Ha! Wow, not so bad, I guess! I had heard of Math.SQRT2 – 1 before, but not the 4/3 — if you have a moment, can you explain where that comes from? I appreciate the response either way!

Hi there. I’m trying to create a perfect circle via createPath, but I’m unsure how to properly calculate the in- and outTangents. I can eyeball it, but I’d rather be able to define precise variables that correctly scale with either the radius or arc length given the contents of my points array.

Does anyone know the math I need? Here’s the hacky,…

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All right, one more discovery: I had the particle emission tied to the intersection of a field (parented to the green ball thing) and the “floor” of my set. In order for emission to only happen at the locus of the intersection, I’d subdivided the floor: I think the Boolean object got confused with all those components, so I removed the…

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Hi Kouraib,

Thanks for the suggestion. I gave it a whirl, but those weird artifacts remain (attached screen shot). I’m going to attempt to recreate the scene and see if I get the same results (hopefully I won’t!). I appreciate the help.

Edit: Upon additional exploration, I think it has to be something with the Booleans: I disabled the Boolean that…

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Yeah, I’ll try to do that! Gotta get some screen recording software first!

Hi there. I’m attaching a relatively simple scene, as well as screen shots of the undesired render result. I have everything set up and working, even looks good in the Redshift Viewer, but as soon as I render to files, certain frames get these weird artifacts that I can’t explain — or, more importantly, get rid of! I’ve tried removing all the…

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Okay, I figured out what I was missing — I knew it had to be something! 🙂 When creating a RS Pyro Volume to apply to my Pyro Output (I only need one of each, not multiple), I wasn’t filling in the Color field with the color property of the Pyro Output (after assigning color to each emitter and enabling Color as an option in the Pyro Object’s…

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Thanks for the suggestion, but that’s not the goal or the issue. And this example is just a trouble-shooting exercise anyway. The problem that I can’t solve is this: if I have more than one pyro output in a scene, both sharing the same (default) simulation scene, and if I apply separate pyro volumes to each output, the rendered result is that C4D…

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Hi there. If I have two pyro emitters, two pyro output objects, and two pyro volume materials, at render time, the tint value of both RS pyro volumes gets blended upon emission (in this case, 50% gray?): the separate tints are never separate. I’m attaching a simple test scene in case anyone who knows what they’re doing (unlike me!) wants to take a…

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Hi Kouraib, thanks for responding. I came here to post what seemed to work for me (which most C4D users might have already known!)

I created an experimental file and got things working. When comparing the two, I noticed I had objects stacked in a different order, and some things grouped that I hadn’t grouped in the original. After adjusting my…

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Hello all. I have a collection of meshes and stuff (grouped) to which I’ve applied a Squash and Stretch object. One of the items within that group is a pyro emitter. When I preview my animation, the squash and stretch works, the pyro sim works, but the pyro emitter seems “stuck” on the non-squashed/stretched geometry. What’s the right way to have…

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Well hey, I figured it out. I was building my arrays for points, ins, and outs incorrectly. Shocker. When I changed my code to look like the following, it worked!

_dd = thisComp.layer("N exp controls").effect("Diverge distance")("Slider");
_dcs = thisComp.layer("N exp controls").effect("Diverge curve strength (%)")("Slider");
_mult = 0.5;
_prev =…

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I’m really sorry to be posting this, but I’ve been banging my head against it for hours, and I’m still missing something. I have a path that needs to get its first however many points and tangents from a previous path; then I need to build a second path using all but the last point/tangents from that first path. It kinda sorta worked when I just…

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Thanks (again!) Dan. That’s what I was afraid of. I’ll create multiples of the comp(s) in question then. Shouldn’t be too bad: there are only three…I think!

Hi there.

Is there any way to get the “start time” of a precomp contained within another precomp? For example, let’s say I have precomp B starting 30 seconds inside comp A. Comp A contains a null that adjusts scaling for a bunch of other layers/precomps. When scaled, I need a shape layer stroke weight property (inside the precomp) to update based…

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Dan, thank you so much! That seems to do the trick! I appreciate your help!

