[Andy Engelkemier]

Thanks Dan, very friendly explanation. I’m starting to get why a few of my older projects were confusing me also. I always had troubles doing things like having layerA parented to layerB and then later referencing position of layerA via some expression.
The Terrible part is I was always in a hurry, so usually just add/subtract/divide/whatever my way to it’s correct position until it works. Aaaah.

I love learning things before hand so I don’t have to scrap junk together like that in a hurry.

Always a big help. Thanks again.

[Andy Engelkemier]

OMG I can’t believe I overlooked that.

It’s been one of those days I guess. Sometimes I’m too quick to jump to another solution if I see one. I actually just needed the brush to go away for a couple sections. I just animated the position off screen, then back on where it resumed.

This will allow me to get some wiggle in now, and I can taper that off instead of just having it disappear.

My client won’t care, but I will be much more pleased. lol

Thanks

[Andy Engelkemier]

That worked. I found that about the time your replied as well on another post that Dan Ebbert replied to. I used the 0,0,0 method, however the object Does have an anchor point. It’s not moved though, so that’s probably why it works.

I like your formatting a bit better here because it is more telling of what’s going on. I’d never seen toComp, toWorld, fromComp, etc. used before so didn’t really understand what they would be used for.

About the write-on though. I didn’t realize animating the brush size over time doesn’t change the size over time. It changes the brush size and All previous brush strokes at the current time. There goes my idea of creating some line thickness changes with write-on. I guess I’ll have to play with just animating a circle size and position with also using echo or something? That’s all I can think of for now. Once the frames start stacking up that just gets Really slow.

[Andy Engelkemier]

OK, this works, but I totally don’t get it. I asked this question elsewhere, but it works for me as well. I just can’t figure out why it works.

Care to explain the basics? I hate just doing something because it works without having a clue what it’s doing.

[Andy Engelkemier]

I wasn’t clear. I actually wanted it to animate to a shape, not the write-on effect.
Although….Why didn’t I just Draw that line with write-on!?!

I already have the expression for the circle to follow the write on. I’ll just put that on a null object and change it to draw instead of reveal and I’m set.

It’s always one of those “duh” moments.

Thanks

[Andy Engelkemier]

Ha, I didn’t think about audio. I suppose it would be helpful to not eliminate that last 1/nth of a second on that last frame.

I had a script that sort of solved this before, but it was actually wrong. I just had it take the last keyframe and subtract one value. Of course, that adjusted the time slightly, so that’s no good.

I wonder if you could put a preference? I think most 3d animators are going to want it one way, where most video compositors may want it another by default.

Good to know that Adobe’s working on it though.

I’d be happy with some sort of hotkey that just runs a script to do exactly what I’m doing now: Go to out frame, insert key, delete last key.
That way it’d not ruin any data unless I specifically told it to. That might be a good solution until you guys figure out a more elegant one? And it’d also be backward compatible.

[Andy Engelkemier]

Beam Effect, I like your thinking. That’s a great idea. I always think of that as some sort of laser use. I’ve never actually used it.

I kind of like having the triangle orientation be automatic as well. My current plan is a bit more awkward to position. Your solution seems a bit nicer.

Thanks.

[Andy Engelkemier]

so I guess I was unnecessarily trying to make it much harder than it really was. For some reason I was thinking it would give speed for multiple directions and I was thinking velocity was more complex than just speed in both directions. I suppose that’s all you need to define the vector of a 2D movement.

It’s working now. Although, I’m not sure why you can’t specify the first value in an array of 1. I know that’s dumb, but couldn’t the computer still figure out that you want The value?

I wish I could find some good online resources so I didn’t have to keep bugging you. I’m not a fan of books because it takes too long to search through to find something specific. Although, I suppose since I’m not specifically calling you out, you Are helping voluntarily. And for that, I thank you.

[Andy Engelkemier]

hmmm, so what am I doing wrong then. Given that I’m applying it to a single digit I need to break it down to only one number of the array, so I did this, but it doesn’t work.
expression error. Can you spot anything wrong with it?

also can you do things like:
transform.position[0].speed

That was the first thing I tried as a single line, but AE didn’t like it.

p = transform.position.speed;
p[0];


[Andy Engelkemier]

well I got it to work, but still would like to know how to get it to work using speed.

I’m using 24fps so wanted to get the position 1/2 keyframe back to calculate from.

I thought you could do: position[0].valueAtTime…
but that gave me an error, so instead I put a variable to it, then called the variable’s first value instead.

Also for some stupid reason I couldn’t get the syntax right for just calling thisLayer. I thought it was suppose to be: thisComp.layer(thisLayer)…
After failing at that I said, “F it” and just put the layer name instead just so the expression at least works right now.

Here’s what I used. I’d still love some help though.

posOld = thisComp.layer("timeline box").position.valueAtTime(time - (1/48));
(posOld[0] - transform.position[0])*-5;