[Ash Curkpatrick]

I’m having the same issue. Specifically it has to do with adding a Spot Light. Ambient Lights work fine.

I am running After Effects CC 2015.3 on Windows 10

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Yes, That works! Thanks so much. I’m working to an incredibly short deadline so you’ve literally saved me. I’m really going to have to find out why it works… at least until after this deadline.

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Right, I see. Yeah, I’ve had a quick look at the documentation at it’s definitely a bit too deep for me at the moment. For the time-being I’ve got the problem solved of the coloured letter’s positioning so I guess it’s not too bad! I’ll just step through each frame and nudge them to the necessary positions. I’ll be diving down the rabbit hole in to scripting in the future though!

Thanks again for your help Dan

Ash

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Doh. I’ve just realised I’m been talking in terms of scripting, rather than expressions. My bad.

Expression-wise, do you think it’s possible?

Ash

[Ash Curkpatrick]

As far as I’m aware, and not for lack of trying, it’s not possible. I remember reading that Adobe has said it was one of the most requested features for After Effects, so that’s good news in one regards – but probably not for your immediate needs. I’m sorry, I can’t find the link for the article though.

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Hey Dan, thanks for your quick reply. I’ll be honest, I don’t really know a whole lot about scripting – so a lot of what I come up with is hacked together.

Currently I’m calling up a txt file with an array to be output into the source text depending on which frame the time is on. From there I’ve fed in the length of the strings in to the start and end nodes of an opacity range selector on the text. See here (please forgive my messy code – I’m really a beginner):

I’ve duplicated the layer 2 more times so that I can slightly adjust the ranges, dividing it all up in to 3 sections. This all works, but now I’m going to be looking at the positioning so as to keep the second letter in a fixed position.

You’ve mentioned the sourceRectAtTime() – do you have any recommendations of where I can chase down a thorough explanation of it and how to use it? I’ve tried looking through the documentation here, but haven’t been successful in finding it:

https://helpx.adobe.com/after-effects/using/expression-language-reference.html

I will tinker around and see what I can do, anyway.

Thanks again for you initial assistance and patience. Really appreciated.

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Thanks so much! Exactly what I needed!

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Awesome! The After Effects scripting king answered me! Does my little amateur heart some good! Thank you sir. It worked brilliantly!

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Thank you. This was also quite helpful.

[Ash Curkpatrick]

Awesome! That’s fantastic. Exactly what I’m after. Thank you so much.