While I’m here, what do you suggest I read/study to get a better understanding of just what exactly all that code is doing? Or how to know what elements/properties to manipulate to achieve what you shared above? I can hamfist my way though some stuff, but other times I have…

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Hi Dan. I had hoped I could add, say, a checkbox control: if checked, let the loop progress; if unchecked, keep the loop where it was when the checkbox value was changed (on a particular keyframe). But that threw errors: I didn’t know what to use for an else condition, and the loopOut() itself didn’t work. Something like this:

allowLooping =…

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Not exactly what I wanted (or thought I could get away with!), but looping the animation in the precomp (and extending its timeline longer than necessary), I can use hold keyframes with Time Remapping to more or less accompish my goal. It’s not as elegant or customizable as I hoped, but it seems to work for now. Still open to any better options, thanks!

Hi there.

I have a precomp that I have looped — just using loopOut() — but at some points, I want to be able to “pause” the loop where it is. Maybe loopOut() isn’t really what I want here, but I’m not sure how to get this to work. I tried adding time remapping and a hold keyframe, but the loopOut() just ignores that entirely.

I thought about…

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Hi all. Extremely new to C4D and not terribly familiar with node-based shaders/materials, although I do have some understanding. That said, I cannot seem to get a material blender to function.

My mograph color is working: if I ramp that and plug it into my material’s output, I see black and white that changes according to the mograph stuff I’ve…

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Hi there,

I gave myself a problem that I’m unable to solve based on my limited math skills, but here’s the gist of things: I have two point controls that represent the start and end of a shape path (just a line with a stroke). This works. I’ve added another layer as a matte which also has a bunch of effects applied, all of which build off of an…

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That sounds amazing! Going to have to see if I can convince the powers-that-be that I need it! Thanks!

Hi all, if I adjust the keyframe velocity of a keyframe, then move that keyframe, After Effects resets at least one of its points (in or out) to 0.01 or something, regardless of what I had it set at. Why? And is there anyway to prevent it?

While I’m here, is there any reason why I have to set separate properties differently? Meaning, if I want to…

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Never mind, I’m just mathematically challenged! All I had to do was add the wiggle result to the value assigned to “r” (above) and things behave as I want. Thanks for reading!

(Changed my last line to this):

transform.rotation = r + wiggle(wf, wa);

This has probably been answered elsewhere, but I’m probably not working my searches correctly. Here’s what I want to happen:

I have a rotation value randomly assigned to a layer through other expressions. I want to add a wiggle expression that takes that precalculated rotation as its starting point and wiggles based on that, not the default…

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There’s always GIMP (GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program). It’s been a long while since I used it, but it has the capabilities you’re after, per your post.

It’s 4 years later but I just want to thank you for this!

Holy smokes, thank you! From what I can tell, this is exactly what I was trying to achieve! My speed and value graphs for timeRemap don’t visually indicate any change, but previewing shows me just what I was hoping to see!

Hi all. There’s probably a simpler way to accomplish what I’m trying to describe here, but if there is, I have no idea what it might be. As the topic states, I have a clip that I want to remap over a specific interval. For example, if I have a clip of arbitrary length, I want to choose a point to start ramping up the time, and, say, 2 seconds…

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Thanks Kevin! I’ll definitely give this a look…Later. I’m done with this project for today! 🙂

Thanks Filip. That’s what I was afraid of, but hope springs eternal 😉 Thanks for weighing in! Like I told Nick, I settled for faking it!

Thanks Nick. The search() method could be useful. It’s something I’ll definitely consider the next time this comes around: for now, since this is due soon (ha!), I cheated and made two layers: one all regular, one all italic, and masked the exclusive portions. It happens quickly enough and it’s a short enough word (“and”) that the kerning doesn’t…

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Hi all. I have a text layer that has a blinking cursor (based on this YT tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uitRUjAd_0I). This is fine as far as it goes (I did fix it so it’ll still work on newlines), but I have a text layer that has an italic variant at one point, and the above script makes everything the same font as the initial font in…

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