[Arne Münch]

Yes, sorry that I was not clear enough.
I will try on his website…

[Arne Münch]

Mhm, Yes but I thought this maskvertexexpression script does transfering all vertices to 2D points, applys to every single point the expression as if it was a normal point property and transfers it back to vertices of a mask?

So its not possible via that maskvertexexpression script?

[Arne Münch]

Thanks for your reply. I think with the handles that could be an issue I don´t know yet.
With implementing angular inertia would be a further step, thats right.

But I do have some skills in writing expressions, but not in writing scripts so that my first approach is to use that maskvertexexpression script from nabscripts.
I tried:
amp = 1
freq = 3
decay = 5
lookAt = 0.1;
n = 0;
if (mask(1).maskPath.numKeys > 0) {
n = mask(1).maskPath.nearestKey(time).index;
if (mask(1).maskPath.key(n).time > time) n–;
}
if (n >1){
t = time – mask(1).maskPath.key(n).time;
amp_1 = amp * (velocityAtTime(mask(1).maskPath.key(n).time – thisComp.frameDuration*lookAt));
w = freq*Math.PI*2;
value + amp_1*(Math.sin(t*w)/Math.exp(decay*t)/w);
}else value;

but nothing happend, only a static copy of the animated mask was generated.
I ended typing just one line:
velocityAtTime(time);
And recognized that a mask was generated with all vertices at (0,0)
So velocityAtTime seems not to work in that script as far as I understood. But why? The maskpath of course was animated, so the vertices do have some Velocity.

[Arne Münch]

Was I clear enough with what I want?
Please also tell me if you think you can´t do that via that maskvertexexpression script nor any other scripts, so I can discard the idea..
thank you

[Arne Münch]

try
if (transform.position[0]>1000){1}else{0}
on the checkbox

[Arne Münch]

Dan, I just love your amazing smart programming skills.
these 7 lines are beautyfull, even for a bad coder like me..

[Arne Münch]

hi kevin
thanks for your reply
iris wipe can generate a triangle, but as you say, there are no controls for the corners, so you can use a shape layer triangle just as well.
I also tried your trick with the paint bucket, but if you do animations, where a triangle gets really sharp and maybe switches to its “negative” side, you get problems with the paint bucket exactly in that switching transition, it suddenly fills out everything else but not the triangle for a frame or so.

I think its some kind of strange that its not natively in AE possible to generate simple polygons by controlling their vertices.
I had also expected that someone familiar with writing plugins would have written such a thing, but after long time searching the web I just found
https://aescripts.com/bao-mask-avenger/
for 150 Dollar, which is quite expensive.

[Arne Münch]

thanks Darby for your quick reply

I tried CC Power Pin as well, but the edges look the same dirty(is if there were not any anti-aliasing) plus the whole layer seems to disappear in some occasions. I also tried the trick with the fourth point set to the center of the two nearest, but the edges doesn´t look fine. Continuously rasterization doesn´t seem to have any effect on this.

At the moment I am working with corner pin plus three beam effects for the edges in the same color, but this is also not perfect. Sometimes you get small holes in-between, if you do not set your beams thickness high enough, but this also may not look how you want it.

I was hoping there is a simple effect that just renders simple forms like triangles, but maybe there isn´t.

[Arne Münch]

Thanks a lot, Xavier
It works perfect. I hope it will be useful for other people aswell.
Maybe you are right about learning script writing. I hope I will find the time. At the moment I am focusing on learning expressions and there still is a lot to discover.

[Arne Münch]

@Xavier
Your Script is very good and I guess it was quite a lot of work.
I tried to check out how to modify the script and affect the other values like for example:
contents/Shape 1/Transform: Shape 1/Rotation
Your Script does affect:
contents/Shape 1/Path 1/Position

I think to modify it to access “Anchor Point”,”Position”,”Scale”, etc. under Transform should be changing only one single line in your script, but I don´t find out where.

Maybe you could help out here once again. It can be very useful, because if you have hundreds of shapes calculated by expressions it slows down your computer a lot.
thanks