? Thanks for all the help!

[Filip Vandueren]

([LGABoarder] “does the (index-1) tag always reference the top most layer”

No,

the index-1 in this script has nothing to do with which layer you’re copying the value from.

delay = 20; //number of frames to delay
d = delay*thisComp.frameDuration*(index – 1);
thisComp.layer(“Layer 1”).yRotation.valueAtTime(time – d);

You’re reading the value of yrotation from layer “Layer 1”, at time d
(index-1) is used to calculate the time, which for each consecutive layer should be a bit earlier.
normally you would want the time between the original and the first ‘echo’ to be the same as between consecutive echoes, so you should alter the (index-1) part to reflect the actual index of the first echo-layer.
ie.:
if the first echo is layer Nr. 5 (it has index 5)
you should use index-4